What A Day

The second impeachment trial began yesterday, with Senators voting 56 to 44 to uphold the trial as constitutional and move forward. House managers presented video of the siege on the Capitol paired with Trump’s inflammatory speech to rally-goers beforehand, while Trump’s lawyers tried and failed to frame Trump’s impeachment after leaving office as a “slippery slope.” A team from the World Health O...

Trump’s Senate impeachment trial begins today. Trump’s team continues to argue that the trial itself is unconstitutional… that’s what they’ll be debating with House managers today. Many of the country’s largest retail and grocery chains have suspended “hero pay” to essential workers, despite having a profitable 2020. Now cities and counties are trying to increase wages with local ordinances, but t...

Coronavirus cases in the US are in decline from last month, and the daily speed of vaccinations has picked up. But concerns over variants continue. A new study supports the idea that the new, more contagious strain first discovered in the UK could become the dominant strain the US by March. Democrats are working to include expanded child tax credits in the Covid relief bill. The inclusion of a min...

The House voted to strip Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments for spreading conspiracy theories and endorsing violence against Democrats on social media.  President Biden announced that the United States will end its support of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign in Yemen. A war that has helped create what the UN calls the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. W...

Amazon faces its first unionization vote in the country in seven years next week in Bessemer, Alabama, and if the workers decide to unionize, it could spark waves of action across the country. We interviewed Christian Smalls, a former Amazon employee, who led a walkout last March at a warehouse in Staten Island and was subsequently fired. He told us about his experience, his thoughts on the union...

Trump’s second impeachment trial starts next week in the Senate, and yesterday we got a preview of the arguments both sides will be making. We go through the details of legal filings from the House Managers, and the response from Trump's team. Democrats in the Senate voted yesterday to get the budget reconciliation process started, which they could use to pass coronavirus relief. Meanwhile, Biden...

The daily pace of vaccinations is picking up, with some states working faster than others. We talk about states that have given the most shots per capita, and what’s led them to succeed relative to the country at-large. Following the 2020 election, Republicans at the state level are doing all they can to pass laws to suppress the vote, particularly vote-by-mail. It’s also a redistricting year. We...

A group of Republican Senators are sending Biden a counter-proposal on Covid relief. They want to slash the bill by over a trillion dollars, and limit the size and scope of stimulus checks. They’re framing it as a bipartisan solution, but Democrats are reportedly planning to move forward with their own plan using budget reconciliation. The average number of new cases in the US has dropped off sign...

The COVID strain first discovered in South Africa was found in the United States for the first time in the state of South Carolina. This strain is more contagious, and there’s some concern that it might be slightly more vaccine resistant than the strains we’ve been dealing with thus far. Robinhood and similar trading platforms restricted purchases of Gamestop stock and other companies targeted by...

At the Biden team's first public health briefing, officials noted that the number of COVID cases and hospitalizations in the US is on a downward trend, and they also emphasized the importance of genomic sequencing for detecting coronavirus variants. Over 10 million people are still out of work due to the pandemic, and recent data suggest that the economy isn't getting any better. We spoke to peopl...

Impeachment is moving forward in the Senate despite a Republican effort to dismiss it yesterday, but a conviction next month doesn't seem likely. Meanwhile, Senate leaders finally came to an agreement on Monday on how the 50-50 chamber would run, with the filibuster intact. For many of President Biden’s larger goals, he will need Congress to cooperate. We spoke to Crooked Media’s Editor in Chief a...

Pfizer and Moderna say their vaccines may be less effective against a new coronavirus variant first identified in South Africa. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom somewhat inexplicably lifted statewide stay-at-home orders… that decision received quick backlash given the dire state of the pandemic, especially in Southern California. Ice loss around the globe is accelerating at a record pace accor...

The House is expected to send the article of impeachment to the Senate today, with the trial set to begin the week of February 8th. There’s a distinct lack of harmony right now in the GOP, with House members who voted to impeach Trump facing backlash from local party officials, and national Republican leaders trying to hold things together.  The US surpassed 25 million COVID cases this weekend, wi...

Biden released a 200-page national plan yesterday to centralize the COVID response effort, along with a flurry of executive orders and directives targeted at the health crisis. Plus, a more candid Dr. Fauci did his first press briefing under the new administration. The vaccine goal for the Biden administration is 100 million shots in the first 100 days. We spoke with Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of Brown...

Yesterday was inauguration day, which saw President Biden give his first speech as president on themes of unity, the division in our country, and a need to get back to telling the truth. Kamala Harris was sworn in as the first woman ever to be Vice President, and the first Black woman and Indian-American woman as well. Biden signed a total of 17 orders, proclamations, and memoranda on his first da...

Trump leaves office today after four years of hellish incompetence. We reflect on the challenges President Biden and Vice-President Harris will inherit as they takeover. The Senate trial for Trump’s impeachment still looms, as do Cabinet confirmations. Plus, Biden plans to send Congress a major immigration bill today, which is expected to include a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants liv...

Over the weekend, Biden’s team announced the president-elect’s agenda for the first ten days of his term, plus a dozen or so executive actions Biden intends to sign on Inauguration Day. We discuss. Tomorrow's inauguration will have a massive security presence, with tens of thousands of National Guard troops headed to DC. Across the country, authorities continue to arrest people who participated in...

Biden unveiled his proposal for a $1.9 trillion COVID rescue package yesterday, which includes $1,400 stimulus checks, an increase in federal unemployment benefits, plus $160 billion for a national vaccine program. New York attorney general is suing Mayor Bill De Blasio and the NYPD for excessive force against protestors this summer. This marks the first time in history that the state AG has sued...

The House voted to impeach Donald Trump for the second time yesterday, making him the first president to be impeached twice. Soon-to-be minority leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate won’t take up the impeachment until after Biden takes office, and whether Republicans will convict him remains unknown. There were over 4,400 deaths from COVID-19 in the US on Tuesday, and hospitalizations are still...

The House is planning to vote on impeachment today. Democrats and some number of Republicans are expected to support it, like Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney. The FBI and DOJ held the first press conference since the attack on the Capitol yesterday. Their investigation will likely be a months long process that could lead to hundreds of charges. The Trump administration will move to release all a...

The business community is responding to the siege on the Capitol by suspending contributions to lawmakers who didn’t vote to certify the election results, or in some cases, suspending political donations altogether. Security concerns continue to arise following the events of last week, including armed protests that the FBI says are being planned in all 50 state capitals between now and the inaugur...

This week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will try to pass a resolution to get Vice President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment, and if he doesn’t, the House plans to begin the process of impeaching Trump for a second time. We spoke to Representative Mondaire Jones of New York, who experienced the violent siege on his fourth day on the job, and was one of the first to call for impeachment. T...

After Trump incited an attack on the nation’s Capitol, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi want Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the President, and a second impeachment of Trump by Democrats is also on the table. Resignations abound in Trump-world right now. Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos resigned yesterday, along with others responsible for securit...

Violent mobs broke into the nation’s Capitol yesterday in a failed coup attempt, which was incited and encouraged by President Trump and many other Republican politicians who continue to reject the results of the election. By evening, lawmakers resumed their effort to certify the election. The two Georgia Senate runoff races were called for Democrats Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock. Organi...

Votes are coming in from the Georgia runoff elections, with the results generally looking positive for Democrats… but we’re still waiting on the final calls. Congress meets today to certify Joe Biden’s presidential victory, with about a dozen Republican senators and more House Republicans set to object and add hours of needless debate. Yesterday, the Surgeon General said that the CDC guidelines fo...