Weekend thread: What's happening?

Christian national judge to rule on abortion pill. Media outlets demand release of 1/6 footage after McCarthy gave Carlson exclusive. Far right senator now admits he resigned because of long Covid.

It’s abhorrent that the GOP, spurred on further by rabid MAGA forces, continually engage in judge-shopping, seeking rulings from one federal judge who will rule in their favor for the entire country, cementing racist isolationist policies or theocratic decrees into rulings. But that’s what they’ve done yet again, and a Christian theocrat appointed by Donald Trump is likely to ban two drugs used for medication abortion.

House Kevin McCarthy outraged Democrats and even many Republicans when he — without even telling his leadership team — released all 9/11 surveillance footage to Tucker Carlson of Fox News exclusively.

Giving this footage to a propagandist is part of an attempt to rewrite the insurrectionist attack, and is unprecedented for a release of footage by Congress. Other media are demanding the footage right now — rather than getting it after Carlson can twist and distort and take out of context, as McCarthy apparently planned — and they’ve hired an attorney to push their case.

And former Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma, a right-wing senator who voted against every Covid relief package that came before him, has now revealed that he retired because of the effects of long Covid. And he says he’s not the only one.