John Danforth, a former Republican senator, garnered attention last month when he denounced Sen. Josh Hawley's role in the Capitol attacks and expressed regret over his previous support for the Missouri lawmaker. He joins Judy Woodruff to discuss his views on the modern-day Republican Party, former President Trump's impeachment, and the impact of questioning the legitimacy of the election.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/gop-a-grotesque-caricature-of-what-it-was-before-says-former-sen-john-danforth

Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a video of herself titled “Marjorie Greene Confronts David Hogg” to YouTube on January 21, 2020, shot the year before. In it, she follows the Parkland shooting survivor while berating him for not debating her, informing him she had a concealed carry permit. One year later, when CNN published their story “Video surfaces of Marjorie Taylor Greene confronting Parkland shooting survivor with baseless claims,” rebroadcasting the video, it blew up, and Greene’s stature with it. Families of Parkland victims were brought onto cable news to challenge Greene’s past assertions that the school shooting was a “false flag,” not an original lie, just one common on the Infowars side of the online right wing media, and one she had espoused openly before arriving in Congress. This is who she is and has been. Nothing needed surfacing. Her bid to become an insult-influencer was sitting right there, on her own YouTube account.

Whether or not Greene is a sign of what the Republican party has become—or has long contained, from the Birchers onward—she strongly resembles its former leader. Greene has emerged from the same mold as Donald Trump, starring in her own always-rolling kind of reality show meant to convert attention into influence, vengeance into votes. She is best known for endorsing QAnon, as The New York Times has described her—not just that QAnon is what we most associate with her, but that she is someone whose association with QAnon made her famous. Some Democrats have turned that media attention back on her, trying to hold Greene up as the “face” of the Republican Party; the DCCC dropped its first 2022 campaign ads Tuesday, targeting Republicans who, as the ad intones, “stood with Q, not you.” Greene is fundraising off of the notoriety she sought out, saying she brought in $1.6M in the days following calls for her expulsion. All this may further elevate her into a Trumpian figure, a rich sacrificial lamb. She now warns, as her Facebook Live on Tuesday was captioned, “The radical left wing mob is trying to take me out!”

Though none of her conspiratorial beliefs are news anymore (as her own press rep told a reporter this week) and have sometimes been dismissed as mere opportunism, they are being treated now as a threat to democracy. After the events of January 6, that is entirely fair. We are also past the point of debating whether or not it is right to give Greene more of a role in the spectacle we now live in. She is a member of Congress who has been telling her supporters and opponents alike that it may take a violent battle to defend her fundamentalist worldview, and that she is ready, and looking for recruits.

The freshman congresswoman from Georgia has positioned her Christian “family values” against what she considers to be “communism,” by which she appears to mean Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In the Republican primary last year, she essentially ran against the Squad. Democrats, Greene claimed cooly in a January 2020 campaign video, “they want to murder babies up until the day of birth”—a fiction also shared by Trump—”and they want to take away our guns.” It’s a common refrain for her: Abortion is “the greatest evil” and women for gun control need to “grow some balls.” Before her Senate run, Greene accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of treason in a Facebook video: “It’s, uh, it’s a crime punishable by death is what treason is.” A few days before her election night victory in November, Greene said in a Facebook Live interview, “The only way you get your freedoms back is it’s earned with the price of blood.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/161222/ascension-marjorie-taylor-greene

In his first impeachment trial, former President Donald Trump drew on the White House's cadre of lawyers and some of the biggest names in conservative legal circles to defend him. This time around, things are different. And if the first legal brief his hastily assembled team filed is any indicator, this is not going to be a smooth ride for Trump.

I'll admit that I was worried about getting through Trump's defense brief in time to write this column. After all, last year's initial defense filing was an exacting, professional work, spanning 171 pages with dense appendixes. I needn't have been concerned. Trump's current defense is 14 pages of circuitous logic and rambling paeans to America. It also misspells "United States" on the first page.

After the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol that he set into motion, Trump struggled to find lawyers willing to take his case. Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone was a hard pass after months of wrangling with Trump's conspiracy-minded allies over the election results. Jay Sekulow, who was the lead outside counsel during last year's trial, was also a no. Rudy Giuliani reportedly wanted the gig, but thankfully that trial balloon was popped fast.

Then, last week, after a set of lawyers was finally nailed down, they all abruptly resigned. Rather than focus on the argument that Senate Republicans have latched onto — that the trial is moot because Trump is no longer in office — the former president wanted them to argue that he really did win the election.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/trump-s-impeachment-defense-lawyers-are-not-good-their-job-n1256552?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

Top House Democrats are moving to force Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene off multiple committees this week — with or without Kevin McCarthy’s help.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has delivered an ultimatum to McCarthy: Either Republicans move on their own to strip Greene (R-Ga.) of her committee assignments within 72 hours, or Democrats will bring the issue to the House floor.

The Democrats’ move comes amid intense fury within the Democratic Caucus over Greene’s long record of incendiary rhetoric, including peddling conspiracy theories that the nation’s deadliest mass shootings were staged. Greene also endorsed violence against Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats before she was elected to Congress.

Last week, Greene was officially awarded seats on the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Budget Committee.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/01/democrats-marjorie-taylor-greene-ultimatum-464382