Moroccan rights groups move to challenge repressive police

Former President Donald Trump's former aides and advisers, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, and former strategist Stephen Miller, are being ordered by a judge to testify to special counsel Jack Smith's federal grand jury investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — a complete rebuke of Trump and his allies' claims they are shielded by executive privilege.

None of this should be a surprise, former federal prosecutor Shan Wu told MSNBC's Alex Wagner on Friday.

Far-right Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) tried to claim, during a call-in session for C-SPAN on Friday, that none of the January 6 insurrectionists were prosecuted for sedition — and was quickly slapped down by the Washington Journal host, reported The Daily Beast.

"Taking calls from viewers during an appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, a rite of passage for guests of the program, the MAGA lawmaker was soon grilled by callers over former President Donald Trump’s promise to pardon Capitol rioters," reported Justin Baragona. "'Trump wants to pardon the traitors that have been convicted of seditious conspiracy? Come on! What the hell’s wrong with you Republicans?!' one caller from Oregon exclaimed. 'I appreciate the call, and I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying, but I think you’re talking about the former president saying if he gets elected he’d issue some pardons or clemency to some of the people arrested and prosecuted on Jan. 6,' Biggs answered."

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has hired a new speechwriter with ties to a notorious neo-Nazi activist — much to the alarm of former Republican strategist Tim Miller, who laid out the implications in an article for The Bulwark on Friday.

"I perked up when I heard scuttlebutt a few weeks ago that Ron DeSantis had chosen a speechwriter not from the ranks of the GOP’s classically liberal old order, but from the brash online 'new right' that is more animated by culture wars and MAGA identity politics than by free markets and free people," wrote Tim Miller. Specifically, he hired Nate Hochman — "a conservative writer who has earned more ink by the age of 25 than anyone this side of Justin Bieber, has garnered a reputation as a young MAGA whisperer," and who has "found it necessary to cozy up to the movement’s gutter-dwelling racists in order to climb the ladder of influence."