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On Monday, after months of hemming and hawing and delays generated by Infowars snake oil salesman Alex Jones, a judge in Waterbury, Connecticut, has ruled that Jones is liable to the families of eight people killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school mass shooting. In a “sweeping victory,” Jones and his Infowars company will be liable for knowingly spreading misinformation in order to profit from it at the expense of the families of dead children.

With Monday’s ruling, in addition to rulings in Texas courts over the past year, Jones is now on the hook to the families of ten people killed that terrible 2012 day in Newtown, Connecticut. After weeks of obstruction by way of delays on the part of Jones and his legal team, Judge Barbara Bellis defaulted Jones for a “failure to produce critical material information that the plaintiffs needed to prove their claims.” The next hearing Jones will face will be to discuss what he owes these families in restitution.

The defamation lawsuits were filed in 2018 after years and years of Jones’ profiting off the promotion of evidence-free conspiracy theories, including the grotesque delusion that the families and others seen on the press forced to speak to the public about the endless agony of losing loved ones were “crisis actors,” not real parents. As a result of these heinous misinformation campaigns to generate conspiracy-theory dollars, the families of dead children have been subjected to death threats and the like over the years since the mass shooting.

Jones has tried to walk back his hours and hours of comments and false speculation. He has also attempted to obstruct discovery attempts by the families to reveal just how much money he made profiting off of their misery. It is the latter delays that led Bellis to default Jones’ case. Jones’ defense has called Bellis biased, but then again Bellis isn’t the only judge to say the exact same thing about Jones and his attempts to obfuscate the issues being litigated in these civil trials.

The families will now bring their victories to a jury that will decide on the damages. Showing the jury video of Jones terrorizing kids and their mothers in service of immigration xenophobia will likely not be permissible in court, but you can remind yourself of the craven theater lows Jones and his conmen ilk peddle in here. 

Having a judge default your case is not common and will most likely lead to an appeal on those grounds by Jones, Infowars, and their legal team. Like most things ultra conservative these days, the whining that many on the right have traditionally done about how our legal system is being abused is a projection of their own decrepitude.

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Steve Bannon has surrendered to the FBI following a contempt of Congress indictment. Still, more such indictments need to follow because Bannon’s not the only Trump loyalist who has defied a subpoena from the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has also fully earned a contempt of Congress charge.

Typically, Bannon took the attention-grabbing route in responding to his Jan. 6 subpoena. He said from the beginning that he would not comply, and claimed executive privilege, even though—in addition to President Joe Biden, the actual president who determines executive privilege, saying he would not assert executive privilege—Bannon had not been a White House aide since 2017, long before the events in question. Donald Trump has no right to executive privilege here. Steve Bannon really has no claim.

By contrast, Meadows strung the select committee along, saying he was negotiating the terms of his deposition and what documents he would hand over. Eventually, the committee lost patience with this and demanded that he appear on Friday, Nov. 12. Meadows did not appear. That means it’s time for criminal contempt proceedings against him.

While Meadows pretended to be considering maybe possibly kinda sorta complying with the select committee’s subpoena, when he was told to show up or face the consequences, his lawyer went straight to Trump’s flawed executive privilege argument, saying, “Mr. Meadows remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege. It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict.”

In other words, Meadows never intended to honor his subpoena and has been wasting the committee’s time for more than a month. He should have been referred for contempt charges at the same time Bannon was.

Trump is fighting in court to get his claims of executive privilege upheld, despite President Biden’s decision that the National Archives should turn over many documents to the select committee. Oral arguments are scheduled for Nov. 30 before Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, following a series of losses for Trump in district court. Given that timing, it seems likely that the select committee will wait for that court date to take more steps against Meadows, especially with Thanksgiving intervening. But if the committee’s leaders—Democrat Bennie Thompson and Republican Liz Cheney—feel that’s necessary, they should ensure that the contempt referral is ready to go the instant that case is decided. Meadows and Trump are trying to run out the clock. The only way to prevent that is to move decisively and promptly.

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Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Democrat who is the chamber’s longest-serving sitting member from either party, announced Monday that he would not seek a ninth term in 2022. While Leahy is famously the only Democrat ever elected to represent the Green Mountain State in the Senate—Bernie Sanders campaigned as an independent in all three of his successful campaigns—there’s little question that Team Blue’s eventual nominee will prevail in this 66-31 Biden state.

Leahy’s long career in office began in 1966 when Gov. Phillip Hoff, the state’s first Democratic chief executive since before the Civil War, appointed the 26-year-old Leahy to serve as Chittenden County state’s attorney. Leahy developed statewide recognition during his eight years as the top prosecutor of Vermont’s most populous county, and he began preparing for a 1974 Senate run even before longtime Republican incumbent George Aiken announced his retirement.

However, he still looked like a decided long shot once the seat opened up. The Washington Post didn’t even initially mention the state’s attorney, who himself had long aspired to run governor, in its list of potential candidates. Leahy had no trouble winning the Democratic primary, but he faced a challenging race that fall against Republican Rep. Richard Mallary. The state was anything but a blue stronghold at the time: Vermont had only ever backed one Democratic presidential nominee, Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and Richard Nixon had easily carried it 63-36 two years before as Mallary was prevailing 65-35 statewide.

However, the Watergate scandal had utterly devastated the GOP nationwide, and Leahy successfully pitched himself as an outsider.  Leahy, who Vermont Business Magazine’s Chris Graff writes “fashioned his image as Chittenden County state’s attorney into a high-profile, television-savvy lawman,” also emphasized public finance reform at a time when the issue was quite popular. Leahy ultimately won 49-46, with Sanders, his future colleague,  taking 4% running under the banner of the Liberty Union Party.

Leahy, who at 34 was Vermont’s youngest-ever senator when he was sworn in, had another tough battle in 1980 to stay in office. Republicans were back on the ascent, and Team Red found a formidable candidate in Stewart Ledbetter, a former official in Gov. Richard Snelling’s administration. Leahy managed to hang on by a 50-49 margin―a gap of just under 2,800 votes―even as Ronald Reagan was beating Jimmy Carter 44-38 in the state.

Few could have guessed it at the time, but 1980 would be Leahy’s last close election. Six years later, Leahy defeated Snelling, whom Reagan had recruited to run here, in a 63-35  landslide in a race that had initially looked very close. In 1992, Leahy turned back Secretary of State Jim Douglas, who would later become governor himself, 54-43; that race coincided with Bill Clinton’s 46-30 win, which started an unbroken streak of Democratic presidential victories in this one-time GOP bastion.

Leahy had no trouble in 1998 after dairy farmer Fred Tuttle, who had starred in a 1996 film about a Senate campaign, won the GOP primary before dropping out and endorsing the incumbent. Leahy’s final three campaigns were afterthoughts. He was a major force in D.C. as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee (though plenty of Democrats remain furious at him for allowing Republican senators to essentially veto lower-court nominees from their states), and he took over as chair of the Appropriations Committee in February.

Leahy never attracted the national name recognition of Sanders. However, his fellow Batman fans may remember his many appearances in various movies and shows, including his appearance as the voice of Territorial Governor in an episode of “Batman: The Animated Series” as a civilian who stands up to the Joker in “The Dark Knight.” Leahy would say of his scene with the late Heath Ledger, “He scared the heck out of me with the knife. I didn’t have to act.”

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President Joe Biden will officially ring in infrastructure week, for real, when he signs the infrastructure bill Monday afternoon. The $1.2 trillion package contains $550 billion in new spending on road, bridges, ports, rail, and water systems.

The new law is officially titled the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. (Or IIJA, which is much better than its former acronym, “BIF.”) If you are so inclined, you can read the whole thing—all 2,740 pages (but with huge margins and spacing). It is heavy on current fossil fuel-dependent infrastructure, with $110 billion for roads and bridges. In addition to broadband, it includes $55 billion for water; $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations; $39 billion for transit; $1 billion for Biden’s original $20 billion plan to “reconnect” communities of color; $66 billion for freight and passenger rail; $25 billion for airports; $73 billion to modernize the energy grid; and $21 billion toward environmental remediation.

In addition, it includes $65 billion for broadband infrastructure, which has the potential to be a “game changer” with the $2 billion for rural communities split equally between a rural broadband construction program called ReConnect, which Rural Utilities Service at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will operate, and the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program run by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The White House announced on Sunday that President Biden has tapped former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who led the city through rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, to be the coordinator and senior adviser on the implementation of the IIJA. “Landrieu will be a critical team member when it comes to delivering on the biggest investments in roads, bridges, and rail in generations; investments in ports and airports, the biggest investment in mass transit in American history, investments that stop our children from drinking poisoned water, unprecedented clean energy and climate resilience investments, and investments that connect every American to high speed internet,” the White House said.

The IIJA will, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), add $256 billion to the deficit over the next decade. This is a key number to keep in mind as the Senate deficit peacocks who wrote this bill and the House Sabotage Squad screech about the deficit when it comes to passing the other part of Biden’s agenda, the Build Back Better (BBB) plan. The Joint Committee on Taxation determined BBB, as currently written, will raise about $1.5 trillion in revenue and not add to the deficit long term.

That’s what the House will be focusing on this week: BBB, but as of now there is no vote scheduled. In order to pass the IIJA, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the conservative Democrats who have been holding up the BBB agreed that they would have a vote on BBB this week. That was contingent on having information from the CBO on the budgetary impacts of the bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi updated her colleagues in a letter Friday, telling them that “6 committees who finished with their work early have already received numbers from the CBO consistent with the White House Preliminary Budget Estimate, which includes Transportation and Infrastructure; Oversight and Reform; Homeland Security; Small Business; Science, Space and Technology; and Veterans’ Affairs.” That means thus far they are on track, with another three CBO section reports expected on Monday.

While the House might get to it this week, the Senate will probably push the bill into December. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer informed his colleagues in a letter Sunday that there’s a great deal of work to be done: defense appropriations; another continuing resolution to keep government funded after Dec. 3 when the current funding expires; the debt ceiling, which also has to be extended around the same time; judicial and executive nominations; and “final resolution on the Senate’s other major legislative priorities, like the bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA)—which, among many things, addresses immediate supply chain issues—and the Freedom to Vote Act to safeguard our democracy and protect the right to vote.”

Schumer told colleagues that he is “aiming to finish” work with the House committees and the Senate Parliamentarian on BBB to make sure the House bill “is in compliance with Senate reconciliation rules and the instructions in the budget resolution, and thereby maintains its status as ‘privileged’ legislation in the Senate.” Since the House would like to pass the bill this week, that element of uncertainty—the “aiming” to finish—hints that working things out with the Senate is not necessarily going smoothly. “Timing of consideration of the BBBA in the Senate will largely depend on when the House sends us the bill and when CBO finalizes their scores for all of the committees,” Schumer said. “As you can see, we still have much work to do to close out what will be a very successful year of legislative accomplishments,” he concluded. “I am confident we can get each of these important items done this year, but it will likely take some long nights and weekends.”

Much of how long that will take depends on what can be worked out in the next few days with the House on BBB. It could also depend on whether Sen. Joe Manchin, the thorn in everyone’s side, decides to move the goal posts once again. If the two chambers can work everything out between them with the parliamentarian, it’s just possible that the bill will pass the House and Senate as-is. That’s highly unlikely, however, as it will be subject to change in the Senate, and because it needs every single Democrats in the Senate to pass, which means Manchin, who has outright said he wants to delay the bill, can scupper the whole thing.

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After being indicted for contempt of Congress following his flat refusal to comply with a Jan. 6 Committee subpoena, Steve Bannon surrendered himself to the FBI on Monday and now faces criminal charges for his defiance.

Bannon, a longtime stalwart of former President Donald Trump, was formally charged last week with two counts of contempt of Congress and later Monday afternoon, he will appear before Magistrate Judge Robin Meriweather at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for his arraignment.

Bannon’s subpoena demanded that the former, short-lived strategist to Trump turn over any records in his possession central to the planning and financing of the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on Jan. 6. The subpoena requested documents connected to Bannon’s presence inside of Trump’s “war room” at the Willard Hotel on Jan. 5; his correspondence with other key Trump associates like John Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn; and his communications with extremist groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, among others.

As Bannon flouted the subpoena, he insisted executive privilege shielded him from scrutiny. But, as legislators pointed out in a report issued before the House of Representatives voted to hold him in contempt, Bannon had no “conceivable assertion” to executive privilege since he was a private citizen during his interactions with Trump, the records of which are currently sought by the committee.

In remarks addressing listeners to his podcast and being livestreamed to the right-wing social media platform Gettr just before he surrendered in Washington, Bannon proclaimed: “Everybody watching in the War Room, we’re here today. I don’t want anybody to take their eye off the ball today. We got the Hispanics coming on our side, African Americans coming on our side, we’re taking down the Biden regime … I want you guys to stay focused, stay on message. Remember, signal, not noise. This is all noise, that’s signal.”

The contempt charges against Bannon are misdemeanor charges and are punishable by up to one year in jail. They also come with a maximum fine of $100,000.

Bannon is being represented in court proceedings Monday by David Schoen, one of several attorneys who represented Trump during his second impeachment trial before Congress. In addition to Schoen, Bannon has also tapped Evan Corcoran, a former U.S. assistant attorney presently representing U.S. Capitol Police Officer Michael Riley, who was indicted last month on two felony charges.

Riley allegedly sent messages on Facebook warning a person who was inside the Capitol on Jan. 6 to take down social media posts, photos, and video that could incriminate himself.

This story is developing.

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Kyle Rittenhouse’s murder trial has entered its third week and jurors are preparing for closing arguments and instructions from Judge Bruce Schroeder. Schroeder began proceedings on Monday by claiming he was worried that he would bore jurors with reading the self-defense instruction for each count it applies to despite the fact that it’s a necessary component of instructing the jury.

The instructions, which are 36 pages long, have already changed as Schroeder grilled the prosecution over the six counts Rittenhouse faced. The sixth count—possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under 18—was thrown out over Schroeder’s criticisms of the Wisconsin law. Schroeder claimed it was poorly written and that the size of the barrel of the gun Rittenhouse possessed meant that he did not violate the law despite being in possession of the gun when he was 17. The count is considered a misdemeanor and carries a sentence of up to nine months in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Rittenhouse is accused of shooting three men with a Smith & Wesson AR-15 style .223 while allegedly protecting a car lot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as protests unfolded over the police shooting of Jacob Blake last August. Rittenhouse killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and injured Gaige Grosskreutz.

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Just a few days following the horrifying last moments of John Marion Grant’s execution in late October, in a 3-1 vote, the Oklahoma State Pardon and Parole Board granted clemency to another death row inmate: Julius Jones, who’s been on death row for over 20 years. 

Despite clemency and the fact that capital punishment is at an all-time low in the nation, Jones’ fate remains in the hands of Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, who has yet to weigh in.

Jones is scheduled to be executed on Nov. 18, and as Robert Dunham, executive director of the nonpartisan organization Death Penalty Information Center told Daily Kos, clemency is rarely if ever granted. 

We spoke with Dunham about Jones’ case and more. We wanted to learn about capital punishment and the death penalty and clear up the misinformation that surrounds the topic. 

Americans are conflicted in their feelings about the death penalty. Although more people in the nation favor than oppose it—60% of U.S. adults favor it for people convicted of murder, including 27% who strongly favor it, according to a new Pew Research Center survey—11 states have abolished the death penalty this century, and no new states have added it in that time.

“We now have 34 states that have either abolished the death penalty or have not carried out an execution in more than a decade,” Dunham tells Daily Kos. “Twenty-three states now prohibit capital punishment and another three states—in which it is lawful—have a gubernatorial moratorium on carrying it out. That’s a majority of states and a majority of the U.S. population.”

Dunham adds that U.S. voters are also electing more reform prosecutors with promises never to seek the death penalty, or to use it much more sparingly than their predecessors. 

“There is now no state in New England that authorizes the death penalty,” Dunham says. “In fact, you can now enter the country at the Canadian border of Maine and travel all the way to the Cumberland Gap; the border of Virginia and Tennessee, without entering a state that has the death penalty. And if you go down the Atlantic coast, that means from Maine to North Carolina, from the northern tip of Maine to the northern tip of North Carolina, there are no states that that still have the death penalty.”

But, of course, there are states that still employ capital punishment. And in those that do, Dunham says, there’s a clear line you can draw from slavery to lynching to Jim Crow segregation to modern mass incarceration. They’re states with the fewest procedural protections against wrongful capital convictions and wrongful death sentences. These are states that have significant racial disparities in capital charging practices and capital sentencing practices, and have courts that are more likely to refuse to review claims of unconstitutional trials or unconstitutional death sentences and instead impose procedural hurdles.

Since 1976, people of color have accounted for 43% of total executions and make up over half of the inmates who are currently scheduled to be executed. In Texas, Black people make up less than 13% of the population yet represent 44.2% of death row inmates. Nationally, Black Americans make up 42% of death row inmates.

“The Florida Supreme Court has systematically reversed protections that were available to capital defendants and death row prisoners. With a state attorney general who is actively fighting DNA testing for two death row prisoners who’ve asserted their innocence for 45 years,” Dunham says. 

“In states and counties committed to fairness and criminal legal reform, the death penalty is largely abolished or not used. States that are the least committed to fairness have the longest history of the use of the legal system as an instrument of racial and social hierarchy and that’s where we see the death penalty most active,” he says. 

Dunham doubles down on something that most opponents of capital punishment already know.

Based on 31 years of FBI data, on average, homicide rates were higher in states that had the death penalty than in states that didn’t.

“We found that the rates at which police officers were killed were higher in states that had the death penalty than in states that didn’t. But the trends in terms of murder rates going up or murder rates going down or murder rates being stable, the trends were virtually indistinguishable. So having the death penalty didn’t did make it less likely,” he says. He added that “in states with the lowest rate of police killings tended to be states that had just recently abolished the death penalty.” 

One question that Daily Kos was particularly interested in exploring was what Dunham would like potential jurors on a capital punishment case to know should they be selected to serve. 

Dunham says that the jury selection process in and of itself tends to be a problem in the U.S., with most jurors of color, women, and people with strong religious beliefs against the death penalty being excluded from selection. Leaving juries primarily white and male.

“I say listen carefully to the evidence and separate it out from the rhetoric. Prosecutors will try to inflame the jury by attempting to dehumanize or demonize the defendant because it’s not natural to kill. Prosecutors attempt to paint the defendant as a deviant monster who needs to be put down. You have to recognize that that is a diversionary tactic. If the case warrants the death penalty, then it’s something that a juror would consider without that kind of inflammatory rhetoric and a reason to doubt the prosecution’s case.

“I would also say to the juror, take a look at all the evidence in the case and ask yourself, would you reach this same judgment if the defendant were a different race? And the victim was a different race,” Dunham says. 

The day before Jones’ scheduled execution in Oklahoma, another man by the name of David Neal Cox is set to be executed in Mississippi. Cox, 50, pleaded guilty in 2012 to killing his wife, Kim, in 2010 in the northern Mississippi town of Sherman.

Dunham says this is the first execution in that state in nine years. 

Cox has waived his appeal rights. ”Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 through 2019, at least 149 defendants have been volunteers—approximately 10% of all executions,” Dunham tells Daily Kos. 

Mississippi is still facing a lawsuit filed in 2015 by the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center on behalf of two inmates. The suit argues that Mississippi’s lethal injection protocol is inhumane.

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The trial of the three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery began on Monday with testimony from Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge, Jason Seacrist. 

Attorney Kevin Gough, representing William “Roddie” Bryan, questioned Seacrist about how GBI contributed to the media’s attention to the case and interviews GBI conducted with Bryan. Seacrist responded by explaining how the agency responds to media inquiries but does not initiate interviews. Georgia NAACP President James Woodall tweeted on Monday: “He believes his client is included in this trial simply because of the media circus.”

Gough also failed to get polygraph results admitted into court for his client, and the judge denied it.

Bryan, along with former cop Gregory McMichael and his son Travis, is accused of murdering Arbery on Feb. 23, 2020, after spotting Arbery running near the site of a home under construction in Brunswick, Georgia. The case, over which a prosecutor is indicted for alleged misconduct, has prompted so much outrage in Georgia and beyond that, although some 1,000 potential jurors were summoned, attorneys had a hard time seating 12 people who didn’t openly communicate a bias during voir dire. Only one seated juror is Black.

”I was aware that the media has spotlighted the story, yes,” Seacrist said at one point during testimony. Gough has also thrust himself in the limelight with racially insensitive remarks made during the trial on Thursday. He said at the time that noted civil rights leader and minister Al Sharpton’s presence in court would be allowed but that, “we don’t want any more Black pastors in here.” Gough has since attempted a pseudo apology for the remarks. “My apologies to anyone who might have inadvertently been offended,” he said in court on Friday.

Rev. Jesse Jackson joined Arbery’s parents in court on Monday, the activist’s name also a part of Gough’s attempted banning of Black pastors.

He said, speaking at St. Paul CME Church over the weekend, that the case is not only a matter of ethnicity. Jackson said, if we suppose the inverse were true—that three Black men were accused of murdering a white kid and a jury with only one white person was seated in front of a Black judge—to imagine the outcome of that case.

Race has been a focal point in social media discussions of the case, and it hovered over elements of the trial as well, specifically characterization of the victim as a jogger versus someone running out of fear of arrest. After the court returned from a 15-minute break, prosecutor Linda Dunikoski brought the court’s attention to a motion she filed to prevent the defense from being able to pounce on testimony from regular people that might get at Arbery’s intent in the Satilla Shores neighborhood the day of his death.

The defense already parts from the prosecution on why Arbery was running in the community. Defense attorneys for the McMichaels and Bryan argued that the prosecution’s motion was irrelevant and that, while it is logically true Arbery could be an avid jogger, it’s also possible that on some occasions when he’s running or jogging, he’s doing it for reasons other than physical and mental health.

Judge Timothy Walmsley took a short recess before continuing to discuss Dunikoski’s motion. 

Walmsley asked about the specific witnesses who would be testifying, and the prosecution detailed how witnesses planned to testify to seeing Arbery running in the area, even at night, which led to Walmsley sharing his concern that two witnesses testifying about Arbery running wouldn’t be something that needs rebutting. Walmsley did add that there is a risk of opening the door to the defense bringing up Arbery being on probation in response to testimony from Ms. Flowers, so the prosecution took a break to update the witness.

Watch the trial live below:

RELATED: Defense attorney sees Al Sharpton in court and allows racism to slip out

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A Trump administration memo made newly public this week reportedly offering an outline for how to overturn the 2020 election results demonstrates, yet again, the persistence of the pressure campaign foisted on former Vice President Mike Pence to go along with former President Donald Trump’s Big Lie.

The memo is authored by Trump campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis and was revealed for the first time by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl on Sunday. The release coincides with the publication this week of Karl’s book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.

Ellis, Karl reports, provided a strategy for Pence to stop the election certification, starting with the vice president sending back the electoral votes of six states where Trump had insisted for weeks—falsely—that he had won.

The memo from Ellis was emailed from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to one of Pence’s senior-most aides last New Year’s Eve, Karl reports. It set a deadline of Jan. 15֫—at  7 p.m. sharp—for the new counts to be returned.

This reported scheme and its corresponding deadline meant that Pence, if he acquiesced, would give states nine days to submit their revised totals. And further, if a state missed the deadline, Ellis wrote, then “no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that state.”

Ellis argued that with the new deadline in place, neither Trump nor Biden would have the majority of votes, triggering Congress to vote in a state-by-state delegations.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat and constitutional scholar who now serves as a member to the January 6 Committee, outlined the underlying count process in October explaining then that a potential strategy to deny Biden’s victory could begin with a delay or a refusal to turn over a pro-Biden slate.

After all, Republicans controlled 26 state legislatures and Democrats controlled just 22. Two legislatures were tied but, as Raskin reminded last October, “You need 26 to win.”

Ellis’ memo was followed just 24 hours later by a text from John McEntee to Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short inaccurately suggesting that Thomas Jefferson once “used his position as VP to win.”

While Jefferson did preside over the counting of votes in 1801 as sitting vice president, as Karl pointed out: “Jefferson didn’t discard electoral votes, as Trump wanted Pence to do. He accepted electoral votes from a state that nobody had questioned he had won.”

The pressure campaign unfolded in public and private and led right up to the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

That morning, as Trump incited the crowd gathered at the Ellipse, the defeated president broadcast the message to his second-in-command loud and clear.

“If Mike Pence does the right thing, we win the election. Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us and if he doesn’t, it will be a sad day for our country,” Trump said.

Ellis’ memo is the second one revealed by Karl that exposes the breadth of the pressure campaign on Pence. The first memo by John Eastman, Trump’s onetime attorney, offered a strategy featuring an altogether bogus scheme that would have Pence recognize an “alternate slate” of electors.

No such electors, however, have ever been appointed and Eastman’s contention also forgets that the U.S. Constitution provides no such power to the Vice President to serve as “ultimate arbiter” of the election.

Ellis, unlike Eastman, has not been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee.

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Donald Trump continues to rule the Republican Party. The publication of a recorded interview in which Trump defended the people chanting “Hang Mike Pence” on Jan. 6 isn’t changing Sen. John Barrasso’s embrace of Trump.

In the interview, released by reporter Jonathan Karl as he promotes his new book, as Trump defended how the “very angry” insurrectionists targeted his own vice president, Karl reminded him of that “Hang Mike Pence” chant. “Because it’s common sense, Jon. It’s common sense that you’re supposed to protect,” Trump responded. “How can you—if the vote is fraudulent right?—how can you pass on a fraudulent vote to Congress? How can you do that?” (The vote was not fraudulent. Trump, one of history’s sorest losers, is lying, delusional, or both.)

In response to Trump defending the people who attacked the U.S. Capitol and specifically defending their stated desire to assassinate the Republican vice president, Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, fell back on an old favorite of Republican politicians confronted with Trump’s outrages. He dodged and ducked and weaved and said “I don’t agree with President Trump on everything,” but he focused far more on where he does agree with Trump than on this specific disagreement with Trump about whether it was “common sense” for Trump supporters attacking the Capitol to wish to hang Pence.

Literally as far as Barrasso would go to criticize Trump was, “It’s not common sense,” and, “I don’t agree with President Trump on everything.”

But he poured his heart into defending Trump. Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “Can your party tolerate a leader who defends murderous chants against his own vice president?” Barrasso responded “Well — well, let me just say, the Republican Party is incredibly united right now and it’s because of the policies of this administration. And I think the more that the Democrats and the press becomes obsessed with President Trump, I think the better it is for the Republican Party. President Trump brings lots of energy to the party. He’s an enduring force.” Then he attacked Democrats for a while.

When Stephanopoulos followed up about the common sense part, Barrasso downplayed the threat to Pence on Jan. 6.

“I was with Mike Pence in the Senate chamber during January 6th. And what happened was they quickly got Vice President Pence out of there, certainly a lot faster than they removed the senators,” he said. “I believed he was safe the whole time. I didn’t hear any of those chants. I don’t believe that he did either. And Vice President Pence came back into the chamber that night and certified the election.”

Eh, no big deal. I didn’t hear those chants. (Recordings of the chants are widely available.)

Donald Trump lost. He remains widely unpopular. Yet Republican lawmakers remain in thrall to him, too loyal or too fearful to say the most obvious thing, like: “It’s terrible to sympathize with the people who stormed the Capitol and said they wanted to kill your sidekick.” A few Republicans have been willing to sharply criticize Trump. They are either retiring or fighting for their political lives as they face primaries. Basically all of the rest of the Republicans in Congress or other prominent positions are sending the clear message that Trump remains the head of the Republican Party and they will continue to follow him.