A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to block a House select committee from getting a tranche of White House records as part of its investigation of the Capitol invasion.

Trump had argued that the records are protected by executive privilege, the legal doctrine that protects White House communications from being made public. The select committee objected to Trump’s claims, and President Joe Biden waived privilege over the disputed records.

In its ruling Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that Biden “and the Legislative Branch have shown a national interest in and pressing need for the prompt disclosure of these documents.”

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For the final half-our of the John Rothmann program, he takes a look at the recent trend of confederate statues coming down and other statues being beheaded. That's right. Beheaded! An insane pair of stories to discuss, but that's exactly what John does with his callers in this incredible segment.

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For the 2nd hour of the program, John decides to get into a heavy topic. Scott Patterson's murder of his pregnant wife and unborn son made headlines and disgusted the nation in 2004, and today we learned he would be taken off death row and be given life in prison. A tough subject for sure, but Rothmann will discuss it with his callers.

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John Rothmann takes the first hour of his program to talk about Oakland's big decision. The city council voted 5-1 in favor of increasing the police presence in the city. This news has brought out a variety of opinions, as many callers agree with the move...though Councilmember Noel Gallo disagrees.

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Shared Spaces started last year as an emergency program, aimed at providing small businesses with an option when indoor activities were prohibited. Many restaurants spent $10,000 to $50,000 to build outdoor dining setups, and the program accomplished its goal to boost sales:

Rules governing the structures have changed several times over the past year. In the fall of 2020, the rule book was just seven pages long. But unbeknownst to many businesses, the Shared Spaces staff drafted new guidance, incorporating feedback from agencies such as the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the Fire Department and San Francisco Planning.

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State of emergency in Hawaii

Hawaii is threatened by heavy rains that are likely to last at least two more days and damage life, infrastructure and property throughout the state, Gov. David Ige said as he declared a state of emergency on Monday.

Are we headed for mass extinction?

Earth’s skin already bears the scars of the climate crisis. Fires ravage forests, hurricanes swamp coastlines, floods drown city blocks and entire species disappear. But beneath the surface layer, in the planet’s rocks, lies evidence of past catastrophes much more severe.

Daniel Rothman, a professor of geophysics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes we may be creeping toward a calamity for Earth’s life system as a whole — the planet’s sixth mass extinction event.

The staggering amount of carbon humans are pumping into the atmosphere and the oceans may soon cross a threshold that will disorder the planet’s carbon cycle and cause a cascade of disruptions we cannot fully envision, Rothman said.

 

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The bipartisan commission appointed by President Biden to study possible changes to the federal judiciary unanimously approved a final report on Tuesday that flagged “profound disagreement” among its members over the issue that led to the panel’s creation: calls to expand or “pack” the Supreme Court with additional justices.

By a vote of 34 to 0, the commission approved a 288-page report that offered a critical appraisal of arguments for and against that and many other ideas for changes to the Supreme Court, including imposing 18-year term limits on justices and reducing their power to strike down acts of Congress.

But the group did not offer specific recommendations. That result was in line with the mandate given to the commission by Mr. Biden, but also underscored the lack of consensus and suggested that the report might do little in the short run to drive any particular ideas for change.

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Russia experts say Putin has never accepted the breakup of the Soviet Union. Ukraine occupies a particularly important place in Russian history; together with Belarus, it formed the medieval Kievan Rus state that both Moscow and Kyiv claim laid the foundation of their countries. In a recent article, Putin described Russians and Ukrainians as one people and wrote that “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”

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Nunes gets a Trump deal

Rep. Devin Nunes, who serves as the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee will retire at the end of the year and become CEO of Trump’s new media organization. Nunes, once considered a moderate member of the party, became one of the fiercest defenders of former President Donald Trump throughout both of Trump's impeachments and the Intel committee's Russia investigation.

Ukraine

As the Kremlin masses troops near Ukraine, it is signaling one core conviction: Russia cares more about the fate of its southwestern neighbor than the West ever will. In speeches, interviews and lengthy articles, Putin and his close associates have telegraphed a singular fixation this year on the former Soviet republic. The Kremlin thesis goes that Ukrainians are “one people” with Russians, living in a failing state controlled by Western forces determined to divide and conquer the post-Soviet world. Ukrainians, who ousted a Russia-friendly president in 2014 and are increasingly in favor of binding their country to Western institutions, would largely beg to differ. But Mr. Putin’s conviction finds a receptive ear among many Russians, who see themselves as linked intimately with Ukraine by generations of linguistic, cultural, economic, political and family ties

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