OUR PICKSAmerica Has a Resilience Problem | Opening Any of 3 Million Hotel Keycard Locks in Seconds | Trump’s Dangerous January 6–Pardon Promise, and more
· Trump’s Dangerous January 6–Pardon Promise
The convicted rioters are criminals, not hostages.
· Trump Told Pence Certifying Election Would Be ‘Career Killer,’ Valet Testified
President Donald J. Trump warned his vice president against failing to overturn the 2020 election results, according to an account by the White House valet by his side on Jan. 6.
· Hackers Found a Way to Open Any of 3 Million Hotel Keycard Locks in Seconds
The company behind the Saflok-brand door locks is offering a fix, but it may take months or years to reach some hotels.
· America Has a Resilience Problem
The chair of the Federal Trade Commission makes the case for competition in an increasingly consolidated world.
· Lev Parnas, ex-Giuliani associate, Testified Allegations Against Bidens are False and ‘Spread by the Kremlin’
In an interview with NBC News after his testimony, Parnas argued that the impeachment inquiry hearings are “pushing the same Russian narrative and propaganda.”
· Government Funding Bill Punts Extension of Controversial Spying Power
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act expires April 19 unless reauthorized by Congress, and an 11th-hour funding bill crafted to avert a partial government shutdown doesn’t address the matter.
Trump’s Dangerous January 6–Pardon Promise (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)
Trump has added a much more disturbing project to his list of campaign promises: He intends to pardon all the people jailed for the attack on the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection. Trump once held a maybe-sorta position on pardoning the insurrectionists. He is now, however, issuing full-throated vows to get them out of prison.
This is not evolution so much as it is a kind of synergy, however, in which Trump and the right-wing fever swamp feed on each other’s manic energy. The QAnon conspiracy theorists, for example, anointed Trump as their champion, and Trump responded by eventually embracing them in return. When Trump goes to rallies and bellows for two hours at a time while using words such as vermin, or when his response to a question about the Proud Boys is to tell them to “stand back and stand by,” the MAGA ecosystem amplifies him and organizes his sentence fragments into something like guidance.
In promising pardons, Trump may have a motive even darker than his general hatred for rules and laws. As he makes his third run at the presidency, Trump no longer has a reservoir of establishment Republicans who will support him or serve him. He distrusts the U.S. military, not least because senior officers and appointees thwarted his efforts to use the armed forces for his own political purposes. And although he may yet win reelection, his MAGA movement is now dependent on the kind of people who will go to his rallies and buy the trinkets and hats and shirts that go on sale whenever he speaks.
Where, then, can he find a truly loyal cadre willing to offer unconditional support? Where might he find people who will feel they owe their very lives to Donald J. Trump, and will do anything he asks?
He can find many of them in prison, waiting for him to let them out. (Cont.)
