A political newsletter for normal people
WTF Just Happened Today? is a sane, once-a-day newsletter helping normal people make sense of the news. Curated daily by Matt Kiser and delivered to 200,000+ people every afternoon around 3 pm Pacific.
Day 790: "A final warning."
Today in one sentence: Trump claimed he will be arrested Tuesday and urged his supporters to "protest, take our nation back”; three House Republican committee chairmen are demanding that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg testify before Congress; Trump asked a Georgia court to scrap the criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the state's presidential election by him and his allies; a federal judge ordered Trump's attorney to testify as part of the special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents; Wyoming became the first state to ban the use of pills for abortion; Biden vetoed legislation that would bar investment managers from weighing environmental, social, and corporate governance factors when selecting investments; and Earth will likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade and the world’s current plans to avoid catastrophic warming are inadequate.
1/ Trump claimed he will be arrested Tuesday and urged his supporters to “protest, take our nation back!” The claim comes while District Attorney Alvin Bragg considers criminal charges over Trump’s handling of a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump, however, provided no clear basis for his expected arrest, and a Trump spokesperson said there had been no actual “notification” about an imminent arrest from Bragg’s office. If charged, Trump would be the first former president to be indicted in U.S. history. (New York Times / NPR / Associated Press / CNN / Politico)
2/ Three House Republican committee chairmen are demanding that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg testify before Congress “about what plainly appears to be a politically motivated prosecutorial decision” in any potential indictment of Trump in connection with hush money payments made ahead of the 2016 election. The letter to Bragg comes before any decision on charging Trump with a crime has been made. House Republicans, meanwhile, have threatened to defund Bragg’s office, vowing to “investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.” (Politico / The Hill / NBC News)
3/ Trump asked a Georgia court to scrap the criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the state’s presidential election by him and his allies. The motion seeks to prohibit Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from filing charges and to suppress the grand jury’s final report, which recommended indictments for more than a dozen people. Trump’s lawyers also requested that Willis be “disqualified from further investigation and/or prosecution of this matter.” (Politico / NBC News / USA Today / New York Times / Wall Street Journal)
4/ A federal judge ordered Trump’s attorney to testify as part of the special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents. The judge said in an order under seal that Justice Department prosecutors had met the threshold for the crime-fraud exception – a provision that allows prosecutors to get around attorney-client privilege when they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services have been used in furthering a crime. Prosecutors overseeing the investigation can now compel Evan Corcoran to answer more questions before a grand jury. (CNN / New York Times)
- Dozens of Mar-a-Lago staff have been subpoenaed in the classified documents probe. “Many of the Mar-a-Lago staffers are being represented by counsel paid for by Trump entities, according to sources and federal elections records.” (CNN)
5/ Wyoming became the first state to ban the use of pills for abortion. Republican Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill making it a felony to prescribe, sell, or use “any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion.” Violators could face up to six months in prison and a $9,000 fine. The legislation takes effect July 1. In addition to prohibiting abortion pills in the state, Gordon allowed a second anti-abortion bill to become law without his signature. The law bans abortion under most circumstances. (New York Times / Politico / CNN / ABC News)
6/ Biden vetoed legislation that would bar investment managers from weighing environmental, social, and corporate governance factors when selecting investments. It was Biden’s first veto of his presidency. Despite ESG factors – short-hand for environment, social, and governance – being a widely accepted investing principle since 2004, Republicans recently started attacking it as “woke capitalism” that, they argue, attempts to force climate change politics into Americans’ financial planning. Investment managers, however, are not required to consider ESG factors – they’re simply encouraged to consider them. “This bill would risk your retirement savings by making it illegal to consider risk factors MAGA House Republicans don’t like,” Biden tweeted. “Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings — whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not.” The rule will now stand, as Congress is unlikely to get a two-thirds majority in each chamber to override Biden’s veto. (New York Times / Associated Press / Politico / NPR / Bloomberg / NBC News)
7/ Earth will likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade and the world’s current plans to avoid catastrophic warming are inadequate. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that unless there are “deep, rapid and sustained” cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, global average temperatures will rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels sometime around “the first half of the 2030s.” Beyond that threshold, scientists warn that the climate disaster will become so extreme that humans will not be able to adapt to the impact of catastrophic heat waves, flooding, drought, crop failures, famines, and infectious diseases. Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial age. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for an end to new fossil fuel exploration and for rich countries to quit coal, oil, and gas by 2040. A climate expert at Greenpeace International warned: “This report is definitely a final warning on 1.5C. If governments just stay on their current policies, the remaining carbon budget will be used up before the next IPCC report [due in 2030].” (New York Times / Washington Post / Bloomberg / Associated Press / The Guardian)
A political newsletter for normal people
WTF Just Happened Today? is a sane, once-a-day newsletter helping normal people make sense of the news. Curated daily by Matt Kiser and delivered to 200,000+ people every afternoon around 3 pm Pacific.
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