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We begin today’s roundup with Paul Waldman at The Washington Post and hist take on the indictment of Steve Bannon, who surrendered to authorities yesterday:

More from Bess Levin on the GOP and Bannon: 

There aren’t a lot of things you can count on in this life, but one thing on which you definitely, 100% always can is Republicans rallying around the absolute worst members of society. Whether it’s an unsympathetic teen who killed two people, a colleague who proudly harasses school shooting survivors, or a Supreme Court justice accused of attempted rape, the GOP just loves to go to bat for these people. So naturally, their new pet cause is Steve Bannon, the indicted former Trump adviser who is literally still trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In the wake of the Friday news that a grand jury had charged Bannon for refusing to appear for a deposition with January 6 investigators and refusing to turn over requested documents—neither of which is in dispute!—Republican lawmakers have flown to the man’s defense, claiming, amazingly, that he’s a victim of a zealous Department of Justice and vowing to get revenge against the people who have wronged him.

James Downie at The Washington Post highlights the Biden administration’s’s messaging problem and their inability to cut through a media that is frustrating unable and/or unwilling to explain the success of the administration:

Instead, The Post-ABC poll suggests two fundamental issues. The first — pandemic-fueled inflation darkening Americans’ perceptions of the economy — would be a struggle for any president. But the latter is entirely of a few Democrats’ making: Just 35 percent of voters say Biden has accomplished much during his first 10 months, while only 31 percent believe he’s keeping his campaign promises. Both are worse scores than Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Barack Obama received ahead of midterm drubbings two years into their presidencies.

But still, as Eugene Robinson points out, it’s actually the Republicans that are disarray, though it’s hardly ever covered that way by the press:

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In the news today: Steve Bannon, an apparent key plotter of the January 6 insurrection, was defiant and mocking as he surrendered to federal authorities after his indictment for ignoring a congressional subpoena demanding his testimony. House Republicans, meanwhile, are already vowing retribution against those that would dare indict Bannon in the first place. A new memo shows that the Trump White House acted in orchestrated fashion to prod Mike Pence into announcing the nullification of the electoral votes that cemented Trump’s loss. It wasn’t a one-off idea from a single lawyer: Mark Meadows and other Trump allies were actively promoting the seditious plan.

Here’s some of what you may have missed:

• Bannon surrenders to FBI, arraignment slated for this week

• House Republicans promise revenge over Bannon indictment just as soon as they retake the gavel

• New memo shows pressure on Mike Pence to subvert 2020 election results was unrelenting

• Live updates: Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial enters closing arguments

• 2021 is already the deadliest year on record for trans folks in the United States

Community Spotlight:

• The Stuff of Memories

• Woke Fiction

• “Electoral McCarthyism”: Our Road to Fascism

Also trending from the community:

• A Rising wave of misery brought to us again by COVID-19

• Another memo on Trump’s coup strategy surfaces, highlighting intent to disenfranchise millions

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An activist and military father who has advocated for deported veterans as co-director of Unified Deported Veterans in Tijuana now gets to return back home himself. Robert Vivar “walked back to San Diego from Tijuana on Veterans Day,” nearly two decades after he was initially deported and had his life upended over a shoplifting offense, The San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

Waiting for him on the U.S. side of the San Ysidro port of entry was his son, an Air Force and National Guard veteran,also named Robert Vivar. “They hugged,” CBS8 News reported. “Dad, welcome back to the United States, welcome back,” he cried.

“Thanks to a law passed in recent years that allows immigrants to challenge old convictions if they weren’t warned about potential immigration consequences before accepting plea deals, he was finally able to get the conviction undone,” The Union-Tribune reported. 

Vivar had been given bad advice by an attorney during his criminal case. He thought he had agreed to a rehabilitation program when, in reality, he’d agreed to “a charge that meant automatic deportation.” He would try to reenter the U.S., only to be again deported. Following a win at the California Supreme Court, Vivar’s legal team then made a successful case at the Board of Immigration Appeals to secure his return to the U.S. from Tijuana, where he’d been a forceful advocate for U.S. veterans deported after serving their country. Veterans have been deported penniless and with only the clothes on their backs.

”Sometimes one of the veterans he served would be allowed back into the U.S., and he would accompany them as far as the border allowed,” the report continued. “On Thursday, it was his turn.” Advocates were also there to greet him. Others congratulated him over social media.

“Despite not being a veteran himself, Robert has worked tirelessly to repatriate deported veterans and provide them with the tools and information they need to survive in Mexico—a country the majority of them barely know,” ImmDef wrote in a thread. “As we welcome Robert home, we thank him for all his dedication to bettering the lives of hundreds of migrants, deportees, and local communities in Tijuana and throughout the border regions of Mexico.”

“#WelcomeHome Robert,” ImmDef continued. “We can’t wait to see the amazing things you will do for our deported veterans from the U.S. but for now, enjoy your family and the joy only being back home can give.”

Like Hector Barajas-Varela, Vivar promised to continue fighting for the right of deported veterans to also return home. Barajas-Varela, himself a veteran, founded the Deported Veterans Support House in Tijuana. He won his return to the U.S. in 2018. The Union-Tribune reports Vivar “promised deported veterans and deported parents of U.S.-citizen children that he would be back to help them.” He went on to say in the report that his work “continues. We continue. Our slogan is, ‘Leave no one behind.’”

Because of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) sloppy record-keeping, it’s unknown exactly how many vets have been deported. The American Civil Liberties Union has estimated perhaps 200 veterans, while the non-partisan Government Accountability Office said ICE has put an estimated 250 veterans in proceedings, NBC News said in 2019. While President Biden announced plans to return deported veterans (and family members), Vivar wrote in a July 30 op-ed that his organization received an exiled soldier that month.

”We are asking President Biden to stop these deportations immediately,” he wrote in The Union-Tribune. “On behalf of military families and veterans, we want to send a message to the president. We salute his willingness to confront this politically complex issue. We have seen his compassion and respect toward all veterans, even our ‘forgotten’ deported veterans and military families. We are proud to support the effort in any way possible to enable our country to move forward with a plan that will bring our deported veterans home, reunite our families, and end the practice, once and for all, of deporting U.S. veterans.”

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The term “scraping the bottom of the barrel” doesn’t quite do justice to the new crop of MAGA talk show hosts that think Alex Jones is too tame. One of them is Stew Peters. He went from being a failed rapper, to a failed bounty hunter, to now a full-time COVID conspiracy theorist. And yes, being full-blown MAGA, there’s the obligatory police report documenting domestic violence as well. Perhaps Trump will push him to run for Senate? 

In the meantime, he hosts his own podcast that features a who’s who of Trumpian rejects: George Papadopoulos, Lin Wood, Michelle Malkin, Sidney Powell, and Karen Fann—the state senate president responsible for the disastrous Arizona audit. I don’t usually care what he’s doing, but this came across my feed. It’s as hilarious as it is sad. If there’s ever been an example of the cult-like cognitive dissonance of the MAGA crowd, this is it. 

Some Q-nut told Stew Peters that he has been “magnetized” by being around people who have had the vaccine, claiming vaccinated people somehow “shed” vaccine components outside their bodies. (Obviously, this has been debunked.) As proof, he sent Stew a photo of various objects, like coins, stuck all over his body. Stew put him on the show immediately, and added that this is a phenomenon “that we’re seeing all over the place!”

Not that facts matter, but coins aren’t even magnetized. Vending machines all have magnets to reject fake coins (steel slugs) because real coins are minted mostly of nonmagnetic metals like copper and nickel. But if you are dumb enough to believe any of this, you aren’t reading Daily Kos, so I digress.

Anyway, the photo was more than enough proof for Stew to feature him on his show. Unfortunately for the guest, Stew asked the guy, Scott Taylor, to demonstrate for the audience. What happened next is comedy gold:  

In case you can’t see it, Stew asked him to demonstrate. Scott Taylor wasn’t prepared for this, and repeatedly tried to put coins on his face, but they kept falling off. One coin managed to linger on his forehead before being dropped, but you can see the video was cut at the 58-second mark. Stew, ignoring his own eyes, closed by going on a rant of how this was absolute proof that this was real and the media was covering it up.

Twitter was not kind:

By the way, the amazing James Randi, who is no longer with us, was a magician and scientific skeptic I loved to watch growing up. He was always invited on shows to challenge paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Sure enough, he was once asked to challenge a claim that someone was “magnetic.” 

Unlike Scott Taylor, this guy actually put some real effort into the illusion, as the crowd oohed and aahed. After the trick, Randi simply asked the man to rub talcum powder on his body, which in no way should interfere with magnetic properties, and try the trick again. 

R.I.P. Randi. I would say we could use your skepticism with these anti-vaxxers now, but as you can see, they won’t even believe what they see with their own eyes.

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As the battle against whether or not critical race theory should be taught in schools continues nationwide, some Republicans are also targeting the LGBTQ community. After attacking a Florida school board member for escorting a group of elementary school students on a field trip to a local LGBTQ-friendly restaurant, conservatives have taken to attacking LGBTQ books. Across the country, conservatives are demanding a ban on inclusive books that talk about the queer experience, not only in schools but also in public libraries.

In the most recent incident of conservative calls to ban, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster demanded his state’s Department of Education remove a book about gender identity from school shelves.

“We’re going to remove things that cause harm to our children or put obstacles in their path as they grow up,” McMaster told reporters Thursday.

McMaster wrongfully claimed the book is “obscene and pornographic” because it speaks of a journey to self-identity and includes illustrations of LGBTQ sexual experiences.

The book in question is the award-winning title, Gender Queer: A Memoir. On Wednesday, McMaster sent a letter to Department of Education Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman, demanding it be investigated alongside other similar books to “prevent” such books from becoming available in the state’s school libraries, NBC News reported.

“For sexually explicit materials of this nature to have ever been introduced or allowed in South Carolina’s schools, it is obvious that there is or was either a lack of, or a breakdown in, any existing oversight processes or the absence of appropriate screening standards,” McMaster wrote in the letter.

According to NBC News, LGBTQ advocates condemned McMaster’s calls to ban the book, noting it was a “political attack.”

“We need to be focused on issues that are actually impacting students right now — getting education back on track after the loss of learning from the pandemic, addressing young people’s health concerns, and ensuring that everyone feels safe and welcome in school,” Ivy Hill, community health program director for the Campaign for Southern Equality, said in a statement to NBC News.

McMaster’s efforts to ban books that address LGBTQ issues follow other government and school officials attempting to do the same, including Texas, Virginia, Ohio, and New Jersey.

According to NPR, in Texas, both Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas state Rep. Jeff Cason called on books to be investigated for “pornographic or obscene material.” But LGBTQ related books were not the only issue for these Texans; Matt Krause, another lawmaker in the state, also identified at least 850 that should be questioned, including books written by women, people of color, and LGBTQ authors.

Outside of banning in Virginia, some officials have even threatened to burn books that go against their backward views.

This specific book is part of the American Library Association’s (ALA) list of the country’s “most challenged books” and had appeared on multiple ban lists across state lines. The director of the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, told NBC News that while challenges against books with LGBTQ content have been historically “constant,” the association has seen a rapid increase in calls to ban books this year.

“I’ve worked at ALA for two decades now, and I’ve never seen this volume of challenges come in,” Caldwell-Stone said. “The impact will fall to those students who desperately want and need books that reflect their lives, that answer questions about their identity, about their experiences that they always desperately need and often feel that they can’t talk to adults about.”

“The library becomes that safe space where they can get accurate information about these topics that they can’t otherwise find,” she added.

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We already knew from an October 2020 Associated Press report that the flawed Title 42 public health order that’s used the novel coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to quickly deport asylum-seekers in violation of their rights was implemented under political pressure by the previous administration. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists “said there was no evidence the action would slow the coronavirus,” but were overruled by the White House, that report said. 

Now we have that on the record. Among damning documents released by a House committee last week is a transcript of Congressional testimony by Anne Schuchat, who until earlier this year served as the agency’s principal deputy director. Her testimony confirms everything we read from the AP back last fall. “Do you believe that that order was necessary to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the U.S. at that time, at this specific time, March 20, 2020?” she’s asked. “No,” Schuchat replies.

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Schuchat’s testimony also confirms the previous administration’s political pressure on another top CDC official, Dr. Martin Cetron. The AP had reported that when Cetron refused to sign Title 42, the White House skipped over him and directly pressured former director Robert Redfield. He gave in. While Schuchat said during her testimony that she didn’t know exactly how the policy was instituted, she knew Cetron had refused to put his pen to paper.

“Dr. Cetron takes the regulatory authority for quarantine very seriously and weighs—you know, the typical issue is, the least restrictive means possible to protect public health is when you exert a quarantine order versus other measures. And the bulk of the evidence at that time did not support this policy proposal,” Schuchat said in testimony. She added that “his view was that the facts on the ground didn’t call for this from a public health reason.”

Schuchat said she didn’t know the thinking behind Redfield’s decision-making process, but told the committee he “was put in many impossible situations over the course of his position.”

“By impossible situations, you mean the pressure from a political perspective?” she was asked. “I would agree with that,” Schuchat responded.

That pressure would be from former unlawfully appointed acting official Chad Wolf, Mike Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short, and Pence himself, who “intervened in early March” when CDC experts refused to okay the order. The AP reported that those experts said “there was no evidence the action would slow the coronavirus.” So the men hopped on a call together for some good old-fashioned group bullying and instructed Redfield “to use the agency’s special legal authority in a pandemic anyway,” the report continued.

Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner writes that other documents released last week showed “both the extent to which members of the Trump White House interfered with efforts to protect the public, and the way they consistently worked to downplay the threat—leading to disaster.” That includes orders to delete emails by a political appointee, Paul Alexander, who demanded a stop to reports that negatively reflected the previous president. 

Though that president is gone, all of his policies certainly aren’t. The Biden administration has shamefully continued enforcing Title 42, including defending it in court. The administration had a way out when a court in September ordered a stop to the deportation of asylum-seeking families under the policy. But the administration appealed and won. Numerous administration officials, including Department of Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, have continued to defend Title 42 as a public health matter. Schuchat’s testimony continues to confirm that’s complete bullshit. The policy has also since been slammed as “illegal” by a former senior State Department official.

The administration has also since eased restrictions for fully vaccinated visitors from Canada and Mexico, yet continues to refuse to budge regarding Title 42 and asylum-seekers. Why not just vaccinate them, you might ask? Plans to do that as part of a Title 42 wind-down were briefly thought out but then “scrapped by top White House officials, including Susan Rice, who feared that unwinding the border policy would increase the political pressure on the administration,” CBS News reported.

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The Republican attack on President Joe Biden’s plan to make child care more affordable and accessible has escalated around a defense of the right to discriminate. Republican politicians and media started by claiming, falsely, that the plan would exclude religious child care providers from receiving the new federal funds. In fact, it very explicitly includes them. But what religious groups are now howling about is that the Democratic plan does say they would have to abide by anti-discrimination rules. 

So it’s not that religious child care providers couldn’t take federal subsidies under the Build Back Better proposal. It’s that they couldn’t do that while also discriminating against staff or families and their children for any reason attributed to faith.

Biden’s Build Back Better plan would “ensure that middle-class families pay no more than 7 percent of their income on child care and will help states expand access to high-quality, affordable child care to about 20 million children per year—covering 9 out of 10 families across the country with young children,” according to the White House. “For two parents with one toddler earning $100,000 per year, the framework will produce more than $5,000 in child care savings per year. Nearly all families of four making up to $300,000 per year will be eligible.”

Those are the stakes for millions of families. But on the other side, you have the right to discriminate, and it’s really no contest where Republicans land.

The New York Times offers a few examples of how applying anti-discrimination rules  could affect how these programs operate: “For instance, it could bar federal funds from going to programs that refused to hire a gay employee, gave preference to applicants of their faith or failed to renovate their facilities to accommodate disabled students.” And all of these forms of discrimination are, according to Republicans, worth defending. Though many high-profile religious discrimination cases involve discrimination against LGBT people, it’s not just homophobia at work—it’s much broader than that.

Currently, some religious programs get federal money indirectly through the Child Care and Development Block Grant program, and since it is indirect, they get to dodge anti-discrimination laws. Some religious groups—not all of them, because not all religious groups put discrimination at the center of their faith—demand that that continue.

”It will be detrimental to our ability to participate,” according to a spokesperson for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “It would impact our ability to stick with our Catholic mission in a variety of ways.”

You’re kind of telling on yourself, there.

But as we know, it is now a central tenet of the Republican faith that religious groups—at least Christian ones—must be entitled to both discriminate and get all the same benefits as groups that do not discriminate. There’s no concept here that one can either follow the rules and get the rewards for doing so, or one can say that standing on principle is more important than extra funding. They want both. They demand both. 

We need to be specific about the kinds of things they’re proposing, because the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other groups, including a major orthodox Jewish group, are trying to tank a significant expansion of child care funding, one that would make care affordable for low- and middle-income families, over their right to shut some people out.

”Who do they want to shut out? Is it the lesbian mom you want to shut out?” the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights’ Liz King asked, “Is it the children with autism you want to shut out? Since at least 1964, the law and basic principle has been that federal funds cannot be used to discriminate. No one should have to subsidize their own discrimination.”

Predictably, the pro-discrimination groups have found not just fierce advocacy from Republicans but a sympathetic ear in conservative Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, setting up yet another fight between progressives in the House who think that funding discrimination would be wrong and Manchin in the Senate who thinks that blocking progress is his most winning stance.

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As House Republicans do everything within their power to stymie the bipartisan probe in the Jan. 6 attack, a new Monmouth University poll shows that nearly three-quarters of Americans support exploring whether members of Congress played a role in the attack, including 58% of Republicans. That’s a very solid majority, especially for Republicans. 

However, when it comes to investigating Donald Trump’s ties to the Capitol siege, just 40% of Republicans approve of the committee looking into anything that could implicate Trump. That’s a nearly 20% drop, suggesting that Trump’s cultists don’t mind going after congressional Republicans but stand firmly against learning anything about Dear Leader’s involvement in planning and fomenting violence that day. Perhaps not surprisingly, 70% of Republicans also support looking into potential 2020 election fraud.

Among Democrats, 91% back probing Trump’s role in the deadly Capitol siege and 89% support looking into the role of members of Congress, but just 47% support exploring possible election fraud.

It’s worth noting the 58% of Republicans who presently say they support investigating the role of congressional members. This question will likely be polled again as we learn more about the findings of the Jan. 6 panel, and if certain GOP members are found to have contributed to the siege, it will be interesting to see if GOP interest in the truth suddenly waves.