1/ I'm a columnist now. But as someone who rose up through the reporting ranks, I can say with 1,000% certainty that this is objectively a far bigger deal than the DOJ report on Biden. That's not a defense of Biden, it's a basic news judgement decision. The fact that this will...

https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1756412015793279117

2/ ...likely receive a tiny fraction of the coverage the Biden report - and his ensuing gaffe during his press conference - received is a searing indictment of our political press. Again, this isn't a partisan statement. What Trump is saying here is astonishing. Every GOP...

1/ So Trump's post-arrest Bedminster speech is over, and here's the thing: It was low energy. This stuff is obviously wearing him down. But beyond that, it was a litany of lies and nonsense, most of them so deep in the right-wing fever swamp that they'll be meaningless to... 2/ ...regular voters, and PARTICULARLY meaningless to younger voters, whose numbers are growing each day. This sounded like an old windbag whining about how he has never done anything wrong in his life but always gets blamed. Whomp-whomp, whatever. Cry more, dummy. Nobody cares.

1/ I can't believe, on the day Nancy Pelosi's husband was attacked by a man with a hammer, a man who was looking to attack her, some mope on Fox News who makes a jaw-dropping sum of money for contributing nothing tried to downplay it: "A lot of people get attacked with hammers." 2/ Seriously? I mean I know we've definitely fallen this far, but...have we REALLY fallen this far. Did he sell his soul to a bridge troll in exchange for a dumb smile and a lucrative contract?

1/ So just this weekend, Donald Trump - the current front runner for the GOP presidential nomination - said the top Republican in the U.S. Senate has a “DEATH WISH” and launched a racist attack on his wife. Then Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an elected official… 2/ …and major GOP fundraiser, said, with complete seriousness, that Democrats have started killing Republicans.

That is all insane and dangerous, and the fact that it’s not widely denounced by the Republican Party is disqualifying. You can put the Democratic Party and…

1/ A thread on the Texas GOP platform that has been in the news all weekend.

The big focus has rightly been on this horrendous and hateful bit from the WRITTEN PLATFORM OF THE TEXAS REPUBLICAN PARTY IN THE DAMN YEAR 2022: 2/ There's also been a lot of talk about the part where they say they want Texas to secede, to which I say, "Great, don't let the door hit you on the keister on the way out."

But if you actually read the damn 40-page document, which I tragically did, it all gets even weirder.

Ted Cruz will have NONE of these political stunts by Beto O'Rourke! NO POLITICAL STUNTS PLEASE, SAYS NOTED NON-STUNT-DOER TED CRUZ.

1/ Thoughts from today's column:

GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik of New York said Thursday: “There is a reason why the Republican Party is the party of parents.”

Eight of the 10 states with the worst infant mortality rates, according to the CDC...

usatoday.com/story/opinion/… 2/ ...are led by Republican governors: Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, South Dakota, North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio.

According to the Education Data Initiative, eight of the 10 states with the lowest public education spending are led by Republican governors: ...

Good lord, wearing a mask is the simplest, most non-cumbersome thing imaginable, and some people are out there acting like they've just been told they no longer have to push a boulder up a hill for the rest of eternity. This country is a mess of selfish gripers. It's so weak. Seriously, people are posting pictures of themselves like it's freakin' D-Day, wholly over-the-moon with not giving a crap about anyone else's comfort or health. This small acknowledgement that we're all in this together and that people have different circumstances in life, ...

1/ This Ginni Thomas stuff is tinfoil-hat level bananas. And I have to believe the majority sane people in America are getting sick of this perverse fiction and all these dodo heads whose brains have turned to mush.

But to halt this, we need a collective response of: ENOUGH! 2/ And liberals saying that won’t be enough. I know there are grounded and reasonable people on the right and in the middle who are disgusted by this stuff. They need to speak up. Frankly, they’re the only ones who can help turn the tide. We don’t have to agree on much.

1/ Buckle up, friends, I have news.

Tomorrow will be my last day at the Chicago Tribune, the wonderful newspaper I’ve called home for nearly 20 years. I’ll soon be starting a new job as a columnist at @USAToday. 2/ I’m outlandishly excited about the opportunity and I’ve been occasionally breaking into little happy dances, something I hope no one ever witnesses.

This decision to leave was mine entirely. It was time for a new challenge...

1/ A couple thoughts on the arrest of Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes and other members of his patriot-cosplay theater group. Charges of "seditious conspiracy" combined with details in the indictment eviscerate all specious claims about Jan. 6...

washingtonpost.com/national-secur… 2/ ...not being a real insurrection or being some riot riled up by instigating feds. The Oath Keepers plan was weeks in the making and specifically aimed at a violent overthrow of our government: "We aren't getting through this without a civil war."

1/ What makes me so mad about the Aaron Rodgers stuff - and there are buckets and buckets of things to be mad about - are the things he didn't say. I heard zero mention of the 750,000 American souls who have died from this virus, a number bolstered by people like himself who... 2/ ...who have the gall, thanks to never being told they're wrong, to think they know better than an overwhelming majority of scientists and medical professionals. Not a damn word about anyone who lost a child, or a parent, or a brother or sister.

1/ OK, to anyone who cares about or covers Chicago media, I guess I have something to say about this. And I'm dovetailing a bit off a tweet my esteemed colleague @RayLong sent earlier, which I just retweeted prior to this thread.

Buckle up.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… 2/ First off, this story by @TheAtlantic about Alden Capital, the hedge fund that now owns my beloved Chicago Tribune, is deeply reported, scary as hell and well written. I don't mean what I'm saying here to cast aspersions on @mckaycoppins. This was an important story to tell.

While writing tomorrow's column about my Reader Fan Mail, I came across this, the single greatest piece of Reader Fan Mail in history. It will be prominently featured in tomorrow's column. (Which is about my Reader Fan Mail.) #Fartmouth I want "Once referred to Donald Trump as 'President Fartmouth'" inscribed on my tombstone.

I want someone to create a Wikipedia page of me solely so it can read, "Known for a 2021 column in which he labeled former President Donald Trump 'President Fartmouth.'"

1/ Hello everyone, and welcome to this meeting of the Florida GOP Committee on Health Policy. We're meeting today in this parking lot behind a Hooter's because Dale, our treasurer, died of COVID-19 last night and he had sole access to the accounts, so we couldn't rent out... 2/ ...our usual conference room space in the Best Western. Apologies for any inconvenience and thoughts and prayers to Dale's family members who have not also died of COVID-19.

My name is Tad Horkington, and I'm honored to have been named president of the committee following...

1/ So Gavin Newsom prevailed and Larry Elder has conceded. But before the California recall election he was on about voter fraud and “shenanigans” and he set up a website to report it and everything. So what changed? The margin of victory was just too great to try and con people? 2/ Is this transparent GOP bullsh*t what we have to deal with in every election now? They scream RIGGED! before the vote, then if the vote is close they keep screaming it, otherwise they just drop and it and move on to the next grift? And we’re just supposed to sit back and…

1/ All righty, folks, let's sit down a moment, collect our breath and address the volcanic right-wing pants-crapping currently brought on by Biden's announcement of various vaccine mandates. For starters, good job, guys! You're doing that thing where you absolutely freak out... 2/ ...and throw around words like "tyranny" and "Marxism" and whatever else you found in the "Modern Conservative's Inaccurate Scare-Word-of-the-Day Calendar" you bought in the gift shop at Mar-a-Lago when you were there hoping to get a whiff of one of Donald Trump's farts.

1/ I will not coddle Trump supporters who refuse to get vaccinated and I won’t bear the burden of “listening to Trump supporters” to better understand them. Why, you ask? 2/ Regarding the unvaccinated, they’re prolonging the pandemic, costing us a fortune when they end up hospitalized, increasing the odds a vaccine-evading variant will develop AND they made life hell for many by refusing to wear masks and mocking those who do.

1/ Tribune Publishing shareholders just let the hedge fund Alden Global Capital buy the company. This is terrible news for the Chicago Tribune and all our sister newspapers. It's also terrible news for the communities these papers cover and, I'd argue, for the country. 2/ So I'm going to take a moment to feel angry, disappointed and a bit scared. Then I'm going to do exactly what my colleagues here in Chicago, and my colleagues in Baltimore and New York and Hartford and Orlando and in newsrooms across the country, will do: get back to work.

1/ Some quick thoughts on masks, being vaccinated and not being a terrible person.

As of today, I'm two weeks clear of my second vaccine shot. FULLY VAXXED. Thank you, science. And thank you, beyond words, to all the front-line workers who have confronted this damn pandemic... 2/ ...bravely in the face of immeasurable selfishness and stupidity from people unwilling to take the simple steps needed to keep everyone safe.

Today the CDC said fully vaccinated people can go maskless outdoors unless they're in large crowds. That's great news.

1/ People who care about newspapers might come together and buy the Chicago Tribune and our sister papers. Not definite. It could still fall through, I know. But for the first time in ages, it's a glimmer of hope.

Here's why this makes me so happy.

chicagotribune.com/business/ct-bi… 2/ I work with amazing people. I work with people who change lives, people who, particularly over the past year, put themselves at risk to tell stories people need to hear. I work with people who give a damn about their community and their country and the world.