The Omicron Wave: With the Biden administration struggling to convince and in some cases requiring Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, the Supreme Court announced that it will hold a special hearing next month to evaluate the legality of  the administration’s vaccine-or-testing mandate aimed at large employers and a vaccination requirement for certain health care workers.

  The requirement for businesses with 100 or more employees would affect more than 84 million workers and is central to the administration’s efforts to fight the pandemic. The administration estimated that the requirement would cause 22 million people to get vaccinated and prevent 250,000 hospitalizations.

  In the meantime, Biden’s promise of providing half a billion free home Covid tests is at least weeks away from fulfillment. The government has yet to sign the contract for the tests and the ordering website hasn’t been created yet.

  In New York, more than a dozen Broadway shows have closed after cast and crew members tested positive.

  More than 168,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported yesterday, up 38 percent over the past two weeks. At least 1,349 deaths were reported, up six percent. More than 812,000 Americans have died so far in the pandemic.

Sue Like Flynn: Retired Gen Michael Flynn, who was Donald Trump’s national security adviser, is suing to prevent the Jan. 6 select committee on the insurrection from forcing him to testify and obtain his documents, particularly his phone records. Flynn claims it might violate his right to avoid self-incrimination.

 Flynn had attended a Dec. 18, 2020, meeting in the Oval Office during which he is believed to have talked to Trump about deploying the military to seize voting machines in order to turn around the results of the election. It has also been reported that Trump was considering invoking the Insurrection Act to keep himself in power. 

  Flynn was among several current and retired military men were involved in efforts to overturn the election, a frightening fact. One of them was retired Col. Phil Waldron who circulated a 38-page PowerPoint plan for keeping Trump in office. 

Be Not Proud: In one of the prominent cases stemming from the Capitol insurrection, a New York member of the Proud Boys has pleaded guilty to felony charges, including conspiracy.

  Matthew Greene, 34, of Syracuse is the first Proud Boy charged with conspiracy to plead guilty and he’s expected to cooperate with the investigation. Greene faces up to 51 months in prison and he agreed to pay $2,000 in restitution for damage done to the Capitol.

  Greene was indicted in April with Proud Boys members Dominic Pezzola and William Pepe. Pezzola, according to court documents, used a police riot shield to break a window at the Capitol, allowing rioters to enter the building.

  Prosecutors say that Greene messaged to a contact, “I’m good, we took the capital.” 

The Spin Rack: French first lady Brigitte Macron is suing over an internet conspiracy theory that she is a transgender woman born male under the name Jean-Michel Trogneux. She’s had three children. — CNN reports that Saudi Arabia is developing its own ballistic missiles with the help of China. — The jury in the manslaughter case of former Minnesota police officer Kim Potter returns for a 4^th day of deliberations today. The white Potter killed a black man with her gun thinking she was using her Taser.

Erasing History: A famous statue at the University of Hong Kong commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre has been removed. It was one of few remaining public memorials marking the student revolution against communist rule and the resulting massacre in Beijing.

  The statue depicted piled-up corpses to commemorate the hundreds – possibly thousands – of pro-democracy protesters killed by the Chinese army. 

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