Wind Turbines Didn’t Cause Texas Energy Crisis

A steep decline in energy generated by fossil fuels and nuclear power plants was largely responsible for the power outages in Texas during the deep freeze that recently gripped the state, according to the operators of the state’s power grid.

Despite that fact, several high-profile conservative figures — including the state’s governor — have wrongly placed the blame for power outages on wind turbines and have tied the issue to the Green New Deal, legislation Democrats proposed in 2019 with the aim of creating jobs and significantly reducing the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. It didn’t pass in either the House or the Senate, but its tenets are still popular among progressives. President Joe Biden has supported its framework.

FactChecking Biden’s Vaccination Goal

President Joe Biden this week boasted on Twitter about his promise to administer 100 million vaccine doses in his first 100 days in office, “With the progress, we’re making I believe we’ll not only reach that, but we’ll also break it.” But as some critics have noted, it was a pretty low bar, to begin with.

On the day Biden was inaugurated, the U.S. administered nearly 1.5 million shots, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID Data Tracker. On that day, the seven-day average for the previous week was about 966,000 shots a day. In other words, the U.S. was already virtually at the pace Biden set as his goal before he took any action as president.

‘This Crap Means More to Him Than My Life’: When QAnon Invades American Homes

What a Reddit forum for "QAnon casualties" can tell us about the conspiracy theory scrambling American politics.

For months, Emily has been married to a ghost. The trouble began last summer, when her husband Peter, the man who once showered her with affection and doted on their kids, started to spend all of his free time online, watching videos and reading message boards. He skipped the family activities they had once enjoyed, like watching football and playing outdoor sports. The couple, she recalled, stopped laughing together; everything suddenly turned serious with him. The pandemic had forced Peter to work from home, but it didn’t feel like he was there.

Before long, there were further turns. Peter started saying things that bordered on “bigoted and xenophobic,” Emily told me. Most shocking to her, Peter made her feel like an enemy for disagreeing with him. When she pushed back on his new strange ideas, like Tom Hanks being a pedophile, he answered her with disdain and treated her as if she were stupid.

Lawyer Who Brought Election Suit Referred For Possible Discipline

D.C. judge says a case filed by Erick Kaardal was deeply flawed and appeared to amount to "political grandstanding."

A federal judge in Washington on Friday formally referred a Minnesota lawyer for potential discipline over a lawsuit filed in December seeking to overturn President Joe Biden’s wins in at least five battleground states.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg said the suit was so flimsy and legally flawed that it could merit the attorney who filed it, Erick Kaardal of Minneapolis, facing some sort of punishment from the court.

“The relief requested in this lawsuit is staggering: to invalidate the election and prevent the electoral votes from being counted. When any counsel seeks to target processes at the heart of our democracy, the Committee may well conclude that they are required to act with far more diligence and good faith than existed here,” wrote Boasberg, an appointee of President Barack Obama.

Boasberg said Kaardal’s explanations for his actions were inadequate, so a referral to a court attorney-conduct panel was warranted.

“As he has not sufficiently allayed the Court’s concerns regarding potential bad faith, it will refer the matter to the Committee via separate letter so that it may determine whether discipline is appropriate,” the judge said.

The suit, Wisconsin Voters Alliance v. Pence, alleged that the election procedures in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin were unconstitutional because legislatures did not have the final say in certifying the victor in those states and in appointing presidential electors.

Boasberg said the case suffered from “numerous shortcomings,” including a protracted recitation of fraud allegations while disclaiming any intention to challenge that same fraud.