Most of Canada to receive emergency alert test today
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene swept into the District of Columbia jail to check on conditions for the Jan. 6 defendants, with Republican lawmakers handshaking and high-fiving the prisoners, who chanted "Let's Go Brandon!" -- a coded vulgarity against President Joe Biden -- as the group left.
A day earlier Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with the mother of slain rioter Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was shot and killed by police as she tried to climb through a broken window during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
And the House Republican leader recently gave Fox News' Tucker Carlson exclusive access to a trove of Jan. 6 surveillance tapes despite the conservative commentator's airing of conspiracy theories about the Capitol attack.
Taken together, the House Republicans can be seen as working steadily but intently to distort the facts of the deadly riot, which played out for the world to see when Donald Trump's supporters laid siege to the Capitol, and in the process downplay the risk of domestic extremism in the U.S.
In actions and legislation, the Republicans are seeking to portray perpetrators of the Capitol riot as victims of zealous federal prosecutors, despite many being convicted of serious crimes. As Trump calls for the Jan. 6 defendants to be pardoned, some House Republicans are attempting to rebrand those who stormed the Capitol as "political prisoners."
The result is alarming to those who recognize a dangerously Orwellian attempt to whitewash recent history.
"There's no question Marjorie Taylor Greene and other Republicans are attempting to rewrite history," said Heidi Beirich, the co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. "They're making light of what was a serious attack on our democracy."
The tour Greene led at the local jail Friday comes as nearly 1,000 people have been charged by the Justice Department in the attack on the Capitol -- leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy. The 20 or so defendants being held at the jail, many in pretrial detention on serious federal charges, are among those who battled police at the Capitol, officials said, in what at times was a gruesome bloody scene of violence and mayhem.
Greene told The Associated Press the idea she's trying to rewrite history is the "stupidest thing" she's ever heard of, especially since the assault on the Capitol has been captured in the 41,000 hours of video that McCarthy made available to Fox News.
"We can't rewrite it -- it's all on video," Greene told the AP.
"You can't change the history, but what we can do is expose the truth. That's what we need to do," Greene said.
The country has been here before -- in the aftermath of the Civil War, when the Lost Cause movement sought to reframe the battle over ending slavery in the U.S. as one of states' rights, and again in the years following the Civil Rights movement as critics of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. questioned his transformative legacy.
In the House under Republican control this year, the new leadership openly questions what happened on Jan. 6 as well as how the federal government is investigating and prosecuting extremists. Outside groups are raising money and rallying to the aid of Jan. 6 defendants.
This past week, a Republican-led Judiciary subcommittee probed the federal government's treatment of parents protesting school board policies -- sometimes violently -- as unfair. Next week, the new Republican committee on the "weaponization" of the federal government will delve into First Amendment free speech rights on social media.
McCarthy warned that the federal government is labeling parents as "domestic terrorists" for showing up at school board meetings, even though such prosecutions are extremely rare.
His was a reference to a 2021 Justice Department memo from Attorney General Merrick Garland responding to the National School Board Association's concerns about violent protesters at school board meetings. Garland had directed federal law enforcement to address what he called a "disturbing spike" in harassment of school officials.
Probing the matter, the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released a report showing that in one federal investigation, the FBI interviewed a mom for allegedly telling a local school board "we are coming for you." In another, the FBI investigated a dad who opposed COVID mask mandates after a tipster to a federal hotline said he "fit the profile of an insurrectionist" because he "rails against the government" and "has a lot of guns and threatens to use them."
"Parents should have a right to go to school board meetings and not be called terrorists," McCarthy said.
While Greene has said the Capitol attack was wrong, at the jail visit Friday she said she believes there's a "two-tiered" justice system and that the Jan. 6 defendants are being "treated as political prisoners" for their beliefs.
Democrats on the tour said that is categorically false. While the local jail came has long been the subject of complaints -- the U.S. Marshals made plans to relocate 400 detainees after a surprise 2021 inspection found parts of the facility "do not meet the minimum standards" -- the Jan. 6 defendants have been housed in a newer wing that was not cited as problematic in the Marshals' statement.
The two Democrats who joined the tour as members of the House Oversight Committee said they both had visited detention facilities before. "It's probably as good as a jail can be," said Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, a former public defender.
Democratic Rep. Robert Garcia of California noted the way the Republicans led by Greene treated the Jan. 6 defendants as celebrities -- shaking their hands and slapping backs when the lawmakers arrived in the jail facility.
As they left, the defendants chanted the "Let's Go Brandon!" phrase against Biden, he said in a tweet.
"What is most important to remember is that while Marjorie Taylor Greene and others want to treat these folks as pseudo celebrities, some of these folks are insurrectionists," Garcia told reporters. "And we can't forget that."
The federal government will test its capacity to issue emergency alerts today, with the exception of Ontario, where the test will take place on May 15.
Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has made headlines with his recent arrival in the U.K., this time to celebrate all things Invictus. But upon the prince landing in the U.K., we have already had confirmation that King Charles III won't have time to see his youngest son during his brief visit.
An Ontario man found out that a line of credit he thought was insured actually isn't after his wife of 50 years died.
After more than a century, Boy Scouts of America is rebranding as Scouting America, another major shakeup for an organization that once proudly resisted change.
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
In March, Indonesian officials and local fishermen rescued 75 people from the overturned hull of a boat off the coast of Indonesia. Until now, little was known about why the boat capsized.
An Ontario woman said it would have been impossible to buy a house without her mother – an anecdote that animates the fact that over 17 per cent of Canadian homeowners born in the ‘90s own their property with their parents, according to a new report.
Canadian immigrants threatened by hostile regimes are urging parliamentarians to quickly pass the 'Countering Foreign Interference Act' so they can feel safe living in their adopted home.
A long-simmering feud between hip-hop superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar reached a boiling point in recent days as the pair traded increasingly personal insults on a succession of diss tracks. Here’s a quick overview of what’s behind the ongoing beef.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.