Wyoming Tells Donald Trump Jr. to Sit Down and STFU

Back in January, Representative Liz Cheney earned the ire of many a fellow Republican when she had the audacity to claim that Donald Trump had “lit the flame” of the attack on the Capitol, announced her support to impeach him, and then, days later, voted to do exactly that. Of course, nothing that Cheney said or did was wrong—Trump quite obviously incited the violent riot and he should have been impeached—but to his band of loyalists in the party, the Wyoming lawmaker’s actions were tantamount to treason. (Which is an interesting point of view, given that the guy they were defending had literally tried to overthrow the results of a federal election.) Dozens of Republican representatives tried to strip Cheney of her role as conference chair. Florida representative Matt Gaetz flew to Wyoming and, after declaring like only a mediocre white man can that he knew everything there was to know about the place having been there for one hour, urged voters to oust her from the House. Donald Trump Jr. has spent the last two months and change attacking Cheney for disrespecting his father.

Unfortunately for Junior, his quest to avenge Daddy Trump and maybe get more than one biannual hug, is not going so hot. Per CNN:

A Wyoming Senate bill to create election runoffs failed on Wednesday, despite Donald Trump Jr.’s campaign to pass it in an attempt to defeat Republican Rep. Liz Cheney in 2022. The vote was 14–15 with one lawmaker excused. The former president’s son has increasingly attacked the No. 3 House Republican since she voted to impeach his father following the deadly attack on the Capitol…. In January, Trump Jr. called into an anti-Cheney rally led by Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, urging Republicans to coalesce around a single candidate to challenge her. And in March, Trump Jr. publicly pressured the state senators on the committee working on the bill, tweeting their email addresses to his 6.8 million followers. “Any Republican in Wyoming who does Liz Cheney’s bidding and opposes SF145 is turning their back on my father and the entire America First movement,” Trump Jr. tweeted.

The bill would’ve forced Cheney and other candidates to receive more than 50% of the vote to win a primary, and potentially pit her against one Trump-backed opponent in a runoff primary election…. But despite Trump Jr.’s efforts, a Wyoming state Senate committee amended the bill so it wouldn’t take effect until 2023, as some legislators pushed to give county clerks enough time to adapt.

Earlier this week, the ex-president’s namesake tweeted a photo of Cheney speaking to Democratic representative Jamie Raskin and suggested the two were conspiring to take down his father:

Last month, Junior said in an interview that he has no intention of running for office right now but wouldn’t rule out a future bid. At the moment, though, he believes he can make a bigger impact on the Republican Party by focusing on the “weaklings” who voted to impeach his dad for a second time. Said weaklings are no doubt quivering in fear.

Someone at Amazon thought it was a good idea to get into a Twitter war with Democratic lawmakers

Oh, Amazon. Dear, sweet, innocent Amazon. You’re a trillion-dollar company that made Jeff Bezos $58 billion richer in the course of one year. You crush mom-and-pop stores just by looking at them. Someday soon, you’ll probably roll out technology that will allow people to use one-click ordering to have a warehouse employee dropped directly into their bathroom to wipe their asses for them, eliminating the need for toilet paper ​(but not the profit, because the ass-wiping won’t come cheap). You’re the kind of monopoly aspiring monopolies hope to be one day. Yet apparently there isn’t one person on your corporate communications team who realized that this was a stupid idea:

Those are a mere sampling of the tweets sent from Amazon’s corporate account this week in which the tech giant has attempted to own a bunch of lawmakers who’ve said mean but true things about them. In the case of Bernie Sanders, Amazon is presumably mad at him for backing the attempt by workers at an Alabama warehouse to unionize, an effort that the tech behemoth is unsurprisingly unhappy about, hence the anti-union messages in the bathrooms. Of course, Sanders is not the governor of Vermont, and so he can’t control the minimum wage in the state. (Amazon could learn about the difference between federal, state, and local governing in a book called *The Infographic Guide to American Government: A Visual Reference for Everything You Need to Know,* the Kindle edition of which is available right now on Amazon.com.) As for the company’s minimum wage, it was raised to $15 in 2018 after pressure from…Bernard Sanders.

The response to Wisconsin representative Mark Pocan is embarrassing for a lot of reasons, chief among them being that the peeing in bottles story is true:

(Incidentally, employees in the U.K. also reportedly said they were forced to skip bathroom breaks to avoid being fired. A spokesperson for the company said at the time of the report “we don’t recognize these allegations as an accurate portrayal of activities in our buildings.”)

In the case of the Elizabeth Warren tweets—and there are several!—it’s not clear what the endgame is here. Obviously they homed in on the threat to break them up over snotty tweets, while conveniently ignoring the point that Amazon makes billions every year and pays very little and has previously paid nothing in federal income tax. (Also, Warren clearly isn’t going to get Amazon broken up because of tweets, but because of many other things the company would rather not talk about.)

Mostly though, this strategy of hitting back at lawmakers on social media that a presumably highly paid flack came up with is dumb because it’s entirely futile. No one is going to read their snarky tweets and think, “You go girl!” No one is going to be like, “Huh, I’ve really misjudged them, they ARE good for humanity.” Amazon is never going to win here because (1) people don’t rally around corporate communications accounts, and (2) it is in fact true that many of their employees are treated like dirt and that they’re bad for a lot of other reasons too. But props to the person who thought they were going to convince people that Amazon is more progressive than Bernie Sanders. Dream big, you!

Joe Biden blasts Georgia’s ridiculously transparent attempt to stop Black people from voting

Which is the appropriate response here:

President Joe Biden on Friday called a sweeping elections bill signed into law in Georgia “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “an atrocity,” saying the Justice Department is “taking a look” at the measure. Asked if there was anything the White House could do to protect voting rights in Georgia, Biden told reporters on a tarmac in Delaware, “We’re working on that right now. We don’t know quite exactly what we can do at this point. The Justice Department’s taking a look as well.” A spokesperson for the Justice Department told CNN earlier Friday that the agency is “aware of the law,” but had no further comment. In a statement released earlier Friday, Biden called on Congress to pass voting rights legislation that would counter restrictions Republicans are trying to push through at the state level across the country.

Georgia is the first presidential battleground to impose new voting restrictions following Biden’s victory in the state, but the bill, which Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law Thursday evening, is part of a national Republican effort to restrict access to the ballot after the 2020 election saw record turnout. “This is Jim Crow in the 21st Century. It must end,” Biden said in the statement, noting how the restrictions disproportionately target Black voters…. Georgia’s new law imposes new voter identification requirements for absentee ballots, limits the use of ballot drop boxes, makes it a crime to approach voters in line to give them food and water and gives state officials more power over local elections.

“Instead of celebrating the rights of all Georgians to vote or winning campaigns on the merits of their ideas, Republicans in the state instead rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote. This law, like so many others being pursued by Republicans in statehouses across the country is a blatant attack on the Constitution and good conscience,” Biden said in a statement. Shortly afterward, he told reporters the Georgia law is “an atrocity,” adding: “If you want any indication that it has nothing to do with fairness, nothing to do with decency—they passed a law saying you can’t provide water for people standing in line while they’re waiting to vote.”

On Thursday, Georgia state representative Park Cannon was arrested and charged with a felony for knocking on the door while Georgia governor Brian Kemp signed the bill into law. 

Florida governor wants health experts to let coronavirus petri dishes set sail

Ron DeSantis wants his cruises and he wants them now, damn it!

“We’re looking at making sure all these ships can sail in the summer, it’s really, really important,” DeSantis said Friday from Port Canaveral. DeSantis is adding his voice to the cruise lines’ lobbying push, which went into overdrive this week.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dropped its no-sail order and created a multistep pathway for ships to sail again. But Cruise Lines International Association, the main lobbying arm of the sector, said in a statement this week that the CDC should drop that framework, which it said hasn’t led to advances. DeSantis echoed that sentiment Friday, saying the process has proven “totally unrealistic.” The CDC responded to the industry’s effort this week by reaffirming its commitment to the framework, saying it will remain in effect through November.

In October, the CDC said there had been at least 3,689 COVID-19 or coronavirus-like illness cases on cruise ships in U.S. waters, “in addition to at least 41 reported deaths,” which seems like something people would want to avoid. On the other hand, last March the Daily Beast reported that a not insignificant number of people were jumping at the opportunity to book a cruise vacation given the plummeting cost the pandemic had wrought. “I just have this natural inclination to buy low on things,” Kenny Human told the outlet. “My girlfriend does think I’m crazy, but she is reluctantly on board, no pun intended.” It is not clear if Human ended up setting sail, or what his views are now, one year later.

Elsewhere!

Biden urges Congress to pass election reform in wake of Georgia voting restrictions (Politico)

Ted Cruz mocked for midnight visit to Rio Grande (Independent)

What Can Democrats Do About Georgia’s Voting-Rights Restrictions? (Intelligencer)

New Jersey Is Legalizing Pot, But Cops Can Still Tell Underage Users’ Parents (Bloomberg)

More Americans to become eligible for vaccines and FEMA sites to open (Washington Post)

Devin Nunes’ Mom F*cked Up His Campaign Finance Reports (TDB)

Global Trade Gets Rerouted With Suez Canal Still Blocked (Bloomberg)

Democrats introduce “DeJoy Act” in opening salvo against USPS leader’s mail-slowing plan (Washington Post)

Sharks spotted rolling down Maryland highway (NYP)

The cargo ship in the Suez Canal drew a giant dick pic before getting stuck (Vice)

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