U.S. News

Wisconsin Republicans are pitting themselves against LGBT people, mothers, Asian Americans and gun violence survivors after they worked to block toothless commemoration of groups that typically don't draw any opposition, reported Up North News.

Each day and month does something to commemorate one cause or another. Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month are both in October. Men then mobilized "No-shave November" to draw attention to prostate cancer screenings. Autism Awareness Month is in April. There are thousands of month-long observances, with days like Growing for Wellbeing Week, World Bicycle Day (June 3), a week honoring Nursing Assistants, national Teddy Bear day, and many many more. States, governors, cities, presidents, and Congress generally issue proclamations and have photo-ops.

It doesn't sound like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell considers former President Donald Trump the leader of the Republican Party.

While Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News host Sean Hannity last month that the Republican Party can't move forward without Donald Trump.

Lin Wood, a pro-Trump attorney who became infamous for backing QAnon conspiracy theories, has failed in his effort to halt a psychiatric evaluation as required by the Georgia Bar Association.

"Clearly, there is a grievance proceeding in the State Bar against Wood. Wood Argues that because he filed this action before there was a finding of probable cause against him, this factor is not satisfied," said the court documents. "However, he cites no law to support his contention that a probable. He cites no law to support the proposition that he has a property right not to be asked to consent to a mental health evaluation. And, as a Defendants pointed out, he has been provided a notice of the claims against him and will have an opportunity to defend himself and raise any constitutional issues before any public discipline is imposed."

The battle for a Republican audit of 2020 election ballots came to Illinois after LaSalle County Republican Chairman Larry Smith worked to get access to his county's ballots to examine the results.

President Donald Trump won the county 57 percent to 41 percent. The county is also in the district of U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), one of Trump's many GOP foes. Kinzinger won 62 to 38 against a Democratic challenger. Trump's numbers are actually better than Trump did in 2016, where he got just 54.2 percent to Clinton's 39.8 percent, so it's unknown why Republicans want to examine the results.

Fights with grocery store managers have turned into political careers, VICE News reported Thursday, as more anti-maskers and anti-vaccine are signing up to run against Republican governors who acted to try and contain COVID-19 as it spread across the United States.

Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine became one of few in his party willing to listen to the CDC, implement mask mandates, demand shutdown orders and shutting down schools. He's now being targeted by right-wing Republican Rep. Jim Renacci, a follower of Donald Trump, who opposed DeWine's lockdowns.

Speaking to "The View" on Thursday, Caitlyn Jenner explained why she's running for the governor of California, basing it primarily off of high gas prices and parents angry they couldn't throw their children back into schools this spring.

Co-host Joy Behar asked Jenner why she is starting with governor, since California is the fifth-largest economy in the world, suggesting that she instead start with something like mayor or school board maybe to get her feet wet.

As FBI Director Christopher Wray brief's Congress Thursday, one major point made is that Facebook's new decision to move to end-to-end encryption in their messenger platform will mean the FBI will lose as many as 20 million tips about child exploitation.

According to testimony in his statement, Wray said that "since the vital tips we receive from providers only arrive when those providers themselves are able to detect and report child exploitation being facilitated on their platforms and services. They cannot do that when their platforms are end-to-end encrypted."

What was once a crackpot conversation among mocked believers has now gone mainstream. Speaking to NPR, former Nevada Sen. Harry Reid explained why the U.S. military has been hiding the sightings of UFOs for 70 years.

"The reason we didn't hear more about them is because the military kept it all secret until very recently," Reid explained. "We don't know what they are, but we don't know what they aren't either. We just don't know. That's the way I look at it. We know now, without any hesitancy that they exist."

Former federal prosecutor Elie Honig referred to Don McGahn's testimony to the Judiciary Committee as proof of the most flagrant obstruction of justice in the entirety of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report.

Speaking to CNN host Don Lemon Wednesday, Honig said that McGahn had the good sense to avoid former President Donald Trump and hope that his demand to obstruct justice would just blow over. It didn't, however, and that's what McGahn made clear to Mueller and to the committee when he testified.

Kevin Douglas Creek was arrested today by the FBI, which stated it has video evidence showing him kicking and striking police officers outside the Capitol Building.

Creek, of Alpharetta, GA, admitted to the FBI that he came to the Capitol with mace and a boot knife. He faces a series of charges that include physical violence and assault on officers defending the Capitol

Robert Mueller's top prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, explained that one of the main things learned from Don McGahn's testimony, released Wednesday, is that he didn't lie and he didn't try to cover up for Donald Trump. What came out of it that he thinks is important, is that it confirms that Trump was obstructing justice.

One thing that Weissmann said is that the Judiciary Committee couldn't ask anything outside of what was already included in the Mueller report. It was something that Weissmann said he thinks should be reexamined by the Justice Department because it doesn't exactly make sense.

Tuesday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow lectured Attorney General Merrick Garland for what she believed was a mistake defending Donald Trump in a private court battle. A key piece of her argument was that the Department of Justice faces many things that must be reworked to ensure no president can do what Donald Trump did ever again.

Wednesday, she cited what she called a groundbreaking report from the Boston Globe that is a six-part series walking through all of the things that President Joe Biden and the executive and legislative branches must do to protect the country from another Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, Axios published an analysis of the outsized role that the state of West Virginia is playing in national politics — despite its small size and its lack of any demographic resemblance to the country as a whole.

"The state has experienced the fastest rate of population decline in the nation, according to census data," wrote Stef Kight. "It looks completely different than the rest of the U.S.: 92% of the population is non-Hispanic white, making it the third-whitest state in a rapidly diversifying country. It also has the lowest percentage of people with a bachelor's degree or higher, and was the state that had the second-highest margin in favor of Donald Trump in the 2020 election."