Hundreds of thousands of people turned out across the country over the weekend for the one-year anniversary of last year’s global Women’s Marches (while the entirely GOP-controlled government proved it can’t govern by shutting down on the one-year anniversary of the Incompetent-in-chief at the helm).
Bannon lawyered up and was subpoenaed to testify in Mueller’s investigation before a grand jury, after a truculent refusal to testify before the House Intelligence Committee that also resulted in a subpoena. Subsequently Bannon agreed to testify directly with Mueller’s investigators instead and is expected to cooperate with the investigation.
Democrats in Congress are one vote away from restoring net neutrality. And 22 state attorney generals have also filed suit to block the repeal.
Wisconsin flipped a state senate seat blue by a relatively wide margin in a rural district that has gone Republican for the last two decades—hopefully a sign of things to come in the 2018 elections.
In a bizarre but welcome turn, one of Donald’s federal judicial appointees ruled in favor of a deported immigrant.
Freedom of the press got some much-needed GOP love this past week. John McCain penned an impassioned (though likely futile) plea to Donald to stop attacking the press, likening the president’s attempts to stifle a free press to the actions of governments like Russia, Turkey, China, Egypt,Venezuela, and stating that “journalists play a major role in the promotion and protection of democracy and our unalienable rights, and they must be able to do their jobs freely. Only truth and transparency can guarantee freedom.” And retiring senator Jeff Flake also asserted the crucial importance of a free press, as well as piling on with the criticisms of Donald, comparing him and his White House to Stalin’s Russia.
Despite delayed denials by a few attendees of the infamous immigration meeting in which Donald denigrated swaths of the world as “shithole countries,” Sen. Lindsey Graham continues to (kind of, sort of) admit that Donald did indeed say it, and publicly praised Sen. Dick Durbin, who continues to assert that Donald did use exactly that language. Graham also denounced the White House advisers who convinced Donald to 180 from his initially conciliatory approach with the bipartisan group of senators hoping to pursue a compromise for the DACA program and revealed more about how they intervened to sway the easily swayed president, blaming those advisers for the acrimonious meeting and stating that they’d given Donald “really bad advice.”
The NOAA, the UK’s meteorological office, the Japanese Meteorological Agency, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization, and NASA all independently found 2017 to be one of the three hottest years on record in human history, following the trend of 2016, which is also on that very short list. NOAA’s five hottest years have been from 2010 on. The abnormally hot temps that continue to spike are a clear sign of man-made global warming—which is not good news, but it’s included on this list as—hopefully—a sign that overwhelming scientific opinion may yet prevail on even the most stubbornly ignorant of climate-change deniers in the White House.
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll reveals that while Americans have faith in a recovering economy, more credit President Obama’s administration than Donald’s, and Donald’s ratings remain historically low at 37 percent.
The marvelous Internet did this all week.
This viral video of schoolchildren in Puerto Rico finally getting electricity back gave the Internet all the feels, as did this costume designer who stitched a prosthetic wing for a butterfly and watched it fly away.
And Barry is back, y’all.