Of all the things written about why it seems so hard to live in the modern word without being depressed, I think one that is often overlooked is the scope of our worldview.
It used to be that people just knew about what we going on in their small towns. With newspapers, we started being able to learn more. But still, a lot of the paper was local and so, for a few minutes a day, at most, we read about the world beyond.
TV brought the world into our house, but still, the national news just came once a day — at 6pm, and that was if you tuned in.
Now the world is literally at our fingertips. We carry it around in our pocket. We see headline after headline. We know about things going on everywhere and it permeates our day-to-day lives.
No wonder so many of us are depressed. No wonder we feel helpless.
We are constantly being told about a world that is not in our control. And we are constantly being told about the bad parts of that world.
What do we do? I recommend three things.
First, be kind to yourself:
You are so amazing. You have lived through so much and you keep going. I am so proud of you. Really.
Second, be kind to others.
We can all do that, right? Say “Go ahead — you first” Say “I understand you are short-staffed, I can wait.” Say “stay healthy, my friend.” Stay alive.
Fascism spreads from hate and fear and those who are good being quiet.
So spread love and hope. And don’t be quiet. Even when it is scary, use your voice to speak for what is right.
Third, remember that you are not alone. You are one of millions and millions working to make our country and world better. It is not your obligation to fix everything. Be still for a moment and maybe you can hear it. While you rest, millions of other people are picking up the slack, waiting for you to come back in when you are ready.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t have to act to make the world better. It’d be better if you did — we need you. But it means you only have to do your part. Remember:
What can you do?
Most important: DON'T LOSE HOPE. This is a giant and important fight for us but, win or lose, we keep fighting and voting and organizing and spreading truth and light. We never give up.
With Hard Work, We Can Win In November
Abrams voting rights group has banked $19.5 million heading into 2022 election year
The voting rights group Stacey Abrams founded after losing the 2018 gubernatorial election to Brian Kemp reported this week that it ended 2021 with $19.5 million in the bank as she prepares to seek a rematch with the governor.
The Fair Fight PAC could continue using its money to support Democratic Party efforts and promote voting issues. But it also could get more directly involved in supporting Abrams in her run for governor.
Sen. Mark Kelly raises $9 million in 3 months, leaving GOP primary rivals in the dust
Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly is leaving his Republican rivals in the dust, raising a whopping $9 million in the last three months of 2021.
Not even his wealthiest GOP challengers came close to matching Kelly’s formidable fundraising.
Michelle Obama and coalition vow to register more than a million new voters
Former first lady Michelle Obama said in a letter on Sunday that a coalition of voting rights organizations would register more than a million new voters across the country in the run-up to this year’s midterm elections.
Obama, who founded When We All Vote, a campaign to register and organize voters, also said in the letter that the coalition would organize at least 100,000 Americans to contact their senators, urging them to pass the Freedom to Vote Act and John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
Ohio Supreme Court rejects GOP-drawn congressional map as unfairly partisan
The Ohio Supreme Court on Friday rejected a new congressional map drawn by state Republican lawmakers as unconstitutional and ordered it redrawn, marking a major victory for Democrats in a state where lopsided districts have confounded their efforts to gain seats in the House.
Justice Is Coming
Oath Keepers Leader Charged With Seditious Conspiracy in Jan. 6 Investigation
The F.B.I. arrested Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right militia, in a major step forward in the investigation into the attack on the Capitol by supporters of Donald J. Trump.
Donald Trump should be very afraid: This anniversary was not good news for him
Cheney has talked about possible crimes committed by Trump on or around Jan. 6 before, but it was Woodward's appearance on MSNBC that really caught my attention. I've been a sort of Woodward tea-leaf reader since the Watergate days, throughout his various tomes on presidents as the years have passed. What has always amazed me about Woodward has been his almost congenital refusal to draw conclusions from the extensive reporting he's done on presidents and their administrations. He'll interview them and come up with extraordinary quotes and documentary evidence, but all he ever does is present it without comment. He has been called a "stenographer" for good reason, because of his reluctance or outright refusal to analyze or draw conclusions from some of the groundbreaking revelations he has reported over the years.
But not this week. Brandishing handfuls of documents and looking as animated as I've ever seen him, Woodward made repeated charges that what Trump had done in attempting to overthrow the election of 2020 was "a crime against the Constitution." I'm not going to review my Woodward library on a quote-hunt, but I'm pretty sure it's the first time I've ever heard him accuse a president or former president of a crime.
From Heather Cox Richardson
On Monday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta held a hearing in Washington, D.C., to determine whether three lawsuits against former president Trump and a number of his loyalists should be permitted to go forward.
The lawsuits have been filed by Democratic members of the House and Capitol Police officers injured on January 6 against Trump, lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump Jr., Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL), and others. The plaintiffs are trying to hold Trump and his team liable in a civil suit for inciting the January 6 insurrection.
But the questions in these three cases mirror those being discussed by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, and touch on whether the former president committed a crime by inciting insurrection or by standing back while the rioters stopped the official proceedings of Congress (which itself is a crime).
Most significantly, Judge Mehta grappled with the meaning of Trump’s refusal to call off the rioters for 187 crucial minutes during the insurrection as they stormed the Capitol. This is a key factor on which the January 6th committee is focused, and Mehta dug into it.
While Trump’s lawyer tried to argue that the president could not be in trouble for failing to do something—that is, for failing to call off the rioters—the judge wondered if Trump’s long silence indicated that he agreed with the insurrectionists inside the Capitol. “If my words had been misconstrued…and they led to violence, wouldn’t somebody, the reasonable person, just come out and say, wait a second, stop?” he asked.
The judge also tried to get at the answer to whether the actions of Trump and his loyalists at the rally were protected as official speech, or were part of campaign activities, which are not protected. Brooks told the judge that everything he did—including wearing body armor to tell the crowd to fight—was part of his official duties. The Department of Justice said this summer that it considered the rally a campaign event and would not defend Brooks for his part in it.
For all their bluster before the media, key figures in the events of January 6 appear to be increasingly uncomfortable. Last night, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) joined other Trump administration figures when he announced that he would not appear before the January 6th committee. It has asked him to testify voluntarily, since he has acknowledged that he spoke to Trump on January 6, and since the committee has at least one text from him appearing to embrace the theory that the election results could be overturned.
Jordan claimed that the committee has no legitimate legislative purpose, although a judge has said otherwise.
Observers today noted that Jordan is denying that he recognizes the authority of Congress, and pointed out that in 2015, then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did, in fact, recognize that authority when she testified for 11 hours before a Republican-led House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Today, establishment Republicans showed some resistance to Trump’s attempt to remake the Republican Party as his own when they made a desperate push to stop litigating the 2020 election and instead to move forward. Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) appeared Sunday on ABC News, where he said the 2020 election was “fair” and that Trump lost. “We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency,” he said. The former president then issued a rambling statement asking: “Is he crazy or just stupid?”
Rounds retorted that the party must focus on “what lies ahead, not what’s in the past.” Senator MItt Romney (R-UT) jumped aboard, tweeting that Rounds “speaks truth knowing that our Republic depends upon it.” Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski actually made fun of Trump on Friday with a local political news outlet, mocking his endorsement of the Alaska governor’s reelection only if the governor did not endorse Murkowski.
In North Carolina today, eleven voters filed a challenge with the State Board of Elections to Madison Cawthorn as a candidate for reelection on the grounds that he is disqualified by the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits from holding office anyone “who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”
North Carolina law says “[t]he burden of proof shall be upon the candidate, who must show by a preponderance of the evidence of the record as a whole that he or she is qualified to be a candidate for the office.”
In late December 2021, Cawthorn told supporters to “call your congressman and feel free—you can lightly threaten them…. Say: ‘If you don’t support election integrity, I’m coming after you. Madison Cawthorn’s coming after you. Everybody’s coming after you.’” Cawthorn spoke at the January 6 “Stop the Steal” rally before the crowd broke into the Capitol, suggesting he supported the attack, then voted against accepting the certified ballots from certain states. Cawthorn continues to question the legitimacy of Biden’s election and, last summer, warned there could be “bloodshed” over future elections.
The group filing the challenge promised it would be the first of many.
In days after January 6, McCarthy said Trump admitted bearing some responsibility for Capitol attack
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said publicly and privately in the days following the deadly riots at the US Capitol that President Donald Trump admitted personally bearing some responsibility for the attack -- one of several reasons why the select committee on January 6 wants to hear from the House's top Republican.
Democrats are doing great things
$27 billion in new money aimed at fixing the nation’s aging bridges
The Biden administration urged states on Friday to get to work bringing thousands of aging bridges up to par, while improving safety and uncorking bottlenecks, with the help of $27.5 billion in new federal aid.
The White House announced the allocation of money to mark 60 days since President Biden signed the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. The bridge program is one of the largest new sources of federal spending in the package and one that encapsulates its bipartisan appeal.
“Modernizing America’s bridges will help improve safety, support economic growth, and make people’s lives better in every part of the country — across rural, suburban, urban, and tribal communities,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement.
California farmworkers now get overtime pay after 8 hours.
For years, hundreds of thousands of farmworkers toiling in California’s agricultural heartland weren’t entitled to overtime pay unless they worked more than 10 hours a day. But that has changed due to a 2016 state law that’s been gradually implemented over four years. As of Jan. 1, California law requires that employers with 26 or more employees pay overtime wages to farmworkers after eight hours a day or 40 hours a week. That means many farmworkers like Cárdenas will now be compensated time-and-a-half for working more than eight hours. It’s a change advocates say is long overdue to provide the agricultural labor force with the same protections afforded to other hourly workers.
The Secret Triumph of Economic Policy
All the reporting these days is about rising prices. And I get that: A 7 percent surge in the Consumer Price Index over the past year comes as a shock, especially because so many people, myself included, didn’t see it coming.
But there’s another story that should be getting more attention: America’s extraordinary success in limiting the damage from a horrifying pandemic. In fact, there’s a good chance that in retrospect we’ll view economic management over the past two years as a policy triumph, despite the inflation spike.
Good Virus News
Is Omicron Peaking? In parts of the Northeast, it seems to be
The number of new Covid-19 cases in New York City rose more than twentyfold in December. In the past few days, it has flattened.
In both New Jersey and Maryland, the number of new cases has fallen slightly this week. In several major cities, the number is also showing signs of leveling off.
Other Good News
Major Student Loan Processor Cancels $1.7 Billion In Debt
Navient, one of the nation’s largest student loan processors, will cancel $1.7 billion worth of debt for 66,000 students following an agreement to settle a lawsuit with 39 states and the District of Columbia.
On the Lighter Side
That is it for today.
I am lucky and proud to be in this with you ✊🏾✊🏻💙💚💛💜🧡✊🏽✊🏻