Politico: “President-elect Joe Biden is tapping former South Carolina Democratic Party chair Jaime Harrison to lead the Democratic National Committee, according to three people familiar with the decision, a major victory for state party heads and the powerful House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.”

“Harrison, a current associate chair and senior counselor at the DNC, will be charged with leading the Democrats through the tumultuous 2022 midterms and keeping the party’s warring factions together if party members formally elect him as expected this month.”

CNN: “Dr. Harold Bornstein, President Donald Trump’s former personal physician, has died at the age of 73. Bornstein’s death was announced on Thursday in a paid notice in The New York Times. The notice did not give a cause or say where he died, but said he passed away last Friday. Bornstein had served as Trump’s physician for more than three decades, a position that thrust him into the national spotlight during and after the 2016 campaign, including when he claimed to CNN in 2018 that Trump dictated the doctor’s glowing 2015 letter about the then-candidate’s health.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that a retired firefighter MAGA insurrectionist who wielded a fire extinguisher as a weapon against Capitol police in last week’s riot, completely distinct from the other retired firefighter MAGA insurrectionist who wielded a fire extinguisher as a weapon against Capitol police in last week’s riot and killed Officer Brian Sicknick, was arrested in Chester, Pennsylvania. Robert Sanford has been charged with assaulting a police officer after he was identified as the asshole who struck three Captiol cops in the head with a fire extinguisher he threw at them during the melee at the west side of the building last Wednesday.

“The Girl Scouts of Greater New York, which leases office space in Trump’s building at 40 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, said this week that it is seeking ‘as a matter of very high priority’ to move out. The Girl Scouts’ lease, signed in 2014, was supposed to last 15 years. ‘Our organization has been exploring options for getting out of the lease and the building,’ Meridith Maskara, the group’s chief executive, said in a statement. ‘We continue to investigate our options and work to find an office space that would best serve the girls of New York City'” – Washington Post.

Axios: “Julia Letlow will run in the special election to fill the congressional seat left vacant after her husband, Rep.-elect Luke Letlow (R-La.), passed away in December due to COVID-19 complications. Luke Letlow, 41, was elected in a Dec. 5 runoff to replace outgoing Rep. Ralph Abraham (R-La.), for whom he’d previously worked as chief of staff. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) has called for a special election on March 20 to fill the seat. ‘My motivation is the passion Luke and I both shared: to better this region that we called home and to leave it a better place for our children and future generations,’ Letlow said in a statement.”

“When Melissa booked my Airbnb, she claimed it was for a ‘history sight seeing trip’ but instead she and her guests made history by participating in the most horrific attack on our democracy at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, she and her guests returned after the riot and bragged in front of my house, captured on my Ring doorbell, ‘I was there … I didn’t want to get involved as much as I did but to be honest they deserved it.’ A Capitol Police officer was murdered and four of the rioters lost their lives. I wouldn’t recommend renting to Melissa” says a review reprinted in a New York Magazine article on a DC-area Airbnb host inadvertently renting to a MAGA insurrectionist.

The Daily Beast: “‘Today was a quiet day [in part] because that is what everyone wants,’ the senior White House official said. ‘If we can keep things quiet and event-free between now and the Biden [inauguration] that’s a victory.’ According to three people familiar with the situation and a senior White House official, virtually no one has any fight left in them; there’s less than a week left before Biden takes over, and most top administration officials are simply running out the clock. Though Trump is demanding that Republicans in the Senate do not break from him on this, and privately ranting that the ones who do will live to regret it, there is nothing in place compared to the infrastructure or establishment network that he enjoyed the last time he got impeached.”

“Two sources familiar with the matter said that in recent days, Trump is still going on and on behind closed doors about Dominion voting machine conspiracy theories and how he won in a landslide and therefore Biden is an illegitimate president. (None of the president’s claims there are true.) The president has also said that he’ll now make the polite-sounding public statements that his staff has drafted for him about a ‘smooth’ transfer of power, but has repeatedly – sometimes unprompted – ruled out making any statements that Biden won, emphasizing that he will ‘never’ admit such a thing. Biden’s decisive 2020 victory is ‘bullshit,’ Trump has added, that ‘everyone’ knows is a fiction.”

pic.twitter.com/pYSILiGnrK

— Lara Trump (@LaraLeaTrump) September 28, 2019

For the third time in a week, the United States experienced more than 4,000 fatalities due to the coronavirus, with 4,022 deaths recorded on Wednesday, the third highest daily total since the pandemic hit the nation, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

The seven-day running average hit a new high at 3,323, and hospitalizations continued at an elevated level, signs that seriousness of the pandemic will continue to have a drastic impact on the US.

According to Worldometers, the US had nearly four times the amount of daily confirmed new coronavirus cases, with more than 236,000 cases logged, versus Brazil, the next on the list with slightly less than 62,000.

Democratic New Jersey Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill detailed to Rachel Maddow the unease and skepticism she had as groups of people, many of whom were later linked to the attack on the Capitol the next day, roamed the halls last Tuesday in what Sherrill described as “reconnaissance” efforts.

https://youtu.be/vpO2sZWFTvk

Sherrill noted that group tours of the Capitol had been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, so anyone entering the building had to have business with a member of Congress, who would let them in. 

An unhinged and nearly apoplectic Sean Hannity yelled at his audience that Republicans should not even attend the Senate impeachment trial for Donald Trump and that Trump shouldn’t even send lawyers to the proceedings.

https://youtu.be/Z17VQYqXuTc

“You shouldn’t be a part of this, this, this circus of the Democrats,” Hannity bellowed in a historic hissy fit.  “Stop enabling these psychotic, mentally unhinged Democratic Socialists and [Trump] should waste his time or money even bothering to send a lawyer.”

Antifa won today. Trump lost. There’s no other way of looking at it. Just think: Antifa sat back and watched its enemies – Trump, fascist right wing militias, cosplaying incels, Congressional Republicans – all mixed up and at each other’s throats. They were pointing fingers at each other and Antifa didn’t have to lift one. They were probably having a hell of laugh watching the impeachment coverage on MSNBC today via some illegally streamed cable feed, drinking fair trade coffee that they looted from a business owned by a Caucasian taxpayer back in June.

In a lot of ways, Antifa can take credit for Trump losing reelection too. By being the number one threat to national security in the minds of losers, they’re built up into a far more powerful force than they are in reality, drawing those batshit overreactions from Trump, screaming bloody murder about them every chance he got, turning off more winnable voters – not the least of which was that executive order mandating a decade in prison for anyone convicted of damaging federal property. Guess who’s going to be convicted of damaging federal property? That’s right.

The bottom line is Antifa won today.

Donald Trump awarded country singers Toby Keith and Ricky Skaggs the National Medal for the Arts in the minutes after the House of Representatives passed the article of impeachment against Trump for incitement of insurrection against the United States, according to Billboard.

Unfortunately, there is no video of the ceremony.

Given in conjunction with the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Medal of the Arts is an honor rarely given by Trump.  He awarded none in 2020, and only five previously in his term, all in 2019, to singer Alison Krauss, patron of the arts Sharon Percy Rockefeller, actor (and Trump supporter) Jon Voight, and the The Musicians of the United States Military.

During the Obama Administration, Barack Obama presented an average of 11 National Medals of the Arts annually to composers, dancers, painters, playwrights and arts organizations among others.

The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump is angry about the bipartisan-support impeachment–his second–but he’s more angry about the fact that his staff and cabal of supports let him get impeached again.

Trump instructed his staff not to pay any of Giuliani’s fees or expenses, and he wants to personally approve any expenditures to Giuliani and the Elite Strike Force Team of lawyers won only one case in the dozens filed on his behalf regarding false claims of election fraud.  Giuliani had claimed he was being paid $20,000 per day for his services.

In the week from the coup attempt at the Capitol last Wednesday to today’s impeachment vote, Trump grew increasingly upset that no one was publicly defending him.  He could not understand why Kayleigh McKenery, the White House Press Secretary; Mark Meadows, the chief of staff; and even his son-in-law Jared Kushner weren’t appearing on news shows to constantly tell people he did nothing wrong.

“Sadly, just days lates many House Republicans have disrespected our heroes by verbally abusing them and refusing to adhere to basic precautions keeping members of our Congressional community, including the Capitol Police, safe. The House will soon move forward with a rule change imposing fines on those who refuse to abide by these protections. The fine for the first offense will he $5,000 and $10,000 for the second offense. The fines will be deducted directly from Members’ salary by the Chief Administrative Officer. It is tragic that this step is necessary, but the Chamber of the People’s House must and will be safe” said Pelosi in a letter to members.

That’s it.  That’s the story.  From People.  I’ve already given it too many pixels.

Talking Points Memo: “Rather than attend upcoming right-wing demonstrations that have been the subject of federal law enforcement alerts in recent days, members of the right-wing street gang the Proud Boys should ‘walk backward through a field of dicks,’ Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio said Wednesday on the group’s Telegram channel. Referring to the planned events as a ‘fed honeypot’ – presumably, he meant an effort to attract and catch armed right-wingers as they commit crimes – Tarrio wrote, ‘We suggest none of you go to these events… We won’t sit on our hands for the next four years but we can pick and choose our battles moving forward.'”

FBI Director Christopher Wray and the acting director of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services Kenneth Cuccinelli held a 45-minute conference call with law enforcement heads from major cities around the country to warn them of a greater likelihood of violence from right-wing groups, the New York Times reports.

Wray and Cuccinelli were not specific with details of potential threats, but they told the local officials to openly and freely share information with federal law enforcement to make sure no threats are overlooked or neglected.

The federal officials said they were monitoring extremist chatter online and through other surveillance, and they were concerned that local sites would be targeted if federal locations were not available or vulnerable. 

Looks like this harridan finally realized that Biden will be sworn in next week, which is a switch from what she tweeted last night, when she guaranteed “President Trump will remain in office.”

Axios: “Snapchat will permanently ban President Trump’s account on Jan. 20, Axios has learned, after locking it indefinitely last week following the Capitol siege. The Trump campaign and digital team relied on Snapchat as a key platform to reach younger audiences before the company started limiting its reach in June. The majority of Snapchat’s users are under 30. ‘Last week we announced an indefinite suspension of President Trump’s Snapchat account, and have been assessing what long term action is in the best interest of our Snapchat community,’ a spokesperson emailed Axios.”