Joe Biden takes the oath and is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.
ABCMarjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican representative from Georgia, was recently stripped of her committee duties after it emerged that she’d pushed a whole range of wacko conspiracy theories—the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracies, or that a cabal of Democrats are “Satan-worshipping pedophiles” (her words) trafficking children out of D.C. pizza parlors and harvesting their blood for a substance called “Adrenochrome,” a plotline straight out of the Pixar film Monsters Inc. (really); that the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings were “false flag” operations; that “Zionist supremacists” are lording over a plot to push immigration all over the world; that the 9/11 attacks may not have happened, referring to a “so-called plane that crashed into the Pentagon”—and called for the execution of Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and FBI agents. She’s also, despite presenting as a God-fearing Christian, been accused of conducting a number of affairs (she’s denied the allegations).Well, this week, she attempted to outdo herself in the “terrible” department by hanging an anti-transgender sign outside her office in order to taunt a congresswoman across the hall who has a trans child—and this before fighting against the Equality Act.“The frontrunner for Worst Human of 2021 is working to defeat the Equality Act right now. This is an act that would ban discrimination against Americans based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” explained Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday night, before throwing to footage of Illinois Rep. Marie Newman hanging a transgender flag outside of her office as a message to Greene.“Of course Marjorie could not let this go,” Kimmel continued. “She had to respond by putting up a sign outside her office that said, ‘There are two genders: male and female. Trust the science.’ Now she trusts the science. Because that wasn’t enough scumbaggery for one day, QAnon Marj had the audacity to say this on the floor of the House.”Shockingly Real Tom Cruise Deepfakes Are Invading TikTokKimmel then cut to video of Greene offering this rather unconvincing argument: “I’d like to point out to my Democrat colleagues that there is no Republican member of Congress that condones the attack on the Capitol on January 6. I was also a victim in this chamber when it happened, and we are very offended at your constant attacks on us for claiming we had anything to do with it. So, that needs to stop.” The late-night host was less than convinced, to say the least. “My god. We’ve got a Karen in Congress now. She’s so awful,” said Kimmel. “And by the way, what she said is interesting because yesterday, we learned that one of her closest friends and allies, a guy named Anthony Aguero, was in the Capitol on January 6. This is a guy who, when she was banned from Facebook, she appeared on his Facebook account. They’re very good friends. But she’s offended, because she had nothing to do with what happened! And not only that, one of her other close friends is the guy who actually planned and incited the riot at the Capitol. This guy,” he added, pointing to a photo of Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene together at a rally. Despite Greene’s hateful theatrics, the Equality Act passed the House on Thursday.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Violet light bathed the club stage as 300 people, masked and socially distanced, erupted in gentle applause. For the first time since the pandemic began, Israeli musician Aviv Geffen stepped to his electric piano and began to play for an audience seated right in front of him. Governments say getting vaccinated and having proper documentation will smooth the way to travel, entertainment and other social gatherings in a post-pandemic world.
Josh Venable, a longtime Michigan GOP operative and chief of staff to former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, can trace the arc of the state's Republican Party clearly. “This was the state where to be Republican was defined by Gerald Ford and George Romney,” Venable said, referring to the moderate former president and former governor. Now, he said, it's defined by Mike Shirkey, the state Senate majority leader who was overheard calling the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot a “hoax"; Meshawn Maddock, the new co-chair of the state party who backed former President Donald Trump's false claims of voter fraud; and the Proud Boys.
‘Grim Reaper’ lawyer is fundraising to remind Republicans about last month’s Capitol riots
The Georgia prosecutor investigating potential efforts by Donald Trump and others to influence last year's general election has a message for people who are eager to see whether the former president will be charged: Be patient. “I'm in no rush,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said this week in an interview with The Associated Press. Willis, a Democrat elected in November, sent letters to state officials on Feb. 10 instructing them to preserve records related to the election, particularly those that may contain evidence of attempts to influence elections officials.
It is unclear at the moment if the dog walker was attacked due to his celebrity client
A resurgence of COVID-19 cases is hitting Somalia hard, straining one of the world’s most fragile health systems, while officials await test results to show whether a more infectious variant of the coronavirus is spreading. In the lone COVID-19 isolation center in the capital, Mogadishu, 50 people have died in the past two and a half weeks, Martini hospital deputy director Sadaq Adan Hussein told The Associated Press during a visit. Test results for the presence of one of the new variants are expected next month, Sadaq said.
The U.S. Air Force says it will be distributing bottled water to thousands of residents and business owners near its base in suburban Phoenix until at least April, marking the latest case of chemicals from military firefighting efforts contaminating the water supply in a nearby community. Luke Air Force Base announced this month that studies showed high levels of contaminants had affected drinking water for about 6,000 people in roughly 1,600 homes as well as a few neighboring businesses. A contractor is scheduling deliveries of drinking water to the homes of people who picked up their first bottles this week, said Sean Clements, chief of public affairs for the 56th Fighter Wing at the base.
Democrats are ready to shove a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package through the House on Friday, despite a setback that means a minimum wage boost is unlikely to be in the final version that reaches President Joe Biden. The relief bill would provide millions of people with $1,400 direct payments.
During a meeting with advisers on Thursday, former President Donald Trump shared that he is going to form a new super PAC and has tapped former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski to run it, several people familiar with the matter told Politico. The meeting was held at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, and the attendees included Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; former campaign managers Brad Parscale and Bill Stepien; former deputy campaign manager Justin Clark; former White House social media director Dan Scavino; and senior adviser Jason Miller. Miller told Politico that Trump's fans will be "impressed with the political operation being built out here," and more details will be released "in the coming weeks." Lewandowski served as Trump's first campaign manager, and after being fired in June 2016, he remained close to Trump and spent time with him at the White House. Nothing about the new super PAC is set in stone, people familiar with the matter stressed to Politico, and Trump could change the plan at any moment. Trump already has a leadership PAC called Save America, which he launched after the election. While Trump was falsely claiming the election had been stolen from him, Save America was raising tens of millions of dollars, and had $31.5 million in the bank at the end of December, Politico reports. Leadership PACs are limited in how much they can raise from individual donors, but super PACs can solicit and spend unlimited amounts of money. Trump associates say he wants to play a major role in the 2022 midterms, primarily so he can seek revenge against Republicans who backed his impeachment and didn't help him overturn the election results. More stories from theweek.comDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriouslyThe GOP's apathy for governing is being exposedThe MyPillow guy might be Trump's ultimate chump
President Joe Biden will exercise his empathy skills Friday during a Texas visit with a dual mission: surveying damage caused by severe winter weather and encouraging people to get their coronavirus shots. Biden and his wife, Jill, were traveling to Houston for the president's first trip to a major disaster site since he took office a little over a month ago. Severe winter weather across the South over Valentine's Day weekend battered multiple states, with Texas bearing the brunt of unseasonably frigid conditions that caused widespread power outages and frozen pipes that burst and flooded homes.
Twenty-five years after Pokemon first began delighting children and adults alike, the phenomenon is still capturing hearts, with smartphone craze Pokemon Go enjoying record success in virus-hit 2020.
Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough on Thursday effectively killed a Democratic push to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in President Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, ruling that the measure doesn't pass muster under the budget reconciliation rules Democrats are using to pass the package with a simple majority in the Senate. Two Democrats, Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), have already said they would vote against including the $15 minimum wage provision in the relief package, dealing it a near-fatal blow in the 50-50 Senate. But many supporters of the wage hike were nonetheless irritated that an obscure, unelected Senate official was the one to ax the broadly popular measure. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was among them, but he also had a Plan B. "In the coming days, I will be working with my colleagues in the Senate to move forward with an amendment to take tax deductions away from large, profitable corporations that don't pay workers at least $15 an hour and to provide small businesses with the incentives they need to raise wages," Sanders said in a statement. "That amendment must be included in the reconciliation bill." Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) echoed Sanders, saying he's "looking at a tax penalty for mega-corporations that refuse to pay a living wage." The House is scheduled to vote on the $1.9 trillion package, including the $15 minimum wage, on Friday, but the measure can be amended when it arrives in the Senate. If they reconfigure the minimum wage increase as a tax penalty, which is "likely to qualify under the reconciliation rules," Bloomberg News reports, "Democrats have less than three weeks to draft the changes, convince all 50 senators who caucus with the party to support the tax increases — and the specifics of the minimum-wage hike. ... Targeting only large, profitable companies could help assuage concerns from some moderate Democrats who are hesitant to support large-scale tax increases." More stories from theweek.comDemocrats should take the Romney-Cotton proposal seriouslyThe GOP's apathy for governing is being exposedThe MyPillow guy might be Trump's ultimate chump
A faction of local, county and state Republican officials is pushing lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories that echo those that helped inspire the violent U.S. Capitol siege, online messaging that is spreading quickly through GOP ranks fueled by algorithms that boost extreme content. The Associated Press reviewed public and private social media accounts of nearly 1,000 federal, state, and local elected and appointed Republican officials nationwide, many of whom have voiced support for the Jan. 6 insurrection or demanded that the 2020 presidential election be overturned, sometimes in deleted posts or now-removed online forums.
President Joe Biden urged Americans to wear masks and not let their guard down as the number of coronavirus cases declined. Latest COVID-19 updates.
Nintendo shows off its Sanrio-Animal Crossing collaboration items.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty/TwitterA pickup truck parked at the United States Capitol and bearing a Three Percenter militia sticker on the day of the Jan. 6 riot belongs to the husband of freshman U.S. Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois, who approvingly quoted Adolf Hitler a day earlier.Researchers on Twitter first noticed the Ford pickup truck with the far-right militia’s decal parked on the Capitol grounds in footage posted to social media and taken by CBS News.The presence of a vehicle with a militia decal so close to the Capitol, inaccessible to normal vehicle traffic, raised questions about how it got there—and whether it belonged to any of the hundreds of suspects involved in the deadly riot.But in an email to The Daily Beast, Chris Miller, Rep. Miller’s husband and a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, conceded the truck belonged to him even as he pleaded ignorance about the militia group.Mitch McConnell Says He’ll Support Trump in 2024 After Blaming Him for Capitol Riot“Army friend gave me decal. Thought it was a cool decal. Took it off because of negative pub,” Miller wrote in an email late Thursday. He says he “never was member” of the militia and “didn’t know anything about 3% till fake news started this fake story and read about them.” A request for comment to the office of U.S. Rep. Miller was not returned prior to publication.The link between the truck and Rep. Miller was first reported on Twitter on Thursday by the @capitolhunters account, which is organizing research about rioters seen in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot from a large community of volunteers reviewing thousands of hours of footage.The #Sedition3PTruck with government plates parked in a restricted zone from 1:02. #SeditionHunters #Sedition3PSource: https://t.co/DubmxJhjSZ pic.twitter.com/INCs6geEYg— Phoenix on Wheels (@phoenixonwheels) February 25, 2021 A pickup truck with the same make, model, color, and Illinois plate number as the one at the Capitol on Jan. 6 is also visible in a July 2020 photo carrying Mary Miller for Congress banners during a Fourth of July parade in Illinois. That same day, Rep. Miller’s Facebook page posted a picture of what appeared to be the same truck with the same Trump-Pence and Mary Miller for Congress banners attached to the same PVC pipe frame as she campaigned in the towns of Mattoon, Sullivan, Herrick, and Moweaqua.https://www.facebook.com/BaileyforIllinois/photos/888345101571058Previously, the Millers have proudly posted pictures of the same model of Ford pickup truck, often emblazoned with the same stickers—like “herd quitter” and Guns Save Life, a website affiliated with an Illinois-based gun rights group—as the truck at the Capitol bore on Jan. 6. In at least one case, before Chris Miller’s election to the State House in 2018, the truck in question had a different license plate.The couple have appeared with that truck at campaign events, sometimes with the vehicle plastered in pictures of their faces or “taxpayers lives matter” posters. The license plate of the vehicle at the Capitol on Jan. 6—registered to Illinois, but with a drawing of the state’s Capitol building—appears to be a design reserved for Illinois politicians, like Chris Miller, who took office in 2019.The Three Percenter decal may have been a relatively new addition to the car, as it was not visible in images from this summer.https://www.facebook.com/ChrisMillerForStateRep/photos/2438928539529305Elected last November, Mary Miller, a Republican, is perhaps best known for speaking at a “Moms for America” rally in front of the Capitol one day before the riot. “Hitler was right on one thing: whoever has the youth has the future," she told the crowd. She later apologized for the remarks and said “some are trying to intentionally twist my words to mean something antithetical to my beliefs.”Militia groups have garnered new attention from law enforcement given the number of members arrested and charged with riot-related crimes since Jan. 6. Robert Gieswein, an alleged rioter identified by The Daily Beast who’s visible in footage of the first rioters to break into the Capitol, "appears to be affiliated with the radical militia group known as the Three Percenters," according to an FBI affidavit filed in the court case against him.The group, which first formed in 2008, is part of a loose network of “anti-government extremists” who liken their crusade against the U.S. government to that of Revolutionary War-era patriots, according to the Anti Defamation League. Their name comes from the false claim that only 3 percent of U.S. colonists fought in that war.Ties between militia groups and Congress have also come under greater scrutiny after some lawmakers suggested their colleagues may have played a role in the riot. Rep. Steve Cohen pointedly claimed that U.S. Rep Lauren Boebert led a “large” tour through the Capitol shortly before the riot. Boebert said she gave no tours to anyone outside her family at the time and there is no evidence as yet that any of the rioters benefited from inside help.Boebert has, however, been criticized for her links to militia groups after she posed for a picture at a December 2019 gun rights rally where rally-goers flashed Three Percenter hand signs.Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
Drew Angerer/GettyThursday night, Twitter was full of rage (more than usual) after Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth McDonough ruled the minimum wage increase out of the COVID relief bill. There was rage at McDonough. There was rage at Republicans. There was rage at Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema. And there was some rage at the Biden administration and specifically at Vice President Kamala Harris, who has the power to overrule the parliamentarian. Reversing Harris would require 60 votes, not 51, so she could plausibly do that, but no one really thinks she will.No question, this is excruciating to watch. The Democrats won elections, emerging with congressional majorities, albeit a bare one in the Senate, and they can’t pass the program they ran on, in part because of a couple of Democrats. Progressives in the House are saying the party just has to deliver on this core promise, and they’re right.Well, I think there’s a chance, and maybe a good one, that a minimum wage increase isn’t dead yet. But passing one is going to require courage, patience, and compromise. I know compromise is a dirty word. But that’s the legislative process when you didn’t win enough elections to have things the way you want them in our ridiculous system.Dems Say: We’re Dead If We Don’t Deliver on Minimum WageI’ll come back to the minimum wage, but first let’s back up and examine one silver lining here. Now, Manchin and Sinema have no excuse not to vote for the COVID bill. It will go through a few permutations in the coming days, and presumably without the minimum wage it will come out to less than the previous sticker price of $1.9 trillion, but it will be close to that. And it will pass.Don’t lose sight of what a victory this is, for the country and for liberal economic thinking. This bill, and the money it will help direct to many millions of Americans, is a very big deal. Step back and remember, Biden ran on two core promises: He’d competently get vaccines into people’s arms, and he’d restore the economy.On the vaccination front, things are going… fine. Not great, but fine, and getting better week on week. With the pending Johnson & Johnson approval, fast strides should be made. Biden’s perhaps-cleverly-lowballed 100 million shots in the first 100 days will be surpassed, and it seems a fair guess that everyone who wants a vaccine will have one by, oh, sometime in June.About the economy: In the long run, of course, getting people vaccinated and reopening restaurants and movie houses and sporting arenas and resorts is what will really get the economy going. In the meantime, the government needs to step in. Biden saw this and went big. You’ve read the criticisms that he went too big, exceeding the “output gap” and risking future inflation (which most experts don’t consider a big risk).I think he went big based not just on immediate need. I think he went big in part to try to shift America’s governing economic paradigm from let-the-market-handle-everything to embracing public investment and a robust role for government.The dollar amounts in some of the spending categories are more than the CBO says are necessary to meet the immediate need? Fine. So what? This is a crisis, and crisis brings opportunity, and the opportunities here are rife. To help state and local governments that have been starved for years, that never really made up the revenues they lost 12 years ago after the Great Meltdown. To help schools strengthen themselves against germ transmission, which seems a good idea in general, and is it the worst thing in the world if a school can build a new gym into the bargain? No, it is not! It’s economic activity, and jobs, and, well, a new gym.So this COVID bill has an importance beyond the immediate needs it will meet. When this passes—and we know it will pass now—people should celebrate.Then, Democrats need to re-commence the fight to finally raise the minimum wage. They should immediately start agitating for a stand-alone bill. This would require eliminating or changing the filibuster, which I’ve been saying for years they need to do.That will be tough. Manchin and Sinema have to go for it. Biden has to lean on them hard. Might they accede, if Biden drops the number a bit from $15 and promises billions for their states? I don’t think it’s impossible. The key phrase above may prove to be “or changing”; Ian Millhiser of Vox recently wrote a comprehensive piece on how the filibuster can be changed, not eliminated, in ways Manchin and Sinema might be able to live with.Joe Biden Wants to Repair America. Will Joe Manchin Let Him?A stand-alone bill would pressure some Republicans who purport to be on the side of the working class to take a stand one way or the other. Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, a couple others; they talk populism sometimes, but their no votes on a stand-alone minimum wage bill would chisel their hypocrisy in stone. And Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a top Democratic target for 2022, would make himself more vulnerable with a no vote.The other way to go is to attach the minimum wage to a “must-pass” bill like a defense appropriations bill. That’s what happened the last time a minimum-wage bill passed in 2007. It was part of an emergency appropriations act that funded the Iraq War.There will be plenty of those bills in the next couple years. What’s important now is that the White House keep everybody together, and that Democrats not let this setback start a corrosive dynamic. The Senate is a completely screwed-up place. Its rules constantly thwart a majority. These are the kinds of things that happen there. People can respond by getting more enraged—or by getting more strategic.Bank the big win of the relief bill, which is coming, and find another venue to fight for the minimum wage. That fight is far from over.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
The rollout of vaccines come at a critical time for the country, which has seen its hard-won gains against the virus get wiped out by a winter surge and is struggling to mitigate the pandemic’s economic shock that decimated service sector jobs. “I felt very anxious over the past year, but I feel more secure now after receiving the vaccine,” said nursing home worker Lee Gyeong-soon, who received her shot at a public health center in northern Seoul. Health authorities plan to complete injecting the first of two doses to some 344,000 residents and workers at long-term care settings and 55,000 frontline medical workers by the end of March.
Fans of Britney Spears who believe her father should be ousted from his role overseeing her conservatorship "have it so wrong", his lawyer said. The pop star's finances and personal affairs have been controlled by a contentious legal agreement since she had a public breakdown in 2008. Her father, Jamie, was appointed her conservator but Spears has recently attempted to have him removed from the role. A court in Los Angeles heard she was "scared" of him. Amid the ongoing legal battles, Jamie's lawyer addressed the FreeBritney movement, which believes the star should be allowed to take control over her life. During an appearance on Good Morning America, Vivian Thoreen said: "I understand that every story needs a villain, but people have it so wrong here.
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