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The Hill’s 12:30 Report: Jan. 6 committee regroups after key witness pulls out
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–> A midday take on what’s happening in politics and how to have a sense of humor about it.*
*Ha. Haha. Hahah. Sniff. Haha. Sniff. Ha–breaks down crying hysterically.
NEWS OF THE MORNING
This is another day to be glued to your TVs:
The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol is holding its second hearing today.
But unlike the first: Today’s hearing is a more standard, day-time hearing — instead of Thursday’s prime-time testimony.
The theme of today’s hearing — the ‘Big Lie’: The committee will try to prove that former President Trump knew he had lost the 2020 presidential election, but still pushed the false narrative that it had been stolen.
Who is testifying?: Former Fox News political editor Chris Stirewalt, who was part of the team to call Arizona for President Biden on election night in 2020.
➤ NEWS RIGHT BEFORE THE HEARING — A MAJOR WITNESS WON’T TESTIFY TODAY:
Former President Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien, a key witness in today’s testimony, canceled right before the start of the hearing, citing a “family emergency.”
Instead: Stepien’s lawyer will make a statement on his behalf.
What is the family emergency?: Stepien’s wife is in labor.
➤ SIGHTS AND SOUNDS:
View from the hearing room: Photo from Vice’s Elizabeth Landers
Fox News IS airing today’s hearing: Unlike Thursday’s prime time hearing, Fox News is airing today’s hearing live — along with the other cable and TV networks (Via CNN’s Brian Stelter)
Former Attorney General William Barr described election night: “Right out of the box on election night, the president claimed that there was major fraud underway. I mean, this happened, as far as I could tell, before there was actually any potential of looking at evidence.” (Via NBC’s Allan Smith)
A Trump aide said Giuliani was drinking on election night: “[Former Trump campaign manager] Bill Stepien testified to the Jan. 6 committee that he believed [Trump’s lawyer] Rudy Giuliani had had too much to drink on election night. [Former Trump aide] Jason Miller also testified Giuliani was ‘intoxicated.’ Stepien said Giuliani was trying to talk to Trump but was initially directed his way instead.” (Via CNN’s Kaitlan Collins)
Ah, Monday mornings: Journalist Matt Laslo tweeted, “Lots of milling about, yawning, and cursing life decisions going on in the press corps outside the Jan. 6 hearing.” Photos
Op-ed: “The Jan. 6 hearings are exposing just how divided America has become.”
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL MONDAY IN DC. I’m Cate Martel with a quick recap of the morning and what’s coming up. Did someone forward this newsletter to you? Sign up here.
🐻 Inflation
We’re not talking about a cute and fuzzy teddy-type bear:
U.S. stocks fell this morning, reaching “bear market” territory.
What makes a bear market?: A fall of 20 percent or more. This morning, the market dipped to a 20 percent decline since January.
Plus: “Markets around the world tumbled, as higher-than-expected inflation and lower-than-expected economic growth upend the outlook for interest rates and corporate profits. Stocks in Asia and Europe fell, investors dumped government bonds, oil prices slipped and cryptocurrencies crashed.” Context, numbers and explanation, via The New York Times’sAlexandra Stevenson andJason Karaian
Keep in mind about bear markets: “Bear markets, or when stocks drop at least 20 percent from their most recent peaks, are relatively rare and signal that investors are viewing the economy with serious pessimism.” More on what this means, via The New York Times’s Melina Delkic
How the economy got to be this way:
Via The Hill’s Sylvan Lane, “President Biden’s bet on a rapid rebound from the coronavirus recession may have backfired.”
How we got here — in 2021: “The president and his top economic officials rallied Democrats around a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill in March 2021, urging Congress not to repeat the mistakes of the Great Recession and cut off support for the economy too soon.”
Where we stand now — the good: “U.S. unemployment rate is nearly at pre-pandemic levels, the economy has added more than 10 million jobs, and gross domestic product is well above where it was when COVID-19 shattered the economy.” And the bad: “Consumer prices rose 1 percent in May alone and by 8.6 percent over the past 12 months.”
What happened?? Here’s an explainer: “Top Biden administration and Fed officials — along with dozens of economists — expected inflation to cool off last year as the world adjusted to life after COVID-19 … But COVID-19 adjusted quicker. The emergence of the delta and omicron variants didn’t curb consumer spending or cost the economy jobs. Instead, it shifted a glut of saved-up money toward goods, which had been in high demand since the start of the pandemic, instead of services … The new variants also led to factory shutdowns, port backlogs and other pandemic-related snarls, making it even harder for manufacturers and suppliers to meet even higher demand powered in part by federal stimulus.” More on the risky gamble Biden took and backfired
📝In Congress
Hey, a bipartisan gun deal could actually pass the Senate:
A group of 10 Democratic senators and 10 Republican senators agreed to a gun deal over the weekend (!)
Why the number of Republicans is significant: To overcome a filibuster, 60 votes are needed. If all 50 Democrats vote “yes” on this gun proposal, at least 10 Republicans are needed.
The gist of the deal: “The nine-point bipartisan plan would send federal resources to set up red flag laws to keep guns out of the hands of people deemed dangerous to the community, invest billions of dollars in children and family mental health services, fund school-based mental health services, fund new safety measures at schools and strengthen criminal background check requirements for gun buyers younger than 21.” What we know about the agreement
Where’s the text?: That is still being worked out. Senators agreed to measures and are now drafting text.
‘Here are the 10 Senate Republicans who are backing the bipartisan bill.’
➤ HELPFUL READ — ‘WHAT’S IN THE BIPARTISAN GUN DEAL AND WHAT’S NOT’:
Via CNN’s Lauren Fox and Devan Cole
➤ SOME CONTEXT — ‘GUN DEAL IS LESS THAN DEMOCRATS WANTED, BUT MORE THAN THEY EXPECTED’:
Here is some analysis to the meat of the deal, via The New York Times’s Carl Hulse
➤ WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING ON CAPITOL HILL THIS WEEK:
Via The Hill’s Mychael Schnell
🦠 Latest with COVID
Interesting read — ‘Covid is making flu and other common viruses act in unfamiliar ways’:
Via The Washington Post’s Frances Stead Seller, “More than two years into the coronavirus pandemic, familiar viruses are acting in unfamiliar ways. Respiratory syncytial virus, known as RSV, typically limits its suffocating assaults to the winter months.”
How doctors are rethinking things: “The upheaval is being felt in hospitals and labs. Doctors are rethinking routines, including keeping preventive shots on hand into the spring and even summer.”
An interesting side effect: “Researchers have a rare opportunity to figure out whether behavioral changes like stay-at-home orders, masking and social distancing are responsible for the viral shifts, and what evolutionary advantage SARS CoV-2 may be exercising over its microscopic rivals.” The full story
➤ BY THE NUMBERS
Cases to date: 85.3 million
Death toll: 1,006,451
Current hospitalizations: 20,589
Shots administered: 590 million
Fully vaccinated: 66.8 percent of Americans
🐥Notable tweets
Lol, I’m sure many of us have had this thought:
@Ygrene tweeted a photo of his view from the highway. “I’m gonna do it,” he tweeted of the temptation in front of him. More than 96,000 Twitter users clearly agree.
⏱On tap
The House and Senate are in. President Biden and Vice President Harris are in Washington, D.C.
- 11:10 a.m.: Biden left Delaware and returned to the White House.
- 12:30 p.m.: Biden receives the President’s Daily Brief.
- 3 p.m.: The Senate meets.Today’s Senate schedule
- 6:30 p.m.: First and last votes in the House. Today’s House schedule
All times Eastern.
📺What to watch
- 2 p.m.: Biden signs the “Commission To Study the Potential Creation of a National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture Act” into law. Harris also attends. Livestream
- 3 p.m.: White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds a press briefing. Livestream
🧁 In lighter news
Today is National Cupcake Lover’s Day.
And to leave you on a happy note, I want to you meet Rico. He’s currently eating an ear of corn.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Barr worried Trump was 'detached from reality' in aftermath of 2020 election
Former attorney general Bill Barr said he worried in the aftermath of the 2020 election that then-President Trump had become “detached from reality” as Trump made repeated claims about voting fraud.
Barr told the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in recorded testimony that Trump was making increasingly outlandish claims about rigged voting machines and fraudulent vote dumps that Trump claimed were swinging the 2020 election against him.
“And the statements were made very conclusory, like, ‘These machines were designed to engage in fraud,’ or something to that effect. But I didn’t see any supporting information for it,” Barr said in testimony aired Monday during a public committee hearing.
“And I was somewhat demoralized because I thought, ‘Boy if he really believes this stuff he has lost contact with—he’s become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff,’” Barr continued.
Barr, in his deposition to the House committee, repeatedly dismissed Trump’s claims of fraud as “bullshit,” “nonsense” and “crazy stuff.” But he told the panel Trump did not show an interest “in what the actual facts were.”
“My opinion then and my opinion now is that the election was not stolen by fraud. And I haven’t seen any since the election that changes my mind on that,” Barr said.
Barr has been a key witness for the House panel in demonstrating those close to the former president made clear to Trump in the weeks after the 2020 election that there was not widespread fraud or evidence to back up his claims that voting machines were rigged against him.
The former attorney general’s deposition was also played in the committee’s hearing last Thursday, and he was shown dismissing Trump’s claims as “bullshit.” Barr resigned in December 2020 after he had publicly broken with Trump and said he’d found no evidence of widespread fraud in the election.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Canada's Justin Trudeau tests positive for COVID-19 again
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shared on Monday that he has tested positive for COVID-19 a second time and will be isolating.
“I’ve tested positive for COVID-19. I’ll be following public health guidelines and isolating. I feel okay, but that’s because I got my shots. So, if you haven’t, get vaccinated – and if you can, get boosted. Let’s protect our healthcare system, each other, and ourselves,” Trudeau tweeted.
Trudeau previously tested positive for COVID-19 at the end of January, along with two of his children.
Trudeau’s infection comes just days after he attended the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles along with President Biden, first lady Jill Biden and Los Angeles Mayor Gavin Newsom (D), who himself had tested positive for the coronavirus late last month.
During the summit, Trudeau met with the Bidens along with his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, and shook both of their hands while unmasked. Canada’s first lady previously contracted COVID-19 in 2020.
Various members of Biden’s cabinet have recently tested positive for COVID, however they have not been considered a close contact of the president’s, even when they recently attended events together.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a close contact occurs when a person is in the presence of another person with a confirmed case of COVID-19 for a cumulative period of 15 minutes.
Trudeau’s meeting with the Bidens was four days ago, making it possible that he was already infected but not yet showing symptoms.
The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Watch live: Biden signs law to commission study on AAPI museum
President Biden and Vice President Harris will speak at Monday’s signing ceremony for H.R. 3525, which authorizes a commission to study a possible National Museum of Asian Pacific American History and Culture.
The event is scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m. ET.
Watch the live video above.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Miller says Rudy Giuliani was intoxicated on election night 2020
Trump’s former campaign adviser told the House Jan. 6 committee he believed Rudy Giuliani was intoxicated on election night 2020 as he tried to seek an audience with the then president.
The committee showed clips of testimony from senior Trump campaign officials at the onset of Monday’s hearing, in which they described the atmosphere as early results were being tallied across the country.
Jason Miller, who was a senior campaign adviser at the time, told the select committee Giuliani appeared to be inebriated when he spoke with a group of campaign and White House officials on election night.
“I think the mayor was definitely intoxicated, but I do not know his level of toxic intoxication when he spoke with the president, for example,” Miller said in his taped deposition.
Miller and former Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien testified they had argued against the president declaring victory that night given the number of outstanding mail-in ballots that had yet to be counted across the country. But Miller said Giuliani had been urging Trump to prematurely proclaim victory.
“There were suggestions by I believe it was Mayor Giuliani to go and declare victory and say that we won it outright,” Miller said.
In the early morning hours of Nov. 4, Trump falsely claimed to have won the election based on the ballots that had been counted.
“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court, we want all voting to stop,” he said in his remarks. “We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”
Source: TEST FEED1
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Watch live: Blinken holds press conference with South Korean foreign minister
The event is scheduled to begin at 1:45 p.m. ET.
Watch the live video above.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Democrats ask FTC to tackle online baby formula price gouging
Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) have asked the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to address online price gouging of baby formula during the nationwide shortage.
The Democrats sent a letter Monday requesting the agency issue a public advisory to encourage online marketplaces to put measures in place to detect and prevent exploitative practices by third-party vendors selling infant formula.
The FTC launched an inquiry into the formula shortage in May. The advisory for online marketplaces such as eBay, Facebook and Amazon would help complement the ongoing work, the Democrats said.
“While the steps outlined in the FTC’s announcement last month are encouraging, we request that the FTC additionally emphasize that online marketplaces can and should make efforts to protect users from price gougers and scammers. There are common-sense measures that online marketplaces can take to prevent fraud and unfair business practices, and it should not be solely the burden of consumers to uncover such deception,” they wrote.
The letter cites reports with examples of vendors selling formulas on eBay for almost double the price of what it is sold in stores, and of vendors on Facebook selling products that don’t exist. In one reported case, a Facebook vendor disappeared without shipping any formula to a consumer who paid $300.
“Vendors must not be allowed to take advantage of this national crisis by selling products at unreasonable prices or, even worse, committing outright scams by taking consumers’ money without providing products,” they wrote.
The Democrat’s request appears aimed at calling on companies to put in place measures to monitor third-party sellers. The FTC’s initial inquiry already aims to target people who are seeking to exploit or scam American families attempting to buy infant formula.
FTC Chair Lina Khan last month said in a statement the inquiry will in part investigate people who use online “bots” to automatically purchase and resell formulas at “exorbitant prices.”
The FTC also issued a notice warning consumers about scammers that are tricking parents into paying high prices for formula that does not arrive.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Conservatives pan media coverage of threat to Justice Kavanaugh's home
Conservative media outlets and some Republicans took to the internet over the weekend to express disappointment with the amount of media coverage given to the arrest of a man near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home last week.
The suspect in the case, identified as 26-year-old California resident Nicholas John Roske, was arrested near Kavanaugh’s residence on Wednesday and charged with attempted murder after he told officials he wanted to kill the justice.
When police arrested Roske, he was found with a number of items, including a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines and ammunition, zip ties, a crow bar and pepper spray, among others.
Most major media outlets covered news of the arrest as it was breaking Wednesday morning, but coverage eventually dropped off later in the week.
By Sunday, several conservative pundits and Republicans were tweeting outrage about how the focus from media outlets had shifted away from what they characterized as an assassination attempt.
“The mainstream media mob spent all week promoting tonight’s hearing, but largely ignored Biden’s continuing crises and the attempted assassination of Justice Brett Kavanaugh,” said Fox News pundit Sean Hannity.
“BTW… Biden still hasn’t mentioned the assassination attempt against Justice Kavanaugh,” Washington Times columnist Tim Young wrote on Twitter Sunday. The White House issued a statement condemning the threat to Kavanaugh shortly after the news was reported.
“Did anyone talk about the assassination attempt on Justice Kavanaugh at last night’s hearing?” asked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) in a tweet on Friday morning.
The nation’s news outlets have dedicated hours of coverage in recent days to the first hearing of the House select committee investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The committee’s second hearing, which several news networks have said they plan to cover live, is slated for Monday morning.
Source: TEST FEED1
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Two bodies found in Amazon amid search for missing journalist
Two bodies were found in the Amazon rainforest on Monday amid a search for a missing journalist and an indigenous advocate who went missing in Brazil more than a week ago.
The family of British journalist Dom Phillips, who was reported missing along with Brazilian indigenous advocate Bruno Periera last Sunday, confirmed the news to both The Guardian and Brazilian news outlet G1.
The Brazilian ambassador to the UK told Phillip’s brother-in-law they found two bodies in the rainforest but did not share any other details, The Guardian reported.
Phillip’s wife, Alessandra Sampaio, told a similar story to G1, although authorities in Brazil denied the bodies were found in a statement to the news outlet.
The news comes a day after the journalists’ personal belongings were found submerged in a river near the Brazilian municipality of Atalaia do Norte. Authorities found a laptop and a half-submerged backpack still clinging to a tree.
Pereira, 41, and 57-year-old Phillips were last seen on June 5 near Sao Rafael, a remote community in Rio Grande do Norte in Brazil’s northeast.
They were headed to Atalaia do Norte — about an hour away — but never showed up, the Associated Press reported. As the days dragged on, concerns were raised because the indigenous region they were last seen in has seen a share of violence between fishermen, poachers and government agents.
Phillips is a freelance journalist who was writing a book about the preservation of the Amazon rainforest, while Periera is an experienced Brazilian Indigenous affairs agent who has received threats from illegal fishermen and poachers, the AP noted.
After they went missing, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, Bloomberg News, The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal penned a letter urging officials to increase the search for the missing pair.
Police arrested one suspect in the case on Tuesday, local fisherman Amarildo da Costa de Oliveira. He was originally arrested for illegal gun possession but is now considered the only suspect in the case, according to the AP. His family denies the allegations.
Source: TEST FEED1