The Executive Order:

Section 1.  Policy.  Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love.  Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports. 

Wait a second. What do we mean by “whether they will be denied access to the restroom”? Everybody is denied access to one of the two multi-user restrooms, because they are sorted by sex, because there are some men and boys who just will use opportunities like public restrooms with incomplete partitions to peer at or photograph or assault women. Women don’t want … Read the rest

So that’s why Trump put a whole bunch of trump hacks in the Pentagon after he lost the election.

The Pentagon blocked members of President Joe Biden’s incoming administration from gaining access to critical information about current operations, including the troop drawdown in Afghanistan, upcoming special operations missions in Africa and the Covid-19 vaccine distribution program, according to new details provided by transition and defense officials.

By “the Pentagon” here they mean civilian management, not the military.

The effort to obstruct the Biden team, led by senior White House appointees at the Pentagon, is unprecedented in modern presidential transitions and will hobble the new administration on key national security matters as it takes over positions in the Defense Department on

So the Biden people find that Trump just dropped that whole vaccine distribution thing as if it were a rotting rabbit carcass.

The Biden administration has promised to try to turn the Covid-19 pandemic around and drastically speed up the pace of vaccinating Americans against the virus. But in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration’s Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.

Andrew fucking Jackson is gone.

President Biden has filled the Oval Office with images of American leaders and icons, focusing the room around massive portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt that hangs across from the Resolute Desk. It is a clear nod to a president who helped the country through significant crises, a challenge Biden now also faces.

…

Biden is also nodding to segments of the Democratic Party’s base via historic references. Behind the Resolute Desk is a bust of Cesar Chavez. The office also includes busts of Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt and sculpture by Allan Houser of the Chiricahua Apache tribe that once belonged to the late Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI) — the first Japanese-American elected to

Not such a cheerful inauguration day for Joseph Biggs.

A Proud Boys leader caught on camera storming the U.S. Capitol with a pro-Trump mob has been arrested and charged for participating in the deadly insurrection.

Joseph Biggs, a top organizer with the white nationalist organization, has been slapped with three charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding, for his role in the Jan. 6 riots.

Prosecutors say the 37-year-old Florida resident is a “self-described organizer” of the Proud Boys, which describes itself as a “pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists.”

Biggs can be seen in several videos and photos taken inside the Capitol building, including one where someone

It’s another not-Trump, but since it has been Trump for all this time let’s enjoy the not-Trump now that we can.

andrew jackson has been replaced with ben franklin pic.twitter.com/nJaVzgnAqe

— Tim Dickinson (@7im) January 20, 2021

Trail of Tears guy out; good.

This is more than not-Trump; a lot more.

President Biden has now signed the executive order which means the US is rejoining the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Will be deposited with UN later today and take formal effect in 30 days pic.twitter.com/pApATyB2WN

— Leo Hickman (@LeoHickman) January 20, 2021

Historic moment in US Senate: @KamalaHarris, first woman/Black/South Asian VP, swears in first Black senator from Georgia, first Jewish senator from Georgia & first Latino

Lots of fizzled protests out there.

Police were on high alert in state capitals around the U.S. Sunday, after warnings that pro-Trump extremists might attempt to storm legislatures similar to the assault on the U.S. Capitol last week. But at many statehouses and capitols, security and the media outnumbered protesters.

One, Trump wasn’t there. Two, getting arrested probably doesn’t look so attractive any more. Three…ohIdon’tknow, whohastheenergy.

In Denver, the Colorado Capitol’s lower windows were covered in anticipation of possible unrest — but hardly anyone showed up on Sunday. “I’m really surprised. I figured there’d be more than this,” a supporter of President Trump told Colorado Public Radio.

Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown.

In Lansing, where protesters swarmed Michigan’s

Two weeks ago today a lot of us were not expecting what happened. Today…

Mark Leggiero is the one lone Trump supporter out in front of the NYS Capitol. He says he expected a few thousand ppl here and is disappointed. He said he drove 45 minutes for a peaceful protest pic.twitter.com/hDtCLYFpLq

— Morgan Mckay (@morganfmckay) January 20, 2021

… Read the rest

It’s a day to rejoice, it’s a day to breathe a massive sigh of relief, it’s a day even to celebrate. It’s not a day to congratulate ourselves. That day is a long way off.

Like this.

This is among the most powerful images of this historic day

On the same steps where a mob of insurrectionists invited by Trump attacked the government, a peaceful transition.

The old and the new VP couples even laughing together.

America. pic.twitter.com/0lO1Xyxh4g

— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) January 20, 2021

I admire Norm Eisen, but I reject that punchline “America.” It would be pretty to think so, but no. We remember what happened there just two weeks ago, and we know the people who … Read the rest

Ok this made me laugh:

In a subdued, discursive speech on a windy tarmac, Trump made glancing references to his accomplishments in office but seemed bitter at his loss.

“I hope they don’t raise your taxes, but if they do, I told you so,” he said.

Aides had prepared a speech for the President that included references to the incoming administration and more gracious language about a peaceful transition, according to a person familiar with the matter.

But Trump discarded the speech, and teleprompters were removed from the stage before he arrived at Joint Base Andrews.

“What’s all this more gracious shit, fuck that, being more gracious is for pussies, fire the pussies who wrote this.”… Read the rest

President Biden is now officially the 46th president* of the United States of America.

*Only 45 people have been president, Grover Cleveland counts as both 22nd and 24th.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 20, 2021

Is anyone else literally laughing & weeping with relief? #BidenHarrisInauguration

— Joanna Cherry QC (@joannaccherry) January 20, 2021

YASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) January 20, 2021

We did it. President Joe Biden–a man of decency, integrity, empathy, and compassion. A man who will indeed protect and defend the Constitution. Finally.

— Mary L Trump (@MaryLTrump) January 20, 2021

… Read the rest

It’s done.

Joe Biden has been sworn in as president, bringing an end to four years of Donald Trump’s leadership in Washington.

Biden was sworn in by supreme court chief justice John Roberts, and his wife, Dr Jill Biden, held the Bible as he took the oath.

It’s over it’s over it’s over it’s over.… Read the rest

He’s been dumped out on Florida and that’s his last trip on the big important plane yaboosucks.

As former presidents arrived at the Capitol for Joe Biden’s inauguration, Air Force One touched down in Florida.

Donald Trump did not go back to the press cabin to talk to reporters during his trip down to Florida, according to the White House pool.

Trump will be the first president in more than 150 years to not attend the inauguration ceremony of his successor. His vice-president, Mike Pence, is in attendance.

It’s great that he’s breaking precedent by sulking this way; it makes him look so wise and balanced and not at all warped by conceit and entitlement and narcissism hahahahahahaha

People were … Read the rest

It seems Trump managed to do one decent thing in the final hours, by using most of those pardons on people who were serving excessive sentences. But of course he also pardoned Bannon.

The vast majority of the pardons and commutations on Trump’s list were doled out to individuals whose cases have been championed by criminal justice reform advocates, including people serving lengthy sentences for low-level offenses.

Here’s an idea: let’s stop dealing out long prison sentences for low-level offenses.

Over the course of Tuesday, Trump continued to contemplate pardons that aides believed were settled, including for his former strategist. The President continued to go back and forth on it into Tuesday night, sources told CNN.

Then he did the … Read the rest

Pliny says sure Trump should get the intel briefings.… Read the rest

The 1776 Report is about the teaching of history but not one of the people on the 1776 Commission is a historian.

Larry P. Arn, Chair, is “an educator.” Vice Chair Carol Swain taught political science and law at Vanderbilt. Brooke Rollins is a lawyer. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist. Phil Bryant is a former governor of Mississippi. John Gibbs worked for HUD. Scott McNealy is a businessman. Ned Ryan is the CEO of American Majority. Charlie Kirk is a conservative talk show host. And so on. It’s a passel of conservatives, a few of them academics, a few of those in fields adjacent to history, but no actual historians except possibly Hanson who along with being a … Read the rest

Trump’s people organized that rally, the one that led to the terrorist attack on Congress.

Members of President Donald Trump’s failed presidential campaign played key roles in orchestrating the Washington rally that spawned a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to an Associated Press review of records, undercutting claims the event was the brainchild of the president’s grassroots supporters.

A pro-Trump nonprofit group called Women for America First hosted the “Save America Rally” on Jan. 6 at the Ellipse, an oval-shaped, federally owned patch of land near the White House. But an attachment to the National Park Service public gathering permit granted to the group lists more than half a dozen people in staff positions for the event

So, yes, I’m going to have to read at least some of that ridiculous rah rah us! report, to see exactly how bad it is. And yes I’m going to have to inflict it on you.

The declared purpose of the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission is to “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union.” This requires a restoration of American education, which can only be grounded on a history of those principles that is “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.” And a rediscovery of our shared identity rooted in our founding principles is the path to a renewed

The Trump administration’s “1776 Report” has historians running out of red ink.

“It’s a hack job. It’s not a work of history,” American Historical Association executive director James Grossman told The Washington Post. “It’s a work of contentious politics designed to stoke culture wars.”

…The 45-page report is largely an attack on decades of historical scholarship, particularly when it comes to the nation’s 400-year-old legacy of slavery, and most of those listed as authors lack any credentials as historians. While claiming to present a nonpartisan history, it compares progressivism to fascism and claims the civil rights movement devolved into “preferential” identity politics “not unlike those advanced by [slavery defender John C.] Calhoun and his followers.”

“I don’t know where

I didn’t realize that former presidents get intelligence briefings.

Adam Schiff says Trump should be the exception, which seems only prudent.

House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff said Sunday that President Donald Trump should be barred from daily intelligence briefings immediately — and remain cut off from briefings once President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in.

…

Schiff’s comments come a day after Susan Gordon, Trump’s former principal deputy director of national intelligence, penned an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing that Trump must not be briefed on intelligence after Jan. 20.

…

Former presidents typically receive routine intelligence briefings and access to classified information after they have left office.

Schiff added that he thinks U.S. allies withheld information from the