IT’S POLITICAL: Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski announced she will vote against confirming Todd Blanche to the position of attorney general.

  While Blanche serves as acting attorney general, Murkowski said in a social media post that, “The politicization—even weaponization—of the Department did not start with this administration but has accelerated during it.”

  Murkowski joins Maine Republican Susan Collins saying she will vote down the Blanche nomination. In the absence of Mitch McConnell, the deciding vote is left to Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. 

  Murkowski said, “The country needs an Attorney General who will check the worst impulses of this administration.”

CONTEMPT: In a strictly partisan vote the Senate Homeland Security Committee found former NIH director Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for pleading the 5thAmendment to their questions last week.

  Republicans on the Committee claim that because he was pre-emptively pardoned by President Biden, Fauci must answer their questions, but Fauci said that they were trying to steer him into an act of perjury not covered by the pardon.

  Committee Chair Rand Paul of Kentucky and others have repeatedly said Fauci should be in in jail for funding research in China that resulted in the coronavirus pandemic and lied about it to Congress. The theory has never been proved. 

  Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, called the vote “a crude political stunt intended to punish Dr. Fauci for exercising his constitutional rights.”

  It’s now up to the US Attorney in Washington, Jeanine Pirro, to decide whether to pursue a criminal prosecution of Fauci on legally dubious grounds. She’s fresh off eating crow over phony vandalism charges involving the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.

INFINITE SCROLL:

— Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell announced that he’s been discharged from a rehabilitation facility after a nearly eight-week medical absence following a fall. He said in a statement “On the advice of my doctors, I’ll maintain an intensive regimen of physical therapy from home during the state work period, and I’ll continue to engage with my staff and colleagues on important Senate business.”

— A federal judge in Washington formally dismissed felony vandalism charges against former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, ending a case that became an embarrassment to the Justice Department. Hearn had been accused of tearing up a piece of the new bottom coating in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.

  Hearn had always said that all he did was touch a piece of coating that had been peeling up and floating to the surface all on its own.

  “This whole thing has been really surreal and absurd,” Hearn said on CNN. “I think a lot of people feel that way. Again, it’s a relief, but there’s a detachment to that relief of extreme concern for other people and for our country.”

— President Trump signed two new executive orders to limit birthright citizenship despite the Supreme Court ruling against his attempt to completely end it.

  The new orders would exclude children born to staff working for foreign governments while serving in the United States, and the babies of mothers who lie about their intentions for visiting the country while pregnant.

  He would also exclude children whose parents are labelled by the government as being part of known terrorist groups or who are “alien enemies.”

  Trump has said birthright citizen was intended for the babies of slaves but the 14^th Amendment does not mention slavery or slaves.

— A federal judge ordered the Pentagon to lift its freeze on reviewing onshore wind projects and to end some of the delays that have brought development of US wind power to a halt. President Trump decided unilaterally that wind power is an expensive waste and is blocking wind projects.

  Cancelling is also expensive. The Trump administration has agreed to pay the German energy firm RWE $1.22 billion to abandon plans to build wind farms off the coasts of New York, California, and Louisiana. 

  It’s the fifth such deal in which the administration has paid for nothing to happen.

THE OBIT PAGE: Sydney Towle, a recent graduate of Dartmouth who collected a million followers on TikTok as she chronicled life fighting a rare bile duct cancer, died this week at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She was 26.

  Towle was living the Los Angeles life, working remotely at a marketing job and surfing when she developed a bulge and a burning sensation in her belly that turned out to be a cancer called cholangiocarcinoma.

  FDollowing surgery to remove her gall bladder and part of her liver, she set off to live a life of adventure and meaning with the time she had left.  She posted about fighting for her life while her contemporaries were building theirs. In one video she dances in her apartment with a caption saying: “Go get a pint of Ben and Jerry’s, watch your favorite movie, remember that life is good and bad things happen sometimes but that doesn’t make it a bad life.”

THE SPIN RACK:  At least seven people were killed in Thailand today and a dozen others wounded after a student shot and killed his grandparents in their home before opening fire at his high school. — Social media giant Meta, the owner of Facebook, has been ordered by a New Mexico judge to pay $567 million in damages and penalties after a jury  found that the company had misled users about the safety of its platforms and enabled the sexual exploitation of young people. The judge also ordered the company to change the ways young people use Meta platforms. 

BELOW THE FOLD: Be afraid, be very afraid. 

  For the first time, scientists have used artificial intelligence to create new viruses not found in nature. While the development has promise for medicine, it also carries the possibility of being used for biological warfare or worse … the accidental creation of a rogue virus. 

  Coming soon to a theater near you ….   

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