Another of President Biden’s very well-chosen Day One firings (or forced resignations) of highly partisan, unqualified Trump appointees was Kathy Kraninger, the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Kraninger had no background in consumer protection, which was fine since she was not put in the job to protect consumers. She quickly gutted a crackdown on payday lenders and protections against predatory lending for military families.  Biden’s pick for Kraninger’s replacement is one of his most exciting nominations. If confirmed, Rohit Chopra could turn things around in a big way. Chopra was hired by Elizabeth Warren to work on student loan issues at the CFPB under President Obama and is now on the Federal Trade Commission. 

We did it! Kamala Devi Harris is our vice president as of Wednesday. We broke down walls and shattered not one, or two, but three ceilings. No matter what lies ahead, we, and she, made history. I say we, because without the massive, and fiercely dedicated efforts of so many of us, especially Black women, who have waited for what seems like an eternity for this change to come, it wouldn’t have happened at all. In spite of ugly forces lined up against us, our victory can never be erased.  In my heart, I see her mom, Shyamala Gopalan, smiling, seated at a roundtable with Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer, Barbara Jordan, and Ida B. Wells. The founding sisters of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority are circled behind them. I want to give a special shout out to members of the K-Hive, and of the DK-Hive here at Daily Kos—Kamala’s fierce defenders, who were with her from the beginning of her journey, have had her back from day one, and will continue to do so. So this #BlackMusicSunday, we’re having a party for Kamala, and for us all. Join the celebration!

Night Owls is a themed open thread appearing at Daily Kos seven days a week. McKinley L. Price is mayor of Newport News, Virginia, and president of the African American Mayors Association. At The Grio, he writes—Black mayors are leading the charge to reform the police:. [...] My Black mayor colleagues and I at the African American Mayors Association are keenly aware of the need to revamp our policing system. That’s why we created a PEACE Pact, with proven, practical solutions to foster community-centered policing that will keep all Americans safe—and have started implementing these reforms in our communities. These solutions work because they bring the police and the people they serve closer together. Now, it’s up to federal policymakers to help make these policies standard practice across the nation. The “P” in our pact’s acronym stands for provide transparency. The foundation of community-centered policing is built upon trust, and trust is fostered by providing ongoing transparency to the community. Transparency in policing can be enhanced by establishing a dedicated website or hotline for the public to report misconduct. We also recommend cities establish a joint protocol between the mayor’s office and the police department to address public inquiries concerning police-involved incidents resulting in death or injury, provide consistent community updates on police activity, and publish incidences of misconduct and disciplinary actions online.

Let’s face it. We spend so much time focused on saving the world, our communities, our families and friends, and the causes we care about, that we kinda do a shitty job taking care of ourselves. I am, of course, painting a broad brush, and you yourself may be a paragon of health and virtue, but we as a community are not immune to broader societal trends of perpetually high stress, insufficient movement, and an overall lack of self care.  Thus, welcome to my new weekly series, perhaps the most important writing I’ve done yet. Every week I’ll focus on tangible things you can do to look and feel better, because we need you active and healthy in order to save this planet of ours. Or put another way, you can’t save the world if you don’t take care of yourself first. 

Remember back in April when everyone suddenly realized that food chain workers are essential workers? A group of workers in the Bronx is trying to make good on that realization as they negotiate their next contract—and it’s led to a strike, as the bosses at the Hunts Point Produce Market refuse the workers’ call for a $1 an hour raise and added help with healthcare costs. Union representatives say that hundreds of workers have gotten COVID-19 and six have died, but New York City has gotten the food it needs—the 1,400 Teamsters workers at the market handle around 60% of the city’s produce. “We're working in a pandemic, now risking our life, every day, and you want to give us less than what you gave us the last time in a normal situation?" union trustee Charles Machadio told Gothamist. Pointing out that management rhetoric about the “continued uncertainty surrounding the pandemic” is in sharp contrast with the fact that the produce market has remained open throughout, Machadio thinks this is more than just a normal wage dispute: “I think they're using the pandemic to try and get out of the contract.”   The market is offering 32 cents in added pay and 60 additional cents toward healthcare coverage. Rallying with the workers on Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “Our entire city needs to stand by our essential workers. And it's not enough for us to just say it and it's not enough for, you know, we have to say thank you to all of our essential workers from our nurses to our food workers to the folks loading the trucks. But it's not just enough to say thank you. We have to support them in their demands for a better life.”

The day before the inauguration, I pored over images of the 2017 Women's March, and wept for the particular combo of horror and hope we expressed. That largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history, when 4.6 million people participated in Women’s Marches across the U.S., wasn’t billed as a protest against Trump. It was a march for what we hoped to protect and to create by harnessing “the political power of diverse women and their communities to create transformative social change.” A story we rescued on Jan. 20, 2017, “Tomorrow I march,” previewed our course for the next four years. “(W)e all need to become resistors. Our individual voices are not enough, but when joined together we have real power … No matter what the future holds my voice will be heard. I will not be silenced by my fear nor by my uncertainty.” After Trump’s Inauguration, Daily Kos swung into action, as we have done repeatedly since coming together in 2003.

This is the 663rd edition of the Spotlight on Green News & Views (previously known as the Green Diary Rescue). Here is the Jan. 16 edition. Inclusion of a story in the Spotlight does not necessarily indicate my agreement with or endorsement of it. OUTSTANDING GREEN STORIES Mark Lippman writes—Ted Cruz tweets nonsense about the Paris Climate Agreement. Greta Thunberg replies with a clapback: “Ted Cruz knows his followers and he gives them what they like. No lie is too big or too stupid to tell. In fact, the bigger and the stupider it is, the more they like it. Yesterday, after President Biden signed an executive order to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, here’s what Cruz posted on his Senate webpage: ‘By signing this order, President Biden indicates that he’s more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh.’ Yes, he’s worried about the citizens of Pittsburgh two weeks after he tried to disenfranchise 6.9 million voters in the state of Pennsylvania by throwing out their electoral votes. Cruz also knows that when he has something mind-numbingly stupid to say, it’s always best to put it in a tweet.” gmoke writes—Jobs, Jobs, Jobs or How to Talk about Climate: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics says wind turbine service technician jobs should grow 61% over the next decade, the #1 fastest growing job for the next decade. Solar photovoltaic [PV] installer* is the third fastest growing job with a growth rate of 51%. Now imagine if we pursued a goal of 100% renewables by 2030.  Mark Z Jacobson and his team have provided one possible roadmap to do just that.  Even more jobs would be created if we got serious about energy efficiency and began to retrofit our existing buildings to net zero energy or near net zero energy standards, where a building provides all or most of the energy it needs on its own.  Such building energy standards are being gradually adopted in the EU and CA where all building, including renovations, will have to meet those standards by 2030.  In addition, there is at least one company, EnergieSprong, which is developing prefab, mass production methods to do such energy retrofits on existing buildings.”

When the House acted swiftly to impeach Donald Trump for a second time on Jan. 13, the actual Articles of Impeachment were shockingly brief. With just five pages, the first of which is completely taken up with the names of sponsors who signed onto the resolution, the gist of the single article is that Trump repeatedly issued false statements that inflamed the crowd and incited insurgents on Jan. 6. The statements cited in the resolution include Trump’s oft-repeated claim that “we won this election, and we won it by a landslide” and more aggressive statements like “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Those statements, which Trump repeated at the rally he held shortly before the insurgents swarmed up the steps of the Capitol, may seem scant. And arguments over whether they are really incitement to violence may seem to allow Republicans a lot of wiggle room when it comes to their vote.  But the article is not everything that House members will be bringing to the Senate when they come for Trump’s trial on Feb. 8.

As noted by Law and Crime’s Jerry Lambe, Garret Miller essentially wrote his own charging document on social media. Before he went to Washington, D.C. for “this Trump shit,” as he called it in a Jan. 2 Facebook post, Miller was expecting, perhaps even hoping, that “some crazy shit (was) going to happen. “Dollar might collapse,” Miller predicted, and “civil war could start.” Miller, 34, also told his Facebook friends what he planned to bring: “a grappling hook and rope and a level 3 vest. Helmets, mouth guard, and bump cap.” He tweeted video from the Rotunda, mid-riot, and under a handle that included his full name, with the caption “from inside Congress.” He posted selfies in real-time, and he engaged with people, joking with one commenter that he wanted to “incriminate” himself “a little” with his photos. While still on Capitol grounds, Miller, apparently scrolling his feed, challenged false “antifa did it” narratives—by taking credit for the assault on Congress. “Nah, we stormed it. We (were) gentle. We (were) unarmed. We knew what had to be done,” he tweeted, in addition to telling a member of the clergy to “wake the fuck up.” “I charged the east gate myself with an anti-masker,” he insisted on Facebook, while noting on Instagram that he and his fellow invaders got in “as peacefully as we could without weapons.” And when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted “Impeach.” from a Capitol safe room, Miller replied, “Assassinate AOC.”

The Biden-Harris plan for COVID-19 relief contains a lot of good stuff tucked into it, like this: a child tax credit expansion that would lift millions of children out of poverty. The plan not only increases the amount of the tax credit, it ensures more families are able to get its full benefits. There are currently 27 million kids whose families lose out on part of the child tax credit because their families don’t earn enough. Because their income taxes are lower than the amount they’d otherwise qualify for and the child credit is only partially refundable, they just … lose out. The Biden-Harris plan would get the money to the families who need it most (and the ones who need it less) in addition to raising it to $3,600 for children under 6 and $3,000 for children 6 to 17.

Saturday Snippets is a regular weekend feature of Daily Kos. Biden signs orders commanding immediate extra relief for families and businesses: President Biden on Friday signed two executive orders to help Americans struggling with the economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Noting that one in seven American households (and one in five Black and Latino households) “report they do not have enough food to eat”—30 million adults and 12 million children—Biden said this is unconscionable. The Biden-Harris team has put forth a $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan designed to provide more help, delivering additional food and emergency financial assistance to millions. “But families literally can’t wait another day,” Biden said in brief remarks before signing. Moreover, the rescue plan will require a vote in Congress whose outcome is in no way certain. Biden ordered the Department of Agriculture to take immediate steps to make it easier for the hardest hit families to enroll and claim more generous benefits in food assistance. “Nobody should have to choose between their livelihood and their own health or the health of their loved ones in the middle of a pandemic,” Biden said, adding that he expects the Department of Labor to guarantee people the right to refuse employment that would normally jeopardize their health and still remain eligible for unemployment benefits.  Specifics include boosting the amount of money a family with three children can claim for missing free or subsidized lunches because of school closures by about $100 over two months, a 15% increase. The USDA will also look into making sure that congressionally mandated emergency increases in SNAP (food stamp) benefits actually get to all the eligible low-income people, which is not now the case. That is calculated to help 12 million Americans. The Thrifty Food Plan currently provides the basis for calculating how much a healthy, adequate diet costs. But the plan is outdated and SNAP benefits need to be increased to account for this. Because some eligible Americans have still not received the direct stimulus payments Congress authorized in December, the Department of the Treasury will engage in outreach and other methods to reach those who have not yet seen these payments, estimated at more than 1 million. A survey showed that less than 40% of service workers furloughed by the pandemic received their unemployment benefits in a timely way. As a result, federal “Benefit Delivery Teams” will be established to find and get unemployment benefits to Americans who haven’t received them. In addition, a review of boosting the minimum wage of all federal workers to $15 an hour restores collective bargaining protections. x Embedded Content

As Barack Obama's inauguration kicked off on Jan. 20, 2009, LGBTQ Americans across the country watched with mixed emotions while evangelical pastor Rick Warren delivered the invocation. Though the vast majority of them had voted for Obama, Warren had urged members of his California-based megachurch to vote in favor of a ballot measure stripping marriage rights from same-sex couples; indeed, Proposition 8 narrowly passed on the same night Obama was elevated to the highest office in the land. Election Night had been a double-edged sword for gay and transgender individuals, and Warren's presence made the inauguration bittersweet as well. But Obama's pick of Warren symbolized what ultimately emerged as a stumbling block to his ability to accomplish many of the priorities liberals had voted for in 2008 and which were also broadly popular—action on immigration, climate change, and, at least initially, queer rights. Obama was an incrementalist at heart, and he was still approaching Republicans as rational players in America's democratic experiment. Including an anti-gay evangelical pastor in his inauguration was one of several olive branches Obama extended to conservatives in the early days of his administration in what would prove to be a fruitless effort to win their cooperation. A dozen years later, however, Obama's former No. 2—a man who was viewed in the 2020 Democratic primary as far less progressive than Obama had been in the 2008 contest—is quickly advancing a far more unapologetically progressive agenda from Day One of his administration.

Following the House's recent move to impeach Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection, the 10 Republicans who voted in favor of holding Trump accountable for his actions are now almost all facing intense intra-party anger—including, in many cases, talk of potential primary challenges. Here's the latest on each: CA-21: Republican leaders in Fresno County are enraged with Rep. David Valadao, with the local party's chair saying his organization wouldn't support the congressman «if the election were held today.» But Valadao is at least somewhat insulated thanks to California's top-two primary system, which makes it exceedingly hard for partisans to oust incumbents in a primary since they'd have to finish third to miss out on the November general election—something that's never happened in a congressional race.

As the votes continued to be counted in the early hours of November 4, one thing became obvious before dawn: Joe Biden was going to be the next president of the United States. Though networks were extremely slow to acknowledge Biden’s wins across the Rust Belt states, every model showed that Biden was going to win decisively in Minnesota, and Michigan. Though Trump had a large early lead among votes counted in Pennsylvania, it was easy to see from the make up of those votes that this was going to change. The closest of these states, Wisconsin, had already been called by the Associated Press. While it would take all the way until Saturday before networks made the final call, really the only thing in doubt by that point was the exact size of Biden’s victory. But well before the final calls were made, at 2 AM on November 4, Donald Trump had already made it clear where he was going. Trump appeared before the nation and said this. “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment for our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. We did win this election.” Since Trump is constitutionally incapable of admitting a mistake, but only responds to errors by doubling down, everything that happened after that might have been predicted. Even so, the catalog of actions Trump took in an effort to subvert democracy is astounding.

Three grand jurors in the Breonna Taylor case have had enough of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron’s lies and manipulation, and on Friday they decided to do something about it. They filed a petition with the Kentucky House of Representatives calling for Cameron's impeachment after he failed to even mention a homicide charge in his presentation to the jury last September, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.  Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency medical technician, died on March 13 after officers smashed through her door while she was sleeping and fired 32 times into her apartment, hitting her six times. But Cameron only presented to the jury three wanton endangerment charges, regarding shots fired into a neighboring apartment. Kevin Glogower, the lawyer representing the three grand jurors, said in the petition: “The Grand Jurors did not choose this battle. This battle chose them."

President Joe Biden’s 100-day moratorium on most deportations, which went into effect today, is a huge step in both protecting families and beginning the process of holding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accountable. But this pause came too late for as many as half a dozen Mauritanian asylum-seekers, who the out-of-control agency rushed to deport on Tuesday ahead of Biden’s inauguration.  ICE also rushed to deport immigrants from Haiti and Latin America, but Mother Jones reports the deportation of Black immigrants to Mauritania “have inspired particular outrage because of the country’s abysmal human rights record,” including continued slavery despite it being criminalized over a decade ago. Mother Jones said the previous administration in fact condemned this horrific human rights abuse, and yet rushed to deport asylum-seekers there anyway .

President Biden is pushing back Donald Trump’s efforts to turn the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including its flagship Voice of America, from U.S. state media (however problematic that may often be) to Trumpist state media (much worse). One of Biden’s first moves on Inauguration Day was to request the resignation of Michael Pack, the CEO of  the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA and four other networks. On Biden’s first full day in office, Pack’s interim replacement took the next step, removing the director and deputy director Pack had installed at VOA in recent months.

Leading Off ● 2020 Census: Shortly after taking office, President Joe Biden issued an executive order aiming to undo Donald Trump's attempt to weaponize the census against Latinos and Democrats to undermine their political representation. Biden's order rescinds Trump's directive that would have unconstitutionally removed undocumented immigrants from the population totals used to reapportion congressional seats and Electoral College votes among the states. It also directs the Census Bureau to halt the collection of citizenship data from administrative records, which Trump had ordered after he failed to get a citizenship question added to the 2020 census.

NY Times: Prosecute Trump? Biden Is Wary, but His Voters Are Eager Urging unity, the president-elect has tried to focus on his policy plans. But many of those who elected him are still fixated on his predecessor: “He’s a crook and he needs to pay.” Interviews with two dozen Biden voters across the country found near unanimity that it was important for the Senate, the Justice Department and state prosecutors to aggressively pursue Mr. Trump, his family members and top aides — holding them accountable well beyond the impeachment charge against the president for inciting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. The consensus cut across differences of ideology, income, race and sex. “He’s a crook and he needs to pay for the crimes he’s done,” said Teresa Steele, a Republican in Denton County, Texas, who voted for Mr. Biden. The word ‘diner’ does not appear in the report. Keep working it, media. x“Yes, we lost the White House and Congress, and yes, we fought to undo Biden’s electoral victory and, yes, we even encouraged a deadly mob to storm the Capitol, but why oh why hasn’t mean old’ Biden unified the nation yet?”— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) January 22, 2021

Donald Trump driving a crowd into a violent attack on the Capitol may be the defining image that will remain in the minds of most Americans. But that assault on Jan. 6 wasn’t the only coup Trump planned. After his ridiculous legal ploys had all floundered; after his attempts to strong arm governors and secretaries of state had failed; after he had wined and dined state legislators in an attempt to prevent the certification of votes … Trump had another scheme. The New York Times reports that Trump worked with Department of Justice lawyer Jeffrey Clark on a plan that would have removed acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, then Trump and Clark would use the DOJ to order Georgia legislators to reverse the outcome of the election in that state while blocking Congress from counting the Electoral College vote. This plan was apparently only halted because of an accident of timing. And it shows once again how close Trump came to completely gutting American democracy.