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Pamela Hemphill, formerly known as the "MAGA Granny"

Mere hours into his second term, President Trump signed an executive order granting clemency to roughly 1,500 people charged with offenses related to the Capitol riots and protests on January 6th, 2021. But one woman who went to jail for her role is refusing the pardon, saying none should have been issued at all.

Pamela Hemphill, formerly dubbed "MAGA Granny" on social media, pleaded guilty to parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building in 2022. She received a 60-day sentence, 36 months of probation, and an order to pay $500 restitution. "We were wrong that day," Hemphill told the BBC, adding that "[a]ccepting a pardon would only insult the Capitol police officers, rule of law and, of course, our nation." She continued, "I pleaded guilty because I was guilty, and accepting a pardon also would serve to contribute to their gaslighting and false narrative."

In a recent USA Today feature, Hemphill opened up about her change in perspective since January 6th, which she called “the worst day in our history."

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Many current Republicans support Trump but oppose the blanket pardons. The Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police, issued a joint statement denouncing the move, saying they "firmly believe" that anyone "convicted of killing or assaulting law enforcement officers" should be forced to "serve their full sentences."

"When perpetrators of crimes, especially serious crimes, are not held fully accountable, it sends a dangerous message that the consequences for attacking law enforcement are not severe, potentially emboldening others to commit similar acts of violence," the note continues.

Several Republican senators also took issue with the pardons, including North Carolina's Thom Tillis, who was surprised by their scope. "I just can’t agree,” he said. “I’m about to file two bills that will increase the penalties up to and including the death penalty for the murder of a police officer and increasing the penalties and creating federal crimes for assaulting a police officer—that should give you everything you need to know about my position.”

In their statement, the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police criticized Trump's predecessor for the same reasons. In one of his final acts in office, President Biden commuted the life sentence of Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of killing two FBI agents in 1975. (Peltier, 80, will serve the rest of his sentence at home.) Biden, like Trump, also faced pushback from members of his own party—in this case, for using pardons for family and government employees who haven't been charged with crimes.

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"We need to make a critique of some of the more unjust pardons, like the January 6 pardons," said Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, of Virginia. "And I think it’s harder to make that critique, to stand on the high ground and make a critique of the Trump pardons on January 6 when President Biden is pardoning family members.” Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida told CBS News, "I'm not a fan of these pardons. I wish he didn't feel that he needed to do that. ... Now the precedent is set, from now into the future."

Political division is inescapable—seemingly more now than ever. But by taking a stand, Hemphill has set a unique and powerful precedent for people on both sides of the aisle. It takes courage to stand for one's principles, even when doing the opposite would benefit them personally.

See what Americans in each state searched for each day of 2021 in a one-minute video.

Google has become such a ubiquitous part of our lives that the data it reveals is a pretty decent indicator of our collective reality. It's a weird phenomenon, considering the fact that Google has only been a thing for 25 years—basically a single generation—but here we are.

Now that we're wrapping up 2021, we can look back and see what people were searching for the most throughout the year. Reddit user u/V1Analytics pulled together the top trending search terms from Google's 2021 Year in Search summary (for the period before mid-November 2021) and from Google's Daily Search Trends page (from mid-November to now) and illustrated the daily trends for each state in a one-minute video.


It's fascinating to see what Americans were looking up—as well as what they weren't looking up—the most this year.

Watch:

We start with January 6, 2021, which shows most people Googling "Capitol" and "Biden," which isn't surprising considering the attack on the U.S. Capitol as insurrectionists tried to overturn Biden's presidential election win. What is surprising are the six states that were more interested in the Mega Millions jackpot that day. Like, OK people. Really?

Biden dominated searches through January. Soon we collectively turned to the Gamestop (GME) stock phenomenon before a widespread interest in Valheim (video game launch), The Weeknd (Super Bowl performance) and some random power outages. Valheim was apparently super popular before a universal interest in the government's stimulus checks took over the entire second half of March.

In April, Lil Nas X made a splash, followed by rapper DMX. Then Prince Phillip died and Jake Paul had a first-round TKO.

May through early July brought Dogecoin, Dogecoin and more Dogecoin, followed by AMC stock—a very financial period, with some more power outages thrown in for funsies. (Also, Mississippi really likes Dogecoin. Holy moly.)

Then Jeff Bezos went to space and Simone Biles got the twisties, and hey, more power outages! August brought Afghanistan, Hurricane Ida and Jake Paul once again.

In September, Gabby Petito's disappearance had everyone riveted for a solid two weeks before Squid Game, Urban Meyer and Alec Baldwin took over.

October into November saw Travis Scott, Kyle Rittenhouse and Adele dominating people's searches.

Don't blink at the end of November, or you'll miss the school shooting at Oxford High School that piqued people's interest for a day or two before Spotify Wrapped yanked everyone's attention back to what's really important.

Yikes! Tornado in December and then Elon Musk as Time Person of the Year, and that's as far as we've gotten into this month.

It truly is fascinating to see what people were most interested in looking up this year. It's a bit disconcerting in some ways, as well, considering the fact that not one of the top searches had anything to do with the viral pandemic that is still raging and has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans this year alone. Is that a sign that people are tired of the pandemic or just more interested in new things as they come along? Trends can be both organic and driven by what's being covered in the media—and both things can play off of each other—but it's interesting to think about what is missing from this search term synopsis. When we look back at 2021 and its place in U.S. history, is Jake Paul really going to play a bigger role than the coronavirus? Doubtful. Do these search trends offer some indication of why a significant portion of the population is woefully uninformed or misinformed about the pandemic? Possibly.

At any rate, it's an interesting glimpse into what Americans are paying the most attention to.

(A note from V1Analytics about the way the data was collected and presented: "Google Trends provides weekly relative search interest for every search term, along with the interest by state. Using these two datasets for each search term, we're able to calculate the relative search interest for each state for a particular week. Linear interpolation was used to calculate the daily search interest.")

President Biden's first address to Congress on Wednesday night covered a number of topics: COVID-19, the war in Afghanistan, climate change, healthcare, taxes and more. But it was a personal comment to America's transgender community that might have been the most powerful moment of the night.

Transgender Americans continue to be one of the most openly discriminated against communities in America. Since Biden's election, a number of states have proposed bills that would restrict the rights of transgender citizens, including children.

Some leaders have bravely stood up for the rights of our most vulnerable citizens. For example, North Dakota's Republican Gov. Doug Burgum recently vetoed a bill that would have banned trans girls from competing in sports.

"To all the transgender Americans watching at home, especially the young people who are so brave, I want you to know that your president has your back," Biden told Congress in his call for passage of the Equality Act.



Biden's calm and caring words to the trans community were immediately celebrated online.




Biden has promised to make passage of the Equality Act a priority during his first 100 days in office, something he failed to achieved and which has generated criticism from trans activists. However, tonight's address may restore some hope that action is imminent. Along with Biden's call for action, First Lady Jill Biden used her VIP guest list to include Stella Keating, a 16-year-old that President Biden had speak before Congress in support of the Equality Act's passage.


Election 2020 is turning out to be just as batsh*t crazy as 2020 itself, which of course isn't surprising, but certainly is annoying.

Due to Trump's baseless claims that the election is rigged against him and that if only legal votes were counted he'd be winning, states and counties that have spent years honing their elections to make them as secure as possible, that rallied to adjust their systems to accommodate the needs of voters in a global pandemic, and that have managed to pull off hundreds upon hundreds of elections without widespread fraud now have to battle a president publicly attacking the integrity of our entire electoral process.

Good times, America.

No one disagrees that elections should be run fairly. No one disagrees that ballots should be cast within legal boundaries. No one disagrees that every legally cast vote should be counted. No one disagrees that ballot counting should be overseen by representatives of both parties and that poll watchers should raise concerns if they see something questionable in the vote tallying process.

And that has been happening in ballot counting centers across the nation. Unfortunately, so has some ridiculous tomfoolery from the Trump camp.

Julie Moroney is a law student who answered the call for non-partisan poll watchers in Detroit, Michigan, and she shared on Twitter what she experienced as she watched Wayne county ballots being counted.



Moroney wrote:

"I was at the TCF Center in Detroit yesterday as a non-partisan poll challenger. The woman in the maroon shirt with the black mask was one of the GOP challengers I monitored. At one point, she yelled that a ballot needed to be thrown out because it 'looked sticky.' Another time she demanded that the poll workers stop what they were doing and backup all computers in case of power outage or tornado(?). Just baseless, bad faith challenges to slow the process.

And after Trump filed his lawsuit and MI was called for Biden, the GOP strategy shifted to challenge every single ballot. I know this because I overheard their organizers pass on the new message. They didn't even pretend to have a reason for doing so, just repeated 'I challenge this ballot; I challenge that ballot' over and over again as the poll workers tried to count.

At one point, my good friend and law school classmate @sumnertruax looked over at me and said 'this is not how democracy is supposed to work.' It was so true, and so sad. The optics of it all weren't lost on me either. Picture a huge space filled with predominantly Black poll workers just trying to do their gd jobs while white MI GOP challengers hovered over them, yelling at them that they're wrong, doing a bad job, or committing crimes.

The harassment and intimidation — both from the GOP challengers in the room and the GOP supporters banging on the windows trying to get in — is seared onto my brain. Security guards had to escort us out a side entrance so we could leave the building safely.

One of the most jarring things was stepping outside of the building and seeing the sun set across the river in Canada. The juxtaposition of exiting the epicenter of 'American democracy' that felt more like mob rule and seeing the Canadian flag gently flap in the wind a mile away, An example of a functioning democracy...the irony was painful.

I left exhausted, but mostly just sad. I love America, but some of you make it so hard.

How did we get to a place where you challenge other people's ballots simply because you believe they voted for the other guy? How did we get to a place where you file a lawsuit claiming lack of access, when you have 100+ challengers in there fucking shit up? How did we get to a place where you're so deep into conspiracy theories that you claim ballots are coming out of thin air when you are there, witnessing the process, and doing everything in your power to impede it?

Go home. And let the incredible, hard-working and honest poll workers #CountEveryVote."

Poll workers are seriously patriotic heroes right now. What is usually a tedious-but-necessary job has suddenly become a target for quacks and fanatics who simply can't believe that the most unpopular president since Gerald Ford could possibly fail to be reelected in a fair election. Why? Because Trump says so. It's really that simple.

Nevermind the fact that if Democrats were really rigging the election, there's no way on earth Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham would still have their seats. Nevermind the fact that Republicans won races in every one of the swing states where Trump is trying to raise doubts, with the same ballots used to vote for or against him. Nevermind the fact that Trump is a malignant narcissist who literally cannot admit to losing, no matter how clear the outcome of the election.

No one disagrees that legitimate concerns about ballots and votes should be investigated—when there is evidence. Yes, there are occasional irregularities in every single election, and those should be looked into. But you can't just stand behind the presidential podium and claim the election is rigged or fraudulent or stolen because you're losing or because the electoral system that has successfully elected 45—soon to be 46—presidents isn't being run exactly the way you want it to be.

As Moroney's fellow poll watcher said, "This isn't how democracy is supposed to work." Indeed, it is not. And the fact that the dysfunction is coming from the president himself is the saddest thing of all.