“MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is showing support for the anti-vaccine trucker protesters in Ottawa who have blocked major routes across the U.S.-Canada border — by pledging to send them pillows en masse,” the HuffPost reports.
Said Lindell: “All of our employees are busy making pillows right now for the truckers in Canada. We’re going to try and get them through. I’m not going to say what day or, you know, there will be obstructionists.”
“What began as a small-but-loud truck convoy protest against Canadian pandemic restrictions has snowballed into an international crisis that’s been choking the busiest border crossing in North America all week,” Axios reports.
“Copycat convoys are spreading in other countries, including the United States, where officials warned of a potential disruption to Sunday’s Super Bowl in Los Angeles.”
Washington Post: “Authorities in Paris and Brussels yesterday said they will try to stop convoys from entering both cities, potentially thwarting plans for staging in Europe the type of demonstration that has paralyzed Ottawa and closed Canada’s busiest border crossing into the United States.”
“It’s not every day that Canada becomes the red-hot center of a global protest movement,” Politico reports.
“But what started as a rally of Canadian truckers angry at cross-border vaccine mandates has fast become a magnet for far-right grievances around the world.”
More from Politico: “Canada’s truckers have paralyzed Ottawa and unsettled the country’s politics over vaccine and mask mandates. Now Americans want in on the action.”
“Some Republicans on Saturday vowed to investigate GoFundMe’s decision to take down a page accepting donations in support of protesting truck drivers in Canada, although GoFundMe early Saturday already said it would simply refund all donations,” Reuters reports.
“As anti-vaccine activists from across the country prepare to gather on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, they are hoping their rally will mark a once-fringe movement’s arrival as a lasting force in American society,” the Washington Post reports.
“Almost two years into the coronavirus pandemic, the movement to challenge vaccines’ safety — and reject vaccine mandates — has never been stronger. An ideology whose most notable adherents were once religious fundamentalists and minor celebrities is now firmly entrenched among tens of millions of Americans.”
The Intercept: “Last year, right-wing groups that have long opposed the concept of increased government spending on ‘handouts’ were the recipients of more than $1.7 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans while seeing significant increases in contributions or net assets.”
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell told CNBC he has spent $25 million of his own money pushing the false claim that the election was stolen from Donald Trump and he plans to keep spending through the 2022 midterm elections.
Said Lindell: “I will keep spending it because there is no tomorrow. We lose our country. We either only have two paths: either it gets changed before the 2022 election or we lose our country forever. I will spend every dime I have. I will spend whatever it takes.”
BuzzFeed: “Individual election deniers and grassroots groups are canvassing for election fraud in states lost or even won by former president Donald Trump in 2020, including New Hampshire, Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Utah, and Nebraska.”
New York Times: “Members of the Proud Boys, the far-right nationalist group, have increasingly appeared in recent months at town council gatherings, school board presentations and health department question-and-answer sessions across the country. Their presence at the events is part of a strategy shift by the militia organization toward a larger goal: to bring their brand of menacing politics to the local level.”
“For years, the group was known for its national profile. The Proud Boys were prominent at the rallies of Donald Trump, at one point offering to serve as the former president’s private militia. On Jan. 6, some Proud Boys members filmed themselves storming the U.S. Capitol to protest what they falsely said was an election that had been stolen from Mr. Trump.”
“But since federal authorities have cracked down on the group for the Jan. 6 attack, including arresting more than a dozen of its members, the organization has been more muted. Or at least that was how it appeared.”
In a sea of bad news, you’ll want to read Sara Goddard’s latest for inspiration.
“Increasingly restless supporters of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell have a new plan of action: Send the Supreme Court physical copies of the pillow maven’s dubious and unsigned 80-plus page court filing that seeks to overturn the 2020 election,” the Daily Beast reports.
“Late last week and again on Wednesday night, supporters called into Lindell’s evening live streaming program to share that they had “mailed” the pillow executive’s drafted case to the high court.”
“In the months after President Donald Trump lost the November election, lawyer Sidney Powell raised large sums from donors inspired by her fight to reverse the outcome of the vote,” the Washington Post reports.
“Records reviewed by The Washington Post show that Defending the Republic raised more than $14 million, a sum that reveals the reach and resonance of one of the most visible efforts to fundraise using baseless claims about the 2020 election. Previously unreported records also detail acrimony between Powell and her top lieutenants over how the money — now a focus of inquiries by federal prosecutors and Congress — was being handled.”
“Over the past dozen years, at least 28 people who currently hold elected office joined or financially supported the Oath Keepers, the extremist group that figured prominently in the violent Jan. 6 storming of the US Capitol,” BuzzFeed News reports.
“The political network backed by billionaire Charles Koch spent a record amount of money directly lobbying Congress, with a focus on opposing crucial elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda while supporting some bills backed by Democratic lawmakers,” CNBC reports.
“One of the network’s lobbying targets this year has been moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).
A new memo from Third Way, the centrist think tank, warns Democrats that without a deal on President Biden’s agenda the party will lose their congressional majority: “If they don’t, our Democratic majority will reap a whirlwind of political destruction.”
“We narrowly avoided a second term of the Trump presidency by uniting Democrats under a very big tent. Debates inside that tent are healthy, but now it’s time to prove that Democrats can govern. That means moderates and progressives must reach a deal to mutually assure success.”
Also interesting is that the group admits the two bills won’t be separated: “The fate of the bipartisan infrastructure bill is now affixed to the Build Back Better reconciliation package, despite lines drawn in the sand by some moderates.”
“A wealthy Trump donor who helped finance the rally in Washington on Jan. 6 also gave $150,000 to the nonprofit arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association,” the Washington Post reports.
“On Dec. 29, Julie Jenkins Fancelli, daughter of the founder of the Publix grocery store chain, gave the previously undisclosed contribution to RAGA’s nonprofit Rule of Law Defense Fund.”
Former Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican who’s now President Biden’s nominee to be ambassador to Turkey, is funding a nonprofit focused on election processes in his home state of Arizona, Axios reports.
“House Republican leadership has officially broken up with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” Punchbowl News reports.
“GOP leadership has booted the Chamber from the party’s reconciliation-related coalition strategy calls. These calls between Republicans and their allies outside the Capitol help the leadership mobilize for their priorities and against the Democrats. This move by the leadership essentially says that the Chamber is an outcast in House Republican legislative politics.”
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Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
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