U.S. News

The House Select Committee investigating the attack on Congress revealed that they will be calling former deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger, a former deputy national security adviser, to answer questions.

Co-chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) made it clear in the last hearing that new witnesses would be heard and that those would be witnesses who Americans have not yet heard from.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow obtained a Feb. 2020 memo authored by then-Attorney General Bill Barr saying that anyone at the Justice Department who is investigating a political candidate has to run it by the Attorney General. That memo, she explained, was renewed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in May 2022.

"The Department of Justice has a strong interest in the prosecution of election-related crimes, such as those involving federal and state campaign finance laws, federal patronage laws, and corruption of the election process. As Department employees, however, we must be particularly sensitive to safeguarding the Department's reputation for fairness, neutrality, and non-partisanship," the memo says.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 brought anxiety not only about how the virus was being transmitted but panic about going out in public and stocking up on products to survive lockdowns.

The first US city that faced a reported diagnosis of COVID was Seattle, where toilet paper quickly disappeared. Panic buying then commenced across the US, beginning in Arizona, according to a study flagged by the Phoenix News Times.

The CIA has a secret facility in Virginia, outside of their known offices in Langley, where the workforce is typically known to operate. According to the New York Times, however, a noose appears to have been found outside, people familiar with the area reported.

CIA director, William J. Burns issued a warning that racism and racist symbols would not be tolerated, though it's unclear if it was placed by someone from inside the CIA or from outside the staff.

Former Donald Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon promised that he would go "medieval" in court once he was going to trial for his contempt of Congress case. While he never fully explained what he meant by that, the case appears to be closer to medieval torture than a medieval knight.

Already the judge in the case has suggested that Bannon accept a plea agreement and Bannon's own lawyer admitted that he has no defense. Bannon's own podcast declared him guilty while he was in court Monday.

Twitter has been caught in another problem of applying their rules to some and not others.

Axios mentioned the recent transphobic tweets from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) directly targeting Adm. Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health for the U.S Department of Health and Human Services. Twitter said that they would label the tweets instead.

One of Donald Trump's biographers, Tim O'Brien, said that he thinks the time of dodged accountability might be coming to a close.

MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace cited a comment from former Justice Department official Harry Litman, who explained that presidents are never alone and that there are always staff milling about and agents nearby. So, during the 187 minutes in which Donald Trump watched as the violence unfolded on Jan. 6 and did nothing, there were likely people around.

Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig literally wrote the book on the behind-the-scenes world of the U.S Secret Service. During an appearance Monday on MSNBC, she said that Secret Service agents were eager to testify before the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

"The Secret Service agents, I'm told, want to testify," Leonnig said of what she called a "big mess" for the department. "The ones who are allegedly in the car or providing information to Cassidy Hutchinson on the day of Jan. 6th when President Trump was then alleged to have lunged at his Secret Service detail leader -- the agent in charge of his life -- and to have lunged toward the steering wheel.

Discovery's "Shark Week" is going strong, but as if they were helping advertise, beachgoers have seen an increase in shark attacks. From Florida to New York people are being bitten by the toothy migrating fish. Long Island alone has suffered five shark attacks in the past two weeks.

According to NPR, the sharks are after fish, not feet, but they're mistaking the limbs for snacks.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY) said that Republicans need to reconsider their alliance with former President Donald Trump and his supporters, known as MAGA Republicans.

Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Friday, Maloney explained that the "MAGA Republican brand is going to come back to haunt them. So, yeah, all of these things add up. I don't know how they rank in one voter's mind but taken together they are the substance behind what MAGA has come to mean, which is radical, dangerous and terrible for working and middle-class families. And that's the choice this fall."