WaPo:
New emails detail Trump’s efforts to have Justice Department take up his false election-fraud claims
On the same day as the electoral college met to certify the election results — which was also the day Trump announced that William P. Barr would be stepping down as attorney general — his assistant sent Rosen an email with a list of complaints concerning the way the election had been carried out in Antrim County, Mich.
The file included a so-called“forensic analysis” of the Dominion Voting Systems machines the county employed, alleging they were “intentionally and purposefully” calibrated to create fraudulent results. It also included “talking points” that could be used to counter any arguments “against us.”
Trump was involved. Here are the receipts.
Newsweek:
Trump Threatens Pennsylvania State Lawmakers Resisting Election Audit: 'Will Be Primaried'
Donald Trump lashed out Monday at two Pennsylvania Republicans who he said are resisting an audit of the 2020 presidential election.
"Why is State Senator Jake Corman of Pennsylvania fighting so hard that there not be a Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam? Corman is fighting as though he were a Radical Left Democrat, saying that a Forensic Audit of Pennsylvania not take place," Trump said in a statement.
"Why is Senator David Argall playing the same game? Are they stupid, corrupt, or naive? What is going on?" Trump asked.
It’s not over, it’s ongoing.
Philip Bump/WaPo:
We’re learning more about how Trump leveraged his power to bolster his election fantasies
He had already been impeached on allegations of using federal resources for his own political benefit
The Times report and one from CNN that focused on the same cache of emails show two alarming factors at play in the post-election Trump White House. The first is the demonstrated credulousness of the president of the United States in embracing disproved or obviously ridiculous conspiracy theories about the election in an effort to retain power and/or assuage his pride. The second is an immediate staff perfectly willing to do the work of putting Trump’s cockamamie ideas in front of senior government officials as though they were worthy of time or effort.
AL.com:
Whitmire: Alabama lawmaker wants to ban critical race theory, so I asked him what it is
That is a short bill, if not a simple one. But it didn’t answer my question: What is this critical race theory educators would be forbidden to teach? Pringle has seen enough legislation to understand the law requires specificity. Many bills begin by laying out their legal definitions. How would his bill define critical race theory?
“It basically teaches that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin, period,” Pringle said.
That sounded very serious, indeed. Nazi-like, even. So I asked Pringle if there were any critical race theorists he could point to who have been spreading such toxic garbage?
“Yeah, uh, well — I can assure you — I’ll have to read a lot more,” he said.
I began to get the feeling that Pringle didn’t know as much about critical race theory as I had hoped. Were there other examples he could give me where critical race theory was being put into practice?
“These people, when they were doing the training programs — and the government — if you didn’t buy into what they taught you a hundred percent, they sent you away to a reeducation camp,” Pringle said.
And then read this thread:
Anthea Butler/MSNBC:
Southern Baptist Convention 2021 offers a Trump and critical race theory litmus test
The Republican "culture wars" playbook will be front and center at this high-profile meeting of America's largest Protestant denomination.
Despite the declining numbers, the SBC may very well decide to play the race card, gambling that white fear of America's racist history is important to its conservative membership. This is the same gamble GOP lawmakers are making across the country, as state and national lawmakers try to legislate school curricula.
David Rothkopf/Daily Beast:
Here’s What Biden’s Team Expects From His Meeting With Putin
Diplomats with whom I spoke also added that among the heaviest diplomatic lifts of the week was the one managed by Vice President Kamala Harris during her trip to Mexico and Guatemala. Despite the superficial coverage in the press, Harris arrived in Mexico after four years of Trump talking about building a wall, deploying troops to the border, separating families, and worse. For all those caught up in the tone Harris used with an NBC reporter, let’s try to remember that Trump raised the idea of building a moat filled with alligators between the two countries.
In the wake of this Harris had great meetings with the Mexican President (he called them transcendent). The agreement of the Mexicans to enter into a meaningful cabinet-level security dialogue with the U.S. was a major breakthrough. So too was Mexican agreement to help stem the flow of refugees into the U.S., including their participation in efforts to work with Central American governments on addressing the root causes of migration. Restoring funding to programs focused on those root causes and setting up centers to help process legal migrants in Central America were concrete achievements of her Central American trip. While the press got hung upon her admonition to refugees not to come illegally, it neglected that she said in the same sentence that they should pursue legal channels of entry into the U.S.
It was a politically fraught trip that also involved undoing a huge amount of damage inflicted by the prior administration. In that respect, what you saw from both the president and the vice president and their teams was something else much more important than the meeting with any individual world leader: A coordinated, professionally managed, goal-oriented, long-term, realistic, experienced-based, mature US foreign policy being implemented.
Ezra Klein/NY Times:
What the Rich Don’t Want to Admit About the Poor
The American economy runs on poverty, or at least the constant threat of it. Americans like their goods cheap and their services plentiful and the two of them, together, require a sprawling labor force willing to work tough jobs at crummy wages. On the right, the barest glimmer of worker power is treated as a policy emergency, and the whip of poverty, not the lure of higher wages, is the appropriate response.
Click on the timestamp or here to see the full picture. This is why those who have had (or might have had) COVID-19 need to be vaccinated.
Tim Miller/Bulwark:
Get Ready for the Shitstorm That Will Follow the Arizona “Recount”
Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy’s plan for Arizona is the same as it was before January 6.
Today the insurrection is ongoing and the next potentially violent inflection point will come in the weeks after the results of the Arizona “audit” are revealed. The audit, which is being conducted by the “Cyber Ninjas” and funded at least in part by my old pal Lin Wood, is set to deliver some type of result soon. The state senate’s audit “liaison” Ken Bennett (congrats on the fancy title, Ken) said that they expect the process will take most of the “rest of this month.”
Much like Trump’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping coup attempt, the Arizona audit is being ignored by Republican leaders such as Mitch McConnell and Kevin Mccarthy, who are not engaging on the subject publicly and privately consider it shambolic sideshow. This while conservative allies dismiss those of us who are alarmed about the ongoing risks to democracy.
Meanwhile the whole Arizona circus is being taken deadly seriously by Trump himself—he called Republican pols who are ignoring the audit “weak”—and by his radicalized supporters who still want to “stop the steal.”
Doesn’t this all sound a little too familiar?