Now Hear This: The seventh public hearing held by the House January 6^th investigating committee is expected to focus today on how far-right militant groups including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, QAnon network, Boogaloo Boys, and various militias were motivated in part by Donald Trump and his allies to attempt taking the Capitol. Notable will be Trump’s Dec. 19, 2020, Twitter post: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6^th. Be there, will be wild!”

  A committee aide who briefed the press said the tweet served as “a pivotal moment that spurred a chain of events, including preplanning by the Proud Boys.”

  The aide said, “We will show how some of these right-wing extremist groups who came to DC and led the attack on the Capitol had ties to Trump associates, including Roger Stone and General Mike Flynn.” 

  Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, who has spent years fighting white nationalism and domestic extremism, is expected to lead today’s inquiry. He told The NY Times, “There is a real pattern of young, white men getting hyped up on racist provocation and incitement.” He said it’s those people Trump turned to when he lost the election and tried to overturn the result.

Dump Trump: Nearly half of Republican who would vote in a primary are ready to nominate a presidential candidate other than Donald Trump for 2024, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll. 

  Trump is losing support even as he appears ready to make an early declaration that he’s running. Sixty-four percent of primary voters under 35 and 65 percent of those with at least a college degree told the pollsters they would vote against Trump in a presidential primary.

  The poll found that Trump’s focus on political payback for people who have not supported him in his big election lie has created an opening for other candidates, in particular, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

  The poll also indicates that if Joe Biden runs in 2024, his best hope would be to run against Trump.

  Trump’s involvement with the January 6^th insurrection is a factor. Three quarters of primary voters said Trump was “just exercising his right to contest the election,” but nearly one in five said he “went so far that he threatened American democracy.”

 Ominous for Trump is that 16 percent of Republicans said that they would vote for Joe Biden in  a repeat of the 2020 contest, or that they would back a third-party candidate, or just not vote. 

Gunpoint: As President Biden was celebrating the passage of his new gun safety bill yesterday at The White House, the father of one of the teenagers killed in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting interrupted, shouting, “We have to do more than that !” 

  Manuel Oliver broke in just as Biden was saying that the bill was proof that, “despite the naysayers, we can make meaningful progress on dealing with gun violence.”

  The bill expands background checks for buyers 18-21 and encourages states to enact “red flag” laws to identify dangerous gun buyers. But most people will still be able to buy a gun and go kill someone if they want to.

  Ahead of the White House event, Oliver tweeted, “The word CELEBRATION has no space in a society that saw 19 kids massacred just a month ago.” Oliver has previously been critical of efforts to control guns. In February he even climbed a crane in Washington to demand that the president do more. 

Murder Most Foul: British special forces operatives in Afghanistan repeatedly killed detainees and unarmed men, according to a BBC investigation. The British news agency says that military reports they obtained suggest that one unit may have unlawfully killed 54 people in one six-month tour.

  The Ministry of Defence responded that  British troops “served with courage and professionalism in Afghanistan”.

  But witnesses who served with the SAS squadron on that deployment told the BBC they saw the operatives kill unarmed people during night raids. They said that sometimes the killers used “drop weapons,” leaving an AK47 at the scene to justify killing an unarmed person.

  The BBC also reports that the former head of UK Special Forces was briefed about the killings but did not pass on the evidence to the Royal Military Police, even after the RMP had begun a murder investigation. 

The Spin Rack: Twitter stock dropped $2.5 billion in value yesterday on the announcement that Tesla founder Elon Musk is backing out of his deal to buy the company. — Texas death row inmate Ramiro Gonzales, 39, has asked the governor for a 30-day delay of execution scheduled for tomorrow so he can donate a kidney. His lawyers say he wants to make amends for committing rape and murder. —  A federal judge denied a request by Steve Bannon to delay his contempt-of-Congress trial scheduled for July 18^th. He still faces trial even after agreeing to speak to the House January 6^th Committee. — Following the lead of Petaluma, four other cities in California’s Bay Area have banned the building of new gas stations to fight air pollution. — The Tops grocery that was the site of a mass shooting in Buffalo, NY this past May is expected to reopen this week.

Air Head: Running with a football isn’t climate science. Former NFL running back Herschel Walker continues his fumbling run for the Senate from Georgia. Here’s his latest take on air pollution: “Since we don’t control the air, our good air decides to float over to China’s bad air. So, when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So, it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we got to clean that back up.”

  And you know, he wouldn’t be the stupidest person in Congress.

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