House Divided: Facing possible removal from her position as #3 in the Republican House leadership for attacking Donald Trump, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney stood her ground in a Washington Post opinion piece in which she said her party is at a “turning point”  as some members continue to back “the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality.”

  Cheney said that with his false claims that the election was stolen from him, “Trump is seeking to unravel critical elements of our constitutional structure that make democracy work — confidence in the result of elections and the rule of law.”

  Her party can’t handle the truth. Yesterday House Minority Whip Steve Scalise publicly backed New York Rep. Elise Stefanik to replace Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference. Cheney has now lost the two leaders above her, Scalise and minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

  This is a fight to determine whether the Republican Party is the party of Trump and the big lie.

  Cheney wrote that, “While embracing or ignoring Trump’s statements might seem attractive to some for fund-raising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country.” She said, “Trump has never expressed remorse or regret for the attack of Jan. 6 and now suggests that our elections, and our legal and constitutional system, cannot be trusted to do the will of the people. This is immensely harmful.”

  Cheney’s would-be successor, the 36-year-old Stefanik, represents a mostly rural district stretching from Saratoga to Canada and encompassing the Adirondack mountains. She’s a true believer and a rising star who voted against certifying the presidential vote. 

  The moves against Cheney are to keep the leadership in line with the defeated president. Trump said in a statement that Cheney “has no business” in Republican leadership and that Stefanik “is a far superior choice, and she has my COMPLETE and TOTAL Endorsement for GOP Conference Chair.”

Still Unfriended: Facebook’s oversight board decided to continue the ban of Donald Trump from the social network but gave the company six months to decide whether the ban should be “indefinite” — essentially a lifetime ban.

  For the time being, this keeps Trump off Facebook and Instagram. Twitter and YouTube have also kicked out the former president.

  Facebook’s oversight board acts as a kind of appeals court for the network’s content decisions. The international panel of journalists, activists, and lawyers decided that Facebook’s decision to ban Trump was correct because the former president’s remarks helping to inspire the January 6^thinsurrection “created an environment where a serious risk of violence was possible.” 

  But the board also said that an indefinite suspension was “not appropriate,” and that the company should apply a “defined penalty.”

  Trump does have his own website on which he can say anything. He responded with a statement of the kind that got him banned, saying, “Free Speech has been taken away from the President of the United States because the Radical Left Lunatics are afraid of the truth.”

Police Beat: Garrett Rolfe, the Atlanta police officer fired for shooting and killing a black man fleeing in a fast-food parking lot, has been reinstated by the city’s Civil Service Board, which found that Rolfe’s firing violated his due process rights.

  Rolfe was terminated one day after the shooting Rayshard Brooks just a few weeks after the police killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis. 

  Rolfe is still charged with murder and will not be allowed to carry a gun on the job.

Eviction Notice: A federal judge in Washington ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overstepped its legal authority issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium, a ruling that could affect millions of Americans behind on their rent during the pandemic.

  In a 20-page order, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich threw out the CDC order, which is set to expire June 30.

  “It is the role of the political branches, and not the courts, to assess the merits of policy measures designed to combat the spread of disease, even during a global pandemic,” the judge’s order says. “The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not.”

Unfit: After the death of one child and about 70 injuries, the Peloton exercise equipment company is recalling 125,000 treadmills of the Tread and Tread+ lines.

  Some children have been pulled under the tail end of the machines.

  The company had originally pushed back against the Consumer Product Safety Commission and refused to issue a recall. They reversed themselves and apologized.

  “I want to be clear, Peloton made a mistake in our initial response to the CPSC’s request,” said Peloton CEO John Foley. “We should have engaged more productively with them from the outset. For that, I apologize.”

The Spin Rack: Celebutante Kim Kardashian has formally filed for divorce from her rapper husband, Kanye West. They have four children. — An Italian jury sentenced two young Americans to life in prison after convicting them of murdering a police officer in 2019. Finnegan Lee Elder, now 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, had been trying to buy cocaine in Rome and ended up stabbing a plainclothes police officer who bled to death. — The Segway two-wheeled personal transporter, which had been hailed as a revolution in transportation when it was unveiled in 2001, is coming to the end of the road. It was cool, but ultimately disappointing. The Chinese company that now owns the rights is ceasing production. 

Ice Time: From the opening drop of the puck in New York last night, three New York Rangers attacked and began pummeling the three front linemen of the Washington Capitals in retaliation for cheap shots in the match two nights earlier.

  The Rangers fought six members of the Capitals in the first four minutes until a hockey game broke out.

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