•Former President Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, has rescinded his decision to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection. Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, objected to the committee’s issuing of “wide ranging subpoenas of information from a third party communications provider,” in a letter to the panel obtained by CNN.
•President Biden will warn President Vladimir Putin in a special videoconference between the two leaders today that if Russia moves to invade Ukraine it will face serious sanctions (NPR).
•The U.S. will hold a diplomatic boycott against China over human rights violations, for the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. American athletes will be permitted to attend the games (WaPo).
•New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has issued a strict COVID-19 vaccine mandate affecting all employers in Manhattan. But the mandate does not take effect until December 27, four days before Mayor-elect Eric Adams replaces de Blasio. A spokesperson for Adams says he “would evaluate the measure once he is mayor.” (NYT)
•Former Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS), who died Sunday, will lie in state Thursday in the Capitol Rotunda (Roll Call). Further funeral arrangements are yet to be announced.
Tweet This: Nunes to Leave House – Donald J. Trump acolyte Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is retiring from the House of Representatives next month, leaving a whole year on his current term to become CEO of the former president’s new SPAC-funded media and technology group, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. The Trump Media & Technology Group plans a rival to social media such as Twitter – from which Trump has been banned since before he left the White House – thus allowing him to spew out various covfefe on an hourly basis again, but this time without critical responses from Democrats and never-Trumper conservatives.
Note: The former president has allegedly raised more than $1 billion for his new venture through a “special purpose acquisition company” publicly created to merge with another company for a quicker stock exchange listing versus an IPO. The Securities & Exchange Commission is looking into whether the SPAC’s managers had any material discussions with Trump Media, which is a no-no, according to public radio’s Marketplace.
Comment of the Day: In his statement about leaving Congress (suddenly, it seems), a place he’s been since 2002, Nunes wrote:
“The time has come to reopen the Internet and allow for the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship.” (Per Politico.)
Apparently Nunes is referring to the fact that Trump had his social media privileges lifted by the like of Twitter and Facebook for, well, lying.
There are some 221.6 million U.S. Facebook users. There are some 77.75 million Twitter users.
Seems like (a) the Internet isn’t closed (didn’t we just all shop on CyberMonday?) and (b) there is a hell of a lot of flow coursing through the cloud.
Nunes continued, “The United States of American made the dream of the Internet a reality and it will be an American company that restores the dream.”
While we know he is referring to TM&TG, given the former president’s epic fails social-media-wise since being banned, Nunes may be dreaming.
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Justice Dept. to Texas: About Those Electoral Maps – The Justice Department is suing Texas over electoral maps that were drawn in the wake of the 2020 U.S. Census, in which the state gains two Congressional districts, but with no consideration of Black or Latino voters, minorities that account for 95% of Texas’ population growth in the last decade (per The Guardian).
Vanita Gupta, the third-ranking official in the U.S. Department of Justice, says some of Texas’ districts were drawn with “discriminatory intent.”
That’s important because the Justice Department must show such intent in striking down the new maps. Gerrymandering is allowed, so such intent won’t do. The new maps give the GOP hold on 25 of 38 U.S. Congressional districts and on a majority of the state legislature’s seats, The Guardian says.
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Tesla CEO Slams Biden EV Incentives – Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, criticized President Biden’s plans to spur electric vehicle adoption, including provisions in the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better plan providing incentives for consumers’ purchases of EVs, in a video interview for The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council Summit Monday. Musk also said federal funding in the bipartisan infrastructure bill for EV infrastructure recharging is “unnecessary.”
“Do we need support for gas stations? We don’t. Delete it,” Musk said.
Note: Not enough time to get into how much the federal government has done for Big Oil over the last 125 years or so, but Musk has some interest in EV recharging, as Tesla has dotted the North American landscape with Super Chargers, which are recharging stations with connectors that work on its own cars, but not any other brand of EV. Tesla also has made much of its revenue over the last decade from selling California zero-emissions vehicle credits to major automakers in exchange for selling internal combustion-powered vehicles in the state.
--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods