Gina Haspel, a Woman, Confirmed to Head CIA Despite Record on Torture

Another day, another witch hunt.

Here’s all the shit we couldn’t cover today:

• After a rocky hearing during which Gina Haspel refused to answer questions on the morality of torture, the Senate confirmed her as the new director of the CIA. Haspel’s confirmation was assured after six Democrats were persuaded to vote for her confirmation following a Tuesday letter from Haspel. In the letter, she wrote that the torture program, of which she was part, “did damage to our officers and our standing in the world.” That settles that. [New York Times]
• ICYMI, Haspel is a woman. [Twitter]
• Sarah Sanders explained Donald Trump’s comment earlier today, comparing immigrants to animals. “The president was very clearly referring to MS-13 gang members who enter the country illegally,” Sanders said. “Frankly,” she added, “I don’t think the term the president used is strong enough.” In the past, Trump has “gang members” interchangeably with undocumented workers who he has previously called “animals.” [Axios]
• Speaking of nativism, Georgia’s gubernatorial election includes a “fearless conservative” driving a “deportation bus” across the state. [The Guardian]
• The small number of Republican women in the House of Representatives is likely to become even smaller. [New York Times]
• During a hearing of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Representative Mo Brooks suggested that sea levels might be rising because rocks are falling into rivers and oceans. “Every single year that we’re on Earth, you have huge tons of silt deposited by the Mississippi River, by the Amazon River, by the Nile, by every major river system — and for that matter, creek, all the way down to the smallest systems,” Brooks said. He continued: “And every time you have that soil or rock whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise. Because now you’ve got less space in those oceans because the bottom is moving up.” The expert he was lecturing disagreed that rocks could cause the rapid rise of sea levels. [Washington Post]

Here are some tweets the president was allowed to publish:

This has been Barf Bag.