Random News: June 17, 2022

DISCLAIMER: Zak's Random News is very random and doesn't cover many things, and not everything may be accurate, because I'm just some guy. Go find a real news source.

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Good morning. It’s June 17, 2022, and if you can believe it, it’s a Friday once again! Here’s… I don’t even know what. Some kind of stuff, I guess…

• Held yesterday, the third session of hearings by the January 6 Select Committee may have been the most damning yet to Donald J. Trump and the people who knowingly helped spread the lie about the 2020 election results.
• First and maybe most important: the people testifying are Republicans and/or conservative justices and lawyers. This information is coming from people formerly on Trump’s own team.
• It was revealed that the mob made it to within 40 feet of VP Mike Pence, and that an informant within the Proud Boys far-right nationalist group testified that they "would have killed Mike Pence if given the chance."
• I just can’t even start on John Eastman.
• He invoked the Fifth Amendment 100 times during his own Jan 6 deposition. He wrote emails which the committee has and displayed during the proceedings that clearly incriminate himself, Trump, and others in the organization. They admit that there was no case for election fraud but that the election be nullified or the results be held off unconstitutionally.
• Knowing he was guilty, Eastman wrote the following email to Rudy Giuliani: "I've decided that I should be on the pardon list, if that is still in the works.” Narrator’s voice: he was not added to the list.
• Eastman’s email evidence clearly shows that Trump knew it was a lie, knew it was illegal, and did it anyway, and purposefully. This places Trump himself in a position of being indicted for his role in a criminal conspiracy and possibly much more.
• Retired Federal judge J. Michael Luttig stated that the same events that happened on January 6 can definitely happen again after the 2024 election, and that Trump and his supporters pose a clear and present danger to democracy. "It's because to this very day, the former president, his allies and supporters pledge that in the presidential election of 2024, if the former president or his anointed successor as the Republican Party presidential candidate were to lose that election, that they would attempt to overturn that 2024 election in the same way that they attempted to overturn the 2020 election but succeed in 2024 where they failed in 2020.”
• Luttig isn’t just a conservative; he’s Ted Cruz’s mentor, and the John Eastman mentioned above clerked for him. 
• Side note about Luttig… a lot of folks were cracking jokes about his slowness of speech. He had a stroke not long ago, so it’s amazing he was able to testify at all.
• In order to safeguard transition of power and avoid another coup attempt in future elections, the J6 Committee says it’s going to propose legislation to close the loopholes in old election laws that Trump and Eastman tried to exploit.
• The midterms are only 145 days away. Work quick, people.
• A total of seven sessions are expected for the Jan 6 hearings. No definite word on the schedule for upcoming sessions.
• Deep breath. Okay. Moving on.
• This Sunday is June 19th, known as Juneteenth among the Black American community. As of last year, it became a federal holiday (officially celebrated on Monday 6/20 this year). Despite Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation being issued on January 1, 1863, the end of slavery didn’t happen overnight. It was 2-1/2 years later on June 19, 1865 that the freedom of enslaved people was proclaimed in Texas, the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery.
• Side note: that happened because a Union general named Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston with 2,000 heavily-armed troops to tell the Texan slave owners to fuck off and let 250,000 Black people free or have their asses kicked. That’s how it works in Texas.
• Like every holiday, Juneteenth is already being commercialized, and it’s easy to become cynical as such. Still, the fact that it’s officially recognized is a positive step. It had been since 1983, when Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted, that the US had a new federal holiday.
• From the sports desk… congrats to the Golden State Warriors, who beat the Boston Celtics 4-2 to win the 2022 NBA Championship.
• Ukraine is still being invaded by Russia.
• Abortion is health care. So is contraception.
• Social security is not an “entitlement”. You paid for it.
• Today in history… Sir Francis Drake “discovers” a place he calls Nova Albion and claims it for England, known today as California (1579). Mumtaz Mahal dies in childbirth, and her husband spends 17 years building her mausoleum, known as the Taj Mahal (1631). Crazy Horse and 1,500 Sioux and Cheyenne native people put a beatdown on General George Crook at Rosebud Creek (1876). The College Board introduces a standardized test that will become the SAT (1901). Iceland declares independence from Denmark (1944). The SCOTUS rules 8-1 against the requiring of reading Bible verses in public schools (1963). O.J. Simpson is arrested for murder after a famous chase in a Ford Bronco (1994).
• June 17 is the birthday of English king Edward I (1239), composer Igor Stravinsky (1882), guitarist Cliff Gallup (1930), complete asshole Newt Gingrich (1943), singer Barry Manilow (1943), keyboardist and singer Gregg Rolie (1947), comedian Joe Piscopo (1951), tennis great Venus Williams (1980), and NFL player Amari Cooper (1994).

I hope you have a good day. I hope you help other people have a good day. I hope people can be kind and smart instead of dumb and mean. It’s okay to hope. Enjoy your Friday regardless.