(Image via Boylicious)
KENNETH IN THE (212): Mags of the week.
NYT: At a National Prayer Service Tuesday, Trump & Vance and their wives had to sit and stew while Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, leader of the Episcopal diocese of D.C. She said, in part:
I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now ... There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives ... I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.
Making a perfectly reasonable plea for mercy for LGBTQ+ people and immigrants should not require such bravery, but in 2025 America — it does. What a hero she is.
DAILY BEAST: Pete Hegseth seems to be steamrolling past all common-sense complaints toward confirmation as Secretary of Defense — only Kash Patel is more outrageously unqualified among all of Trump's mouth-breathing picks — but not if his ex-sister-in-law can help it. She has accused him, in extensive detail, of violent and abhorrent behavior in the hope that senators will find their spines and force Trump to pick someone else.
INSTAGRAM: A popular post shading Carrie Underwood over her Inauguration Day performance drew 20,000+ likes — but the only like anyone noticed came from Ariana Grande.
BBC: Trump has fully and unconditionally pardoned Ross Ulbricht the scumbag Silk Road creator/drug dealer who had been serving two life sentences plus 4o years. He did it to spite New York prosecutors, and to suck up to Libertarians, who had championed this lowlife. UTTERLY LAWLESS.
CNN: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) was all for pardoning a lot of the January 6 insurrectionists — just not the violent ones. For him to even say this aloud is a big deal. But most Republicans are just whistling past the graveyard. It truly makes me believe that if January 6 had ended with Pence and others murdered, they would still be pardoned.
NPR: Trump has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement, putting us in league with the likes of (checks notes) Yemen and Iran.
HUFF POST: Trump's repulsive, back-pocket judge Aileen Cannon has AGAIN blocked release of the Mar-a-Lago probe report.
HUFF POST: Trump made a big deal of firing José Andrés. Problem is, he'd already quit.
NEW YORK: “Donald Trump Is a Weak President Who Acts Strong.”
FORWARD: Many Jews are flipping out — and rightly so — over the outrageous statement by the Anti-Defamation League's defending Elon Musk and telling us that we didn't see a Nazi salute. We did. Anyone can throw their hand up in that way and NOT mean anything, but Musk recently endorsed the German far right and is in with Trump, who is buoyed by American white supremacists. So fuck the ADL. They must be banking on Trump as a staunch Israel defender.
A comparison of the American neo-Nazi, WHITE POWER salute (from American History X) and Elon Musk's, "My heart goes out to you, Nazis" salute from the other night.
— Chris O'Leary | Catholic Survivor (@IvanDOesnot) January 21, 2025
White. Power.
Hand to Heart = White
Nazi Salute = Power
It's not (just) a Nazi salute. pic.twitter.com/BgR5Mc4aGq
PEOPLE: Jules Pfeiffer has died at 95. The Pulitzer- and Oscar-winning illustrator and cartoonist also wrote the films Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Popeye (1980).
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