California’s Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis is calling for California to follow the lead of Colorado, and kick Donald Trump off the Republican ballot for the state’s coming March 5 state primary.

California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis is not exactly a household name. Yes, she’s the first woman lieutenant governor in California history, she takes over Gavin Newsom’s duties when he’s out of the state, and she was the first to declare that she’s running for Newsom’s job in 2026. And she may be looking to boost her name recognition a bit, with a new gambit where she’s calling for Donald Trump to be disqualified from the 2024 California ballot, according to The Hill, just one day after Colorado disqualified Trump from their own state’s ballot.

This is not Kounalakis’s decision, but she asked California Secretary of State Shirley Weber to remove Trump in a Wednesday letter. “I am prompted by the Colorado Supreme Court's recent ruling that former President Donald Trump is ineligible to appear on the state's ballot as a Presidential Candidate due to his role in inciting an insurrection in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021," Kounalakis wrote. "This decision is about honoring the rule of law in our country and protecting the fundamental pillars of our democracy.”

This comes a day after the Colorado Supreme Court voted to ban Trump from that state’s primary ballot. As the New York Times explains, that ruling cites the Civil War-era 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution which “disqualifies people who engage in insurrection against the Constitution after taking an oath to support it.”

The timing puts Secretary of State Weber in an awkward spot. Kounalakis’s letter is dated December 20, the state is scheduled to finalize its Republican primary ballot on December 28. And kicking Trump off the ballot would be a pretty major decision.

The whole debate is probably moot, because the U.S. Supreme Court is all but certain to take up the legality of these individual state ballot bans. And given Trump’s cult-like popularity among Republicans voters, he would probably win the GOP nomination in California even as a write-in candidate.

Related: Will Trump Get Back on Twitter/X? Truth Social Close to Kaput, Accountants Say [SFist]

Image: RENO, NEVADA - DECEMBER 17: Republican presidential candidate former U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a campaign rally at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center on December 17, 2023 in Reno, Nevada. Former U.S. President Trump held a campaign rally as he battles to become the Republican Presidential nominee for the 2024 Presidential election. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Of the 900 criminal charges filed against the January 6 insurrectionists, a jury handed down the first two guilty verdicts for seditious conspiracy against the United States, to two Oath Keepers in a Washington, D.C. Federal District court.

The terms “treason” and “sedition” are thrown around fairly carelessly these days, but they are crimes with very specific definitions. In terms of sedition, it is defined as inciting people to "conspire to overthrow, or put down, or destroy by force the Government of the United States."  The U.S. has not convicted anyone of sedition or seditious conspiracy since 1995, when prosecutors won convictions for seditious conspiracy against Omar Abdel-Rahman (a.k.a. the “Blind Sheik”) and nine others in the largely unsuccessful 1993 World Trade Center bombing attempt. No one has been found guilty of any sedition charges in the 27 years since.

Until Tuesday. As the Justice Department continues to prosecute Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, the New York Times reports that two Oath Keepers have been found guilty of seditious conspiracy. One of them is the founder and leader of the Oath keepers Stewart Rhodes, another is Florida’s Oath Keepers head Kelly Meggs.

“Seditious conspiracy is the most serious charge brought so far in any of the 900 criminal cases stemming from the vast investigation of the Capitol attack,” the Times explains. “It carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.”

On one hand, the Oath Keepers leader Rhodes was acquitted of two other conspiracy charges, and three other Oath Keepers were found not guilty in the same trial. But on the other hand, it is still a massive and historic victory for the Justice Department to get a guilty verdict on a sedition charge, the first such guilty verdict in 27 years, and the first conspiracy verdicts in all of the January 6 trials. And as NBC News adds, “All five defendants were found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting for their actions on Jan. 6.”  

The Southern Poverty Law Center has a detailed profile on Rhodes, and he’s a piece of work. A former Army paratrooper, Rhodes attended UNLV and then Yale Law School. He worked for the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign, and then founded the Oath Keepers in 2009. He joined the Bundy Ranch standoff in 2014, and provided security for anti-gay marriage clerk Kim Davis in Kentucky. But his wife left him for allegedly choking their teenage daughter and waving a handgun around more frequently than she would have preferred. After the New Zealand Christchurch shootings in 2019, he went on Alex Jones to argue that the shootings were justified because of “Replacement Theory,” and argued that the 2020 election would be stolen by the Democrats' importing of illegal immigrants.

“This election was stolen and this is a communist/Deep State coup, every bit as corrupt and illegitimate as what is done in third world banana republics,” Rhodes wrote after the 2020 elections. “We must refuse to EVER recognize this as a legitimate election, and refuse to recognize Biden as a legitimate winner, and refuse to ever recognize him as the President of the United States. This election was stolen by corrupt, law-breaking Democrat partisans on the ground, and by the manipulation of the CIA.”

Rhodes has yet to be sentenced, but again, faces up to 20 years.

Related: Feds Charge Capitol Insurrection Rioter Who Said of Pelosi, 'We Want to Hang That F***ing B*tch' [SFist]

Image: SALEM, OR - JANUARY 06: Armed supporters of President Trump chant during a protest on January 6, 2021 in Salem, Oregon. Trump supporters gathered at state capitals across the country to protest today's ratification of Joe Biden's Electoral College victory over President Trump in the 2020 election. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

In a lawsuit literally named Trump v. Twitter, the former president is suing Twitter to allow him back on the platform, but his arguments are going fruitlessly in a San Francisco district court.

It’s odd that former U.S. President and current Mar-a-Lago hermit Donald J. Trump is trying to start a Twitter competitor, while simultaneously suing Twitter to get himself reinstated on that platform. Like, if he got reinstated on Twitter, wouldn’t that put his fledgling version at a competitive disadvantage? But linear logic has never been Trump’s strongest suit. (Or maybe it proves that he knows Truth Social ain't ever going to have the user base that Twitter has.)

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You’ll recall Trump was banned from Twitter after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capital on January 6, 2021, with Twitter saying the ban was “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Trump apparently filed his lawsuit against Twitter this past July, and it is actually literally called Trump v. Twitter.

We found a copy of the lawsuit, which alleges that Twitter’s “‘censorship’ of free speech violates the First Amendment, on the theory that Twitter was ‘acting in concert with federal officials and that its conduct ‘amounts to state action.’” Or in plain English, since some Democrats had called for Trump to be kicked off Twitter, Trump says that means the company censored him because “state actors” had called for it, therefore making Twitter also a “state actor” too.

But that argument is falling flat in front of the U.S. District Judge James Donato. “I read, reread and read again your complaint and I’m not seeing any coercive statements by state actors and that is the hook you are hanging your hat on,” Donato said in proceedings.

Twitter is asking Donato to merely toss the lawsuit. Their attorney Patrick Carome said that Democratic lawmakers were “haranguing” and “jawboning” in their various calls to get Trump kicked off Twitter in recent years, and that their statements were “not the stuff of coercive actions.”

This is separate from, but very similar to lawsuits Trump filed against Facebook and Google over his ban from their platforms.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Twitter competitor Truth Social landed in the app store this week, but has been a glitchy disaster, and unsurprisingly, is already censoring content that ridicules conservatives.  

Related: Twitter Insists Trump Is Permanently Banned, Even If He Runs Again [SFist]

Screenshot: @realDonaldTrump via Twitter, back when @realDonaldTrump was still a thing

Just before Pelosi’s House approved a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection Wednesday, a woman who yelled “Bring Nancy Pelosi out here now. We want to hang that f***ing b*tch” was charged in a Pennsylvania court.

Today was a busy day in developments in the evolving aftermath of the January 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection that Republicans in Washington are so desperately trying to sweep under the rug. Early Wednesday morning, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he would oppose a bipartisan commission to investigate the riots, seemingly ending any chance that the Senate would approve such a thing. But then a group of Capitol police sent an anonymous letter around Congress “to express our profound disappointment with the recent comments from both chambers' minority leaders expressing no need for a January 6th commission,"and that "the brave men and women of the USCP were subjected to hours and hours of physical trauma which has led to months of mental anguish."

The House of Representatives just voted to approve the commission. But for good measure, we’ll also note that Mike Pence’s brother, Indiana representative Greg Pence, said that he would vote against creating the commission, despite the whole “Hang Mike Pence” thing.

But there’s other minor news on the insurrection and hanging front. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports that a Pennsylvania couple was charged Wednesday morning for their activities in the insurrection. The woman in that pair, Pauline Bauer, was quoted in an FBI statement that transcribed Capitol guards’ bodycam footage, on the topic of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“Bring Nancy Pelosi out here now,” Bauer said, according to one guard’s bodycam video. “We want to hang that fucking bitch. Bring her out. We're coming in if you don’t bring her out. What, are you trying to protect a fucking Nazi? Is that what you’re protecting?”

It is not a crime to call Nancy Pelosi a “fucking bitch” or a “fucking Nazi,” and it’s unlikely one could prove intent in the statement “We want to hang that fucking bitch.” Instead, she is charged with obstruction of Congress, knowingly entering restricted grounds; disorderly conduct in restricted grounds, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.

Bauer has her next hearing on June 8, and is representing herself instead of getting an attorney.

The House approved the January 6 investigation commission, with 35 Republicans jumping ship and voting with the Democrats. According to CBS News, about 440 alleged insurrectionists have been arrested nationwide, and more than 400 of them have been charged.

Related: SF Proud Boy the Latest Charged by FBI for Storming the Capitol [SFist]

Image: FBI

A “self-proclaimed member of the Proud Boys” who’s popped up at SF pro-Trump events was charged by the FBI Friday for his role in the US Capitol violence, mostly because he was hilariously incompetent at covering his tracks.  

Kids, do not livestream your activities when engaged in federal crimes and possible acts of insurrection and sedition against the US government. That’s the lesson from an FBI criminal complaint filed Friday morning against one Daniel Goodwyn, whose Twitter account identifies him as living in San Francisco, and now faces charges of Knowingly Entering or Remaining in any Restricted Building or Grounds Without Lawful Authority, and Violent Entry and Disorderly Conduct on Capitol Grounds. The FBI criminal complaint has also been reported the Daily Beast, and was posted to Twitter by a New York Times counterterrorism contributor.

That New York Times contributor Seamus Hughes posted a stunningly long thread detailing of all the MAGA riff raff who were charged by the FBI today. This post will focus on the alleged antics of just Goodwyn, since he is among the SF locals who made the trip.

According to the FBI, Goodwyn is allegedly the fellow with the MAGA hat and Ray-Bans above (not the fellow in tri-cornered hat and Revolutionary War reenactment cosplay to the right.)

How does the FBI know that Goodwyn was at the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol and participating in the melee that left five people dead? Read this bit of genius-level undercover subterfuge in which Goodwyn allegedly engaged, straight from the FBI’s charging document:

“According to video footage obtained by the FBI, the defendant, Daniel Goodwyn, entered the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021,” the criminal complaint says. “While in the building the defendant was called out as ‘sfthoughtcriminal,’ by Anthime Gionet aka ‘Baked Alaska.’ Goodwyn, who was wearing dark sunglasses, a MAGA hat, and a tan and black jacket approached Gionet. Goodwyn then told Gionet to stop ‘doxing’ him and stated that his name was Daniel Goodwyn. Goodwyn was then directed out of the building by a U.S. Capitol Police officer. Goodwyn then called the officer an ‘oathbreaker’ and yelled for people to get the officer’s badge number as he left.”

The charging document also contains the above Instagram screenshot, allegedly from Goodwyn’s account.

SFist was able to connect Goodwyn to the San Francisco-based @DanielGoodwyn Twitter account through the above tweet, still very much on his page, which is referenced on Page 6 of the FBI criminal complaint and serves partially as their basis for affiliating him with the Proud Boys. “Goodwyn has posted on his social media to that effect as recently as November 2020, commenting specifically on the 2020 Presidential election,” the FBI says.

A personal website linked in his bio lists Goodwyn as a former web designer for Jews for Jesus, and an advocate for the San Franciscans DEMAND Chick-fil-A! movement.  

A stroll through his Twitter timeline shows Goodwyn has attended a number of pro-Trump events, including a poorly attended October ‘Free Speech and Big Tech protest’ event at which organizer Philip Anderson took a punch to the mouth.  

While Goodwyn himself has not posted any acts of violence committed at the Capitol building on January 6, he has tweeted to the effect that he was in DC at the time.

But isn’t Trump just going to pardon all these alt-right meatballs and wannabe pro wrestlers as he steals the furniture on his way out of the White House anyway? He might. Just last night, the attorney for shirtless, horned “QAnon Shaman” Jake Angeli was on CNN begging Trump to pardon his client. (which… wrong network, buddy.) But notice that nearly all of the alleged insurrectionists have only been charged with two very simple things: unlawful entry, and disorderly conduct. We have not seen many charges on the much more serious fronts of, say, stealing government laptops, destroying federal property, whacking capitol police on the head with fire hydrants, or threatening to hang Mike Pence.

Those charges are likely in the works, and may not be filed until Trump is out of office. At which point, the Coup Anon rabble should not hold their breath for any more presidential pardons.

Related: Woman Shot At Capitol Identified As San Diego QAnon Zealot; Shirtless Man In Horned Costume Also a QAnon Nut [SFist]

Image: United States District Court for the District of Columbia

Social media posts show how former fringe mayoral candidate Ellen Lee Zhou was in attendance at Wednesday's disturbing D.C. madness, and we watched her videos so you don’t have to.

If you’re wondering if anyone from the Bay Area attended Wednesday's Trump-induced riot and looting of the US Capitol building, we have an affirmative on that (not to mention this plane-ful from SFO). KPIX has an interview with a former Oakland cop who stormed the Capitol, who explained his behavior to reporter Joe Vazquez with, “"What do you think's worse, Joe, storming the Capitol with a flag or committing treason against your country?" (clearly oblivious to the irony of that statement).

But San Francisco also had a baby on board at the collective tantrum, as SFGate reports that repeat Republican mayoral candidate Ellen Lee Zhou was at the Trump rally. Zhou ran Starchild-caliber campaigns for mayor in both 2018 and 2019, and is probably best known for a gobsmackingly racist campaign billboard caricaturing London Breed.

World Journal  reporter Han Li first reported Zhou’s attendance, and spoke with her for a Chinese language article in that publication. According to Google Translate, she was there with an organization called  Chinese American Alliance For Trump. “She said that she had already gone to the parade scenes around Capitol Hill and the White House at around 7 o'clock that morning, and did not return to the hotel until the curfew was announced in Washington in the evening,” World Journal says of Zhou, and that “like Trump, she insists that the election is full of fraud and fraudulent votes.”

We said ‘Fuck it’ and watched all of Zhou’s rambling videos from the scene, posted to her Twitter account. They are not entertaining, and make little sense. In the above video that seems straight outta Stalingrad, Zhou is standing amidst the Trumpalos, blurting occasionally random statements like “Mothers for Trump, Fathers for Trump, Catholics for Trump, Christians for Trump, Hong Kong for Trump.” This continues for 13 minutes.

“The fake media will not report, that’s why I am reporting for you to see that we have millions,” she says. (Ahem, Ellen, SFist totally giving you a post here!) Her “millions” attendance is contradicted by her other repeated estimates that there are “thousands and thousands” in attendance.

There’s no indication that Zhou was involved in any of the violent incidents. Though she did tweet “DC In front of congressional hearing,” at 2:40 p.m. ET which is right before things went sideways, so perhaps the FBI ought to haul her ass in for questioning.

You tell from our tone that we consider Zhou to be a joke candidate, and we’ll maintain that tone if/when she runs again. But there is a troubling current of how fake-news house organs like the Epoch Times, and of course the propaganda advertising menace of Shen Yun, have created a solid Trumper element in the Chinese-American community. This despite his, you know, his obvious total contempt for them.

Related: Bay Area Leaders Call Capitol Breach 'Terrorism' and 'An Attempted Coup' [SFist]

Image: @Ellen4SFMayor via Twitter

QAnon posts are now dominating Facebook’s daily ‘top ten,' while Youtube is unwittingly allowing the peddlers of satanic pedophile pizza conspiracy theories to monetize small fortunes.  

The fundamental lie about billionaire tech founders like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and the Google gang is that they’re wealthy because of their deep understanding of technological platforms. The reality is that bad players and hostile foreign actors understand those platforms better than the inventors do, or at least, how to manipulate and monetize those platforms while those top executives make worthless symbolic gestures and investor-speak excuses.

A number of journalistic exposés are surfacing this week on the topic of QAnon, a whackadoodle grand conspiracy theory that’s surged in popularity over the last six months, alleging that a widespread satanic pedophile ring dominated by Democrats is secretly running the world, and Trump is going to expose the whole thing any day now with the help of former president John F. Kennedy, who faked his own assassination 56 years ago.

The New York Times had a piece yesterday positing that QAnon may be the most dangerous conspiracy of the 21st Century. Axios broke down the numbers to find that QAnon searches on Google had increased tenfold in 2020 (peaking at the end of July, thanks to a campaign claiming that Wayfair was hiding abducted children in the furniture they sold), that tweets with popular QAnon hashtags have increased 190% sice March, and that QAnon Facebook pages are getting ten times the number of Likes than they were a year ago this time.

Not bad for a group that the FBI classifies as a domestic terrorism threat.

The lengthy tweet thread above from Times writer Kevin Roose unpacks Tuesday’s daily Facebook top ten posts (Nine from conservative political sites, one from a left-wing site) to show how this is not just a Republican skill at getting Likes and shares. It’s actually a coordinated effort where half of those posts are pushing exact the same AP news article about a fairly pedestrian Justice Department grant to aid human trafficking victims that Roose calls a “QAnon bat signal.”

“They're using the story as more evidence that Trump is breaking up a child-trafficking cabal run by Democrats,” he says further in the thread. “This is also why ‘banning QAnon’ isn't really possible. It's in the bloodstream. Right-wing influencers know they'll get huge engagement on posts about child trafficking, etc., and they can post them without fear of being censored. (Because, after all, it's just a news story.)"

Sure, Facebook “removed 5 Pages, 20 Facebook accounts, and 6 Groups” that were “associated with the QAnon network” in late April, and Twitter did a far more extensive 7,000 QAnon account ban in July. But these are reactive moves instead of proactive moves, and the Q’s have also figured out how to monetize the platforms. An Atlantic report in June pointed out that “There’s also money to be made from ads on YouTube,” where popular QAnon video producers make bank with ads from mainstream companies like Nike, Apple, and VRBO.

Anyone with new age, spirituality type friends knows that QAnon is also catching on with the yoga and meditation community. More dishearteningly, its proponents are also running for elected office, as Media Matters finds 15 QAnon supporters have made the November congressional ballot, five in California. So despite the movements disdain for the “lamestream” media, social media is QAnon’s best friend for actually becoming mainstream.

Related: Conspiracy Theorists Now Promoting Rumor That George Floyd Didn't Die On YouTube and Twitter [SFist]

Image: 20th Century Fox Television

After tear gas was fired at clergy to create the Proverb-ial photo with a Bible, Trump critics are doing Numbers on his hamfisted attempt to create the illusion of Christianity.

We have known ever since the 2018 funeral of George H.W. Bush that Donald Trump does not know a single Christian prayer, and cannot recite one even if the words are right in front of him. Yet this Christian con job has endured throughout his presidency, notably during Monday’s tear-gassing of clergy and protesters so he could hold a Bible (upside-down) in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. Many prominent Bay Area and national figures have lent psalms and lamentations of the crude photo-op.

But first, to the confirmation that clergy members were indeed tear-gassed to create this public relations stunt. “We were literally DRIVEN OFF of the St. John's, Lafayette Square patio with tear gas and concussion grenades and police in full riot gear,” St. John's rector Gini Gerbasi said in the above Facebook post. “WE WERE DRIVEN OFF OF THE PATIO AT ST. JOHN'S - a place of peace and respite and medical care throughout the day - SO THAT MAN COULD HAVE A PHOTO OPPORTUNITY IN FRONT OF THE CHURCH!!! PEOPLE WERE HURT SO THAT HE COULD POSE IN FRONT OF THE CHURCH WITH A BIBLE!”

Our representative and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who’s been known to jab at Trump in terms of practicing faith, got into her own Bible-swinging contest with Trump and actually quoted the scripture in a Tuesday press appearance seen above. She quoted the Book of Ecclesiastes, in a bit you better know as the lyrics to the Byrds’ “Turn! Turn! Turn!.” “Yesterday we saw a most unfortunate situation where before the curfew, the time the curfew occurred, peaceful demonstrators and protesters in front of the White House were beaten, some people came out and beat them, so they could clear the area, so the president could come out and go forward. What is that? That has no place, and it’s time for us to do away with that. A time to heal, the Book of Ecclesiastes.”  

Warriors coach Steve Kerr also threw the book at Trump, as did comic Nick Offerman.

Today we received news from the New York Times that attorney general William Barr himself ordered the beating and tear gas. “When Mr. Barr found on Monday afternoon that [the clearing of protesters] had not been done yet, he ordered officers on the scene to complete the expansion of the perimeter, but there was not enough time to do it before Mr. Trump made a speech in the Rose Garden, declaring himself a friend to peaceful protest,” the Times reports. “When Mr. Trump and aides then set out for the church, the protesters in the park were dispersed using gas and other forceful measures.”

Let’s be honest. We all know that the Bible photo-op was a petty, defensive response to reports that Trump was hiding in an underground bunker during Friday night’s unrest, and he needed some sort of public display of fearlessness and ability to restore normalcy. So the White House put out the propaganda video above, but take a look at the video’s final shot, and see for yourself how much the snipers on the White House roof convey fearlessness and normalcy.

Related: Twitter Doubles Down On Labeling Trump's Tweets After He Suggests Shooting Looters In Minnesota [SFist]

Screenshot: @WhiteHouse

U.S. intelligence officials have been directed to “hunt for evidence” that the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab, though spies and scientists cite zero evidence for this claim.

Many of us remember the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a colossal military blunder wherein garbage, manufactured intelligence was used as just cause to start a war that killed 4,500 U.S. soldiers and easily 100,000 Iraqis. Those death tolls sound quaint amidst the ravaging COVID-19 death tolls that now stand at a quarter million worldwide, with 5,000-10,000 more people dying every day. But the practice of a Republican commander-in-chief eagerly searching and cherry-picking whatever dubious intelligence he can find is back, as the New York Times reports the Trump administration is pressuring intelligence officials for evidence that COVID-19 was manufactured in a Chinese lab.

Even Trump’s Director of National Intelligence admits the “wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified” in his lickspittle statement this morning stressing that his office “will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo buttressed the theory in a recent appearance on Hugh Hewitt’s hyper partisan AM radio talk show. “We know that the Chinese Communist Party, when it began to evaluate what to do inside of Wuhan, considered whether the [Wuhan Institute of Virology] was, in fact, the place where this came from,” Pompeo said, citing no evidence to prove he was not merely pulling this claim out of his rear end.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology is a real laboratory, and lab accidents do happen in real life. And it’s likely the Chinese government is not an honest player here, as their reported death count is curiously not even in the top ten globally. But none of these dots can sensibly be connected to conclude “China what done grew it in a lab!”

Five leading global infectious disease experts published findings on the origin of COVID-19 in the journal Nature Medicine that said “Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.”

But they guy who thinks you should inject Clorox believes otherwise, and coming at a time when we’re kind or reliant on China for medical supplies.Trump’s line of argument will surely spread more racist attacks against Asian Americans, but worse yet, will direct top administration officials’ attention toward a wild goose chase conspiracy theory instead of developing real solutions to rampant unemployment, an annihilated medical supply chain, and an outbreak that’s killing a couple thousand Americans every day.

Related: Bay Area-Based Gilead Sees Potential Legal Conflict With China Over Its Coronavirus Drug [SFist]

Image: Gustavo Fring via Pexels

If you’re not glued to watching today’s impeachment vote proceedings, you really haven’t missed much. But the full vote is expected after 4 p.m., and we’ve got some links where you can livestream it for free.

The historic, third-ever impeachment of a United States President is currently in its sixth hour of House floor debate, and despite the extraordinary significance of the moment, the discussion is somehow simultaneously a snoozefest and a clown show. Democratic and Republican representatives are merely trading histrionic sixty-second sound-bite attempts, the vast majority falling flat, with the GOP reps being pretty much exclusively white elderly males with southern accents. With six hours of this pointless but obligatory grandstanding scheduled, the action is expected to climax with a vote no earlier than 4 p.m. Pacific Time, and probably after 4:30.

If you want to watch that surely satisfying vote, there are livestreams on the PBS Newshour YouTube channel, NBC News, and CBS News, among others.

Last night, a set of pro-impeachment rallies and protests set the table, drawing an estimated 200,000 people to the combined rallies in New York, Chicago, and of course, San Francisco, among other cities. (That’s not Nancy Pelosi under the letter ‘A,’ it's her daughter Christine.)

The New York Times takes this moment to discuss the fact that Nancy Pelosi will now have to live out her remaining days knowing that this impeachment episode will now be inextricably linked to her legacy as the first female Speaker of the House. She may be the most powerful woman in America right now, but this mess — and the potential stain it will leave on Democrats in swing districts — was not something she's been greedily salivating for since Trump took office as his batshit narrative would have it.

"She says she wants to be remembered not for impeachment, but for her legislative achievements — primarily a meticulous and politically complex push to pass the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law," the Times writes. "But for better or worse, people in both parties say, her legacy is now wrapped up with Mr. Trump’s."

Pelosi kicked off this morning’s debate with the eight-and-a-half minute speech above. “What we are discussing today is the established fact that the President again violated the Constitution,” she said. “It is a matter of fact that the President is again an ongoing threat to our national security.” She received a rather muted standing ovation from her Democratic colleagues, which you can see in this Washington Post video.

But lo, the ridiculousness of the commentary from her Republican colleagues. GOP reps decried that this impeachment as a worse thing than the Pearl Harbor attack (2,335 American killed), worse than the Salem witch trials (20 innocent people killed), and worse than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ (one alleged messiah killed after they kicked the shit out of him).

Among the day’s more interesting developments, though, was the discovery of above 2008 interview with then-citizen Trump where he says Pelosi is “a very impressive person, I like her a lot,” and notes the impeachment of President George W. Bush “would have been a wonderful thing.” And it would have been, but we do expect to get the impeachment of Donald Trump tonight ⁠— as Pelosi’s shrewd whip-counting indicates, she has 231 votes for impeachment, and she only needs 216.

Related: Trump Writes Rambling Six-Page Letter To Pelosi Ahead of Impeachment With Twitter-Esque Random Capitalization [SFist]

Screenshot: @SpeakerPelosi via Twitter

Many of tech's biggest companies are banding together to resist President Trump's stated decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. Per CNet's report, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are a few of the 100 companies which sponsored an amicus brief filed in San Francisco yesterday.

The brief, which is publicly available, touches on one of the primary talking points around DACA, which is that it grants a heavy economic boon to these companies in the form of access to an expanded, skilled workforce. They write:

DACA has produced -- and is continuing to produce -- important benefits for America's companies and for our economy as a whole. Employment is not a zero sum game. Dreamers are filling vacancies at companies that cannot find enough workers to fill their needs.

Since the it was first introduced in 2012 by then-President Obama, over 800,000 children and young adults have taken advantage of the program, which defers deportation action and proceedings. In essence, it allowed children and teenagers who were brought in by their undocumented parents to remain in the U.S. while lawmakers worked to institute meaningful immigration reform. No progress has been made on that front, and with Trump's election, many don't expect that fact to change. But in the time since, those 800,000 DACA recipients, or Dreamers, have received full educations, with some of them graduating and joining the American workforce as trained professionals. The tech companies are choosing to center their focus on their contributions and the impact they have as individuals on the tech industry at large.

As an industry, tech has long relied on the skills of workers from overseas, which means they also rely on the government to enable such practices. The foremost example of this is the H1-B visa, which The Independent calls a "key pipeline" for tech companies, as it allows tech companies to bring talent into the country on work visas. The practice has been criticized by many in the past, as American workers are supposedly being replaced by these folks, but if nothing else, the practice shows that tech companies are heavily invested in immigration reform and rights. CNet also points out that Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, created FWD.us back in 2013, a lobbyist group that works to advocate for immigration reform in Washington, D.C. He can also be seen speaking with a few Dreamers in this video he posted to Facebook.

Elsewhere, Axios reports that Apple has filed its own brief. In theirs, they write, in part:

These talented and entrepreneurial people fill important and varied roles across the company, including in operations, research and development, administration, sales and marketing, and retail. Apple and its customers have benefitted greatly from their intelligence, ambition, creativity, resilience, and hard work. These employees are important contributors to Apple's unique culture. That unique culture enables employees throughout Apple to do the best work of their lives and excel at creating the most innovative products and providing the very best customer service.

Additionally, IBM has voiced their support, as Christopher Padilla, their VP of government affairs wrote:

They contribute to our company and help to drive innovation and excellence at IBM. In fact, one of our Dreamers recently worked around-the-clock remote shifts to ensure continuity of IBM services when Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston," Padilla said. "BM is actively urging Congress to find a permanent legislative solution to enable Dreamers to stay in the United States. We have also urged the court in this case to find that DACA's revocation was unfounded. The program is due to begin phasing out in less than five months, and we are committed to providing as much stability and predictability as possible to DACA recipients who work at IBM

Politico reports that Trump is still meeting with GOP senators, who are set to report on how much progress they've made in ending the DACA program, which is scheduled to terminate in March. Ostensibly, their plans would "a pathway to legal status" for the 800,000 or so Dreamers, but there's no word yet on what that pathway might look like.

Related: Dreamers File Lawsuit Against Trump Administration's Move to End DACA

As you do not live on a remote island far from Facebook and Twitter and the news (sigh, IF ONLY), you are likely aware that Paul Manafort, who managed now-President Donald Trump's campaign for office, surrendered to federal agents following an indictment against him announced Monday morning that contained allegations including tax fraud, conspiracy against the US, and money laundering.

Per DCist, the Department of Justice said via written statement that:

Paul J. Manafort, Jr., of Alexandria, Va., and Richard W. Gates III, of Richmond, Va., have been indicted by a federal grand jury on Oct. 27, 2017, in the District of Columbia. The indictment contains 12 counts: conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. The case was unsealed on Oct. 30, 2017, after the defendants were permitted to surrender themselves to the custody of the FBI.

But the DoJ isn't the only one issuing statements, as San Francisco's own Nancy Pelosi released her own while the rest of us were likely still getting ready for work. Here are her full remarks, sent to media this morning:

Even with an accelerating Special Counsel investigation inside the Justice Department, and investigations inside the Republican Congress, we still need an outside, fully independent investigation to expose Russia’s meddling in our election and the involvement of Trump officials. Defending the integrity of our democracy demands that Congress look forward to counter Russian aggression and prevent future meddling with our elections.

Pelosi also tweeted the statement, reiterating in the body of the tweet the need for the investigation to be independent of the current administration.

Obviously, given the freshness of the news, it remains to be seen if Pelosi's demands will be met. As of publication time, Manafort remains in custody. You can read the full indictment below.

After pledging aid on behalf of the federal government to California Governor Jerry Brown, ABC 7 reports that Trump has yet to make any plans to visit any of the areas in Northern California that have been ravaged by wildfire. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that a visit isn't "planned at this time but it certainly hasn't been ruled out either." She reiterates their promise of aid, though, saying that the White House "has been very engaged throughout this process. We're going to continue to be there."

Trump's absence is certainly conspicuous, as he's made a number of headlines recently for the botched optics and response to Puerto Rico's recent calls for aid after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. Rather than just pledging aid to Puerto Rico and offering words of support -- like any other head of state would do — Trump chose to pick a Twitter fight with the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulín Cruz, shaming her requests for aid and the criticisms she had for how the federal government has been handling the disaster. CNN wrote that Trump's lack of empathy for Puerto Rico is "staggering," as he seems to be more interested in tweeting about athletes protesting than he is about calling for aid for Puerto Rico.

SFGate decided to do a deep dive into the tweets Trump has post in the ten days since the fires broke out early last week, and what they turned up was all-too-unsurprising for anybody who's spent any time on the internet within the past year. They found that he had tweeted a total of 82 times between October 8th and today, and none of those tweets mentioned anything about the wildfires, which took the lives of at least 42 Americans. For someone who touted his Twitter savviness as a way he would "connect with the people," this silence on his platform-of-choice is deafening.

Today, though, Trump did tweet words of support for the fire crews and officials still working around the clock to battle the wildfires. He quote-tweeted a photo from a FEMA official on the ground, which shows first responders and fire crews working in one of the burned out areas. He wrote, "Our hearts are with all affected by the wildfires in California. God bless our brave First Responders and @FEMA team. We support you!"

Related: A Majority Of Americans Wish Trump Would Get Off Twitter

Trump's director of digital strategy, Brad Parscale, explained that he called on pro-Trump employees at Facebook to help the Trump campaign maximize its impact on the social networking platform.

According to Bloomberg, Parscale explained the differences in their approach to Facebook and Twitter to 60 Minutes, saying, "Twitter is how [Trump] talked to the people, Facebook was going to be how he won." To ensure that they went about using Facebook to its maximum potential, Parscale brought Facebook employees into his office on a regular basis to offer guidance. But they weren't just any old employees — he said that he only "wanted people who supported Donald Trump" to help them in the office.

In response to this, a spokesperson from Facebook told Bloomberg that Parscale was offered the same help as any other major entity who pays for ads on the platform. Another insider source at Facebook also took issue with how Parscale called these employees "embeds," implying that they were embedded and dedicated only to this particular account. That insider said that these "embeds" actually only had the campaign as one of a few accounts and clients. The key difference, though, according to Parscale, is that he believes the Hillary Clinton campaign didn't use "embeds" and didn't leverage the platform in the same way.

Of course, Facebook's also at the center of plenty of scandals these days for its role as a leverage point regarding the 2016 election. The investigation into Russia's use of the platform continues, with Facebook having submitted information on 3,000 or so ads that they suspect were paid for by Russian interests. On top of that, Facebook has taken moves as of late to implement many, many more human editors and overseers to act as overwatch on political and religious ads. In a livestream from a few weeks ago, CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised to hire 250 people who will beef up the ad review team, a marked distancing from Facebook's stance regarding algorithm-based filtering. That number later ballooned to 1,000 people, according to TechCrunch.

On that front, Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos has criticized journalists and the media for their supposed misunderstanding of how algorithms are utilized and perceived at Facebook. In a tweet, he wrote:

The thing is, the media isn't arguing that Facebook "thinks of algorithms as neutral," but rather that they choose to lean on those tech-based solutions despite being shown their potential for being exploited by abusers. In TechCrunch's report on Stamos' tweets, they point out that criticism regarding Facebook has mostly centered on how a lot of the moves they're making now to prevent election interference feel like they're too little, too late.

Though it's a different product, Facebook's News Feed is an example of a feature that once had human editor/curator oversight, and was exploited only after that team was replaced by an algorithm. As it goes, after Gizmodo shared a story from former contractors who allegedly "suppressed Conservative news sites," the human curators were fired, only to be replaced by an algorithm that misfired on a fake news story about Megyn Kelly only three days after it was placed in charge of controlling the feed.

This work to introduce human oversight and integrate it with those tech-based solutions should probably have been considered a long time ago, way before the 2016 election.

Related: Google And Facebook Under Fire For Spreading Hoaxes During Las Vegas Attack

A billboard in Chico stirred up some controversy as it depicted Donald Trump dressed in a Nazi uniform, standing alongside the swastika-inspired anti-45 logo that became popular shortly after the election.

According to KRON 4's report, the ad belongs to Rouse and Revolt, a local secondhand clothing store. Their logo is presented prominently alongside the depiction of Trump as a Nazi, framing twin mushroom clouds. The store's owner, Nicholle Lewis, spoke with Newsweek about the reaction to the billboard, which has been mostly negative. "I’m living in a small, podunk red town and I'm already getting death threats,” said Lewis. "My business has completely floundered. Overnight I had more one-star reviews than all the reviews I’ve received in a year." Newsweek also pointed out that Chico is a town with a population of 90,000, with many leaning to the right.

After numerous complaints from residents, the company who owns the advertising space, Stott Outdoor Advertising, took down the ad. Newsweek also spoke with Jim Moravec, the general manager for the ad company, who said, "I should have not accepted the ad in the first place."

Still, despite the backlash, Lewis seems to have some supporters. In a video report from Action News Now, the local news affiliate, one interviewee said, "My first reaction, honestly, was shock. I couldn't believe it. But as I sit here and look at it, I think it's bold, and I think it's courageous, and for Chico... I'm impressed with Rouse and Revolt." Another expressed a more mixed opinion, saying, "I guess it's cool they're, like, taking a stance and trying to promote, but I just... that's not the way to do it." A quick scroll through the store's Facebook page also turns up some more heated comments. As well, the store's Yelp page is currently blocked off from further reviews as Yelp goes about an "active cleanup" to remove posts based on the news rather than customer experience.

Additionally, Action News Now turned up a Facebook post from Lewis that features the image. The post reads, in part: "We support equality, we support equal rights, we support a woman's right to her own body, we support DACA, we support universal health care, we support gay people in any Place they live. We welcome all races, all religions, all countries of origin, all genders and we not only STAND with you, we kneel with you as well."

This isn't the first anti-Trump billboard to go up in northern California in recent weeks. Last Monday, a billboard calling for Trump's impeachment popped up next to the eastern span of the Bay Bridge. It was taken down after numerous complaints from observers, only to be put back up again to serve out the rest of its contract, which ended this past Sunday.

Related: All These California Republican Lawmakers Still Support Trump, Which, Wow