“This National Crime Victims Week, my Administration reaffirms our unwavering support for every American who has suffered at the hands of violent criminals. Their stories strengthen my resolve to seek swift and unrelenting justice for those who harm our citizens and to uphold law and order across every corner of our Nation. Since returning to office, I have worked every day to fulfill my promise to the American people to restore public safety. I immediately took action to secure the border and end the invasion of criminal illegal aliens into our country. I deployed federal resources to secure America’s most dangerous cities to make them safe and beautiful again – because to truly live in the land of the free, you cannot live in fear in your own neighborhood. I also signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law, which bolsters the funding, resources, and manpower of our Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to further empower them to arrest and deport illegal criminals” and blah blah blah, says convicted felon President Trump’s White House in an anodyne official statement, emphasis added on a glaring fuckup by his junior comms staffers.

It’s the “Working Families Tax Cuts Act,” you idiots. The whole goddamned GOP hasn’t been working their asses off on changing the name on TV – not to mention passing a goddamned non-binding resolution to change the name, lol – so get your act together and de-brand it properly!

These pikers also failed to mention any of the horrors the biggest crime victim of them all has suffered over the years. “National Crime Victims Week” is already a messaging failure given all the other self-inflicted distractions preventing an orderly exercise of presidential power to create a news cycle singularly painting Dems as the party of crime, so why not at least get some fan service in.

All that said, they did manage to insultingly lie about ICE and CBP making cities safer. That counts.

As mentioned briefly in the Sunday live blog feed but this needs its own report to fully appreciate the grievous self-sabotage by convicted felon President Trump’s regime. Justice Department sources tell NBC News that actual federal prosecutor Maria Medetis Long has been removed from the “Grand Conspiracy” case in Fort Pierce, Florida and well be replaced with 81 year-old Reagan-era DC US Attorney Joe DiGenova who, among other batshittery, in October 2019 called the first impeachment case against Trump “regicide” and the whistleblowers “suicide bombers.”

The “Grand Conspiracy” of course refers to the Obama indictment fantasy. Convoluted circlejerk story short, leading masturbators in the upper echelons of the MAGA legal community in January reportedly got a grand jury empaneled in the federal court bailiwick in which you already know disgraced Judge Aileen Cannon is the sole jurist. The big 5D checkmate move is this: FBI raided Trump in 2022 as the direct result of a RICO conspiracy that began in 2016 and Barack Obama was the ringleader, and since that conspiracy is still ongoing plus the jurisdictional nexus to Cannon’s turf, there are no statute of limitations or Sixth Amendment issues. All of that assumes that an 81 year-old man – who in November 2020 called for Chris Krebs, then the top federal cybersecurity official, to be “drawn and quartered” for publicly stating that Trump lost to Joe Biden in a free and fair election unmolested by foreign hacking operations – is up to the job of using the 2022 Mar-a-Lago raid as the stepping stone to indict former CIA Director John Brennan for crimes allegedly committed before and after the 2016 election. And then presumably Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Even with a sick, fascist, disgrace to her profession like Cannon holding his hand the entire time.

As the Jewish state, Israel cherishes and upholds the Jewish values of tolerance and mutual respect between Jews and worshippers of all faiths. All religions flourish in our land and we view members of all faiths as equals in building our society and region.

Yesterday, like the…

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) April 20, 2026

“Yesterday, like the overwhelming majority of Israelis, I was stunned and saddened to learn that an IDF soldier damaged a Catholic religious icon in southern Lebanon. I condemn the act in the strongest terms. Military authorities are conducting a criminal probe of the matter and will take appropriately harsh disciplinary action against the offender. While Christians are slaughtered in Syria and Lebanon by Muslims, the Christian population in Israel thrives unlike elsewhere in the Middle East. Israel is the only country in the region that the Christian population and standard of living is growing. Israel is the only place in the Middle East that adheres to freedom of worship for all. We express regret for any hurt this has caused to believers in Lebanon and around the world,” the Israeli dictator continued, emphasis added on the “Catholic religious icon” part of his self-serving platitude.

The “Catholic religious icon” was Jesus. Earlier the IDF admitted that the footage of a soldier knocking the statue of Jesus off the crucifix and smashing it in the face with a fire axe was genuine and not AI-generated as surely plenty of Zionist dickheads had claimed. It’s not clear why Netanyahu won’t just fucking say it was Jesus’s image defaced but then again “Bibi” is a piece of shit who will hopefully die in a prison cell at the Hague. If this largely isolated act of iconoclasm had been the worst thing the IDF did so far this decade then maybe his morally relativistic bullshit would be worth more time and space rather than just another snapshot to add to his awful record.

Netanyahu needs to be removed from power. That’s the real take here. The Jesus statue can be replaced. All the innocent lives ruined and outright annihilated in service of his power cannot.

“Employees of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) responded to the location of a reported bear attack Thurs, April 16, in Anchorage on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER). Two soldiers sustained injuries in the attack during a land navigation training event on JBER. They reported having bear spray with them to responding personnel. No bears were encountered at the site by first responders or ADFG staff during the subsequent investigation. The attack occurred in a remote area of JBER, with limited access, on the west side of the Glenn Highway.”

“JBER has closed the area near the attack for all recreational activity. Based on the scene investigation and information from other responding agencies, this appears to be a defensive attack by a bear recently emerged from a den. Initial reports identified the involved animal as a brown bear; however, samples collected during the initial investigation will be processed with the goal of positively identifying species and gender of the animal involved. DNA analysis of collected samples will be performed by the ADFG Gene Conservation Lab in Anchorage, and samples from the attack will be analyzed to determine if they match any materials collected in other research or management activities,” wrote the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in a Friday press release.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has yet to announce whether Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr will lead a special investigative committee aimed at running the bear over with a Humvee, cutting off its penis, and then barbecuing the rest of its remains.

The United Arab Emirates – home to the tallest manmade structure in human history in a city of 4 million that recorded $250 billion in property transactions in 2025 alone, roughly equivalent to the annual gross domestic product of Portugal or New Zealand at a fraction of the size – is suddenly hard up for cash thanks to convicted felon President Trump’s ill-advised attack on Iran and are seeking a line of credit from the American taxpayer, the Wall Street Journal reports.

UAE Central Bank Governor Khaled Mohamed Balama floated a currency-swap line with Treasury Suckretary Scott Bessent and in meetings in DC last week, emphasizing concerns that the conflict could cast a long-term shadow over Dubai and the other emirates’ status as financial hubs.

The Japanese meteorological agency on Monday issued a warning anticipating a 9.8 ft-high tsunami to hit the Iwate prefecture and parts of Hokkaido and Aomori in the country’s northeast after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast just under a half hour ago, CNN reports.

“Today, an Iranian-flagged cargo ship named TOUSKA, nearly 900 feet long and weighing almost as much as an aircraft carrier, tried to get past our Naval Blockade, and it did not go well for them. The US Navy Guided Missile Destroyer USS SPRUANCE intercepted the TOUSKA in the Gulf of Oman, and gave them fair warning to stop. The Iranian crew refused to listen, so our Navy ship stopped them right in their tracks by blowing a hole in the engineroom. Right now, US Marines have custody of the vessel. The TOUSKA is under US Treasury Sanctions because of their prior history of illegal activity. We have full custody of the ship, and are seeing what’s on board!” posted President Shitbag on Sunday, fucking up one unarmed vessel evidently what counts as a big win these days.

CNN’s Jake Tapper was having trouble not laughing in fascist sociopath Elise Stefanik’s face after she insisted, repeatedly that, convicted felon President Trump did not call for genocide against the Iranian people when he threatened to wipe out their “entire civilization,” smartly getting ahead of her whataboutery by brining up Stef’s screechy crusade against the keffiyeh kids on Ivy League campuses. “Of course genocide is bad across the board, Jake!” the angry washout exclaimed.

In a joint op-ed printed Sunday by the Detroit Free Press, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State/leading Dem gubernatorial contender Jocelyn Benson write that “This week, the US Department of Justice sent a letter to Wayne County [which contains Detroit and its innermost suburbs] demanding that county elections officials hand over ‘all ballots’ from the 2024 election so the Trump administration can ‘ensure’ federal election laws were not violated in the November 2024 election.” Keep in mind Trump won Michigan by 80,000 votes in 2024, 24,000 of that margin his improvement over his 2020 total in Wayne and 60,000 more than he won in 2016.

Like if they were demanding all the 2020 ballots it would still be stupid bullshit but it’d at least be internally consistent with the “Stollen Election” narrative as well as the moronic “investigation” into the Fulton County, Georgia 2020 ballots seized by the FBI. That this letter got sent at all could indicate the MAGA Reich likely already failed to get a judge to sign off on a similar warrant in Wayne.

“But this demand isn’t about election integrity – it’s about a weaponized DOJ trying to please a president who doesn’t want to be held accountable at the ballot box by voters tired of the chaos of his administration. It’s also about the upcoming elections in November and in 2028, which he is working to discredit by sowing doubt as to the security and fairness of the process. It’s not going to work with us, and it’s not going to hold up in court,” Nessel and Benson continued in the op-ed.

A cohort termed “social media users” by Fox News on Friday “thrashed” ABC News “after the outlet presented a campaign ad from former President Barack Obama in favor of a Virginia redistricting measure as an ‘exclusive,'” with the Fox article of the “thrashings” leading with a tweet by Real Clear Investigations writer Mark Hemingway asking “Why the hell does a major news network consider an extremely partisan campaign ad an ‘exclusive’?” and containing six of the replies to that tweet.

Hemingway’s outlet last year published an in-depth investigation into the 2023 Biden White House cocaine “scandal” five months after convicted felon President Trump was sworn back into office. His wife, Mollie, writes for the Federalist and in 2023 falsely claimed that Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed Twitter for every person who ever liked a Trump tweet.

Anyway the Fox News article then detailed six of the replies responsive to Mark Hemingway’s gripe about the now-deleted @ABCPolitics tweet that apparently had painted the reporting of the Obama ad as an “exclusive” at the time. The article it apparently linked to does not anywhere contain the word “exclusive” and in italics at the bottom says it had been updated afterward but not specifying why. One of the replies to Hemingway hints at why, saying “It’s so exclusive I saw it on YouTube before my video started about 20 times in the past week.” So yeah sick burn and it is not at all implausible that the Disney-owned news outlet had been cowed into editing “exclusive” out of the article by Hemingway and the five other Twitter users who had agreed with him. The sixth was a lib who wrote “Because it’s an exclusive I guess? What does partisanship have to do with it?”

🚨🇺🇸🇮🇷Vice President Vance will lead the U.S. delegation to the negotiations with Iran in Islamabad, U.S. official tells me

— Barak Ravid (@BarakRavid) April 19, 2026

President Trump told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that Vice President JD Vance will not be leading the U.S. delegation to Islamabad, citing security concerns. https://t.co/LmXt4rhuxb pic.twitter.com/o35JiWTKIT

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) April 19, 2026

Should you not feel like watching the brief clip above, Jon Karl said Trump called him to say that it’s too risky security-wise for Jaydee to fly back to Pakistan on less than 24 hours notice, which kind of sounds like bullshit since Vance was there last weekend and as such you’d think it’d be easier.

“Iran decided to fire bullets yesterday in the Strait of Hormuz – A Total Violation of our Ceasefire Agreement! Many of them were aimed at a French Ship, and a Freighter from the United Kingdom.”

“That wasn’t nice, was it? My Representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan – They will be there tomorrow evening, for Negotiations. Iran recently announced that they were closing the Strait, which is strange, because our BLOCKADE has already closed it. They’re helping us without knowing, and they are the ones that lose with the closed passage, $500 Million Dollars a day! The United States loses nothing. In fact, many Ships are headed, right now, to the US, Texas, Louisiana, and Alaska, to load up, compliments of the IRGC, always wanting to be ‘the tough guy!’ We’re offering a very fair and reasonable DEAL, and I hope they take it because, if they don’t, the United States is going to knock out every single Power Plant, and every single Bridge, in Iran. NO MORE MR NICE GUY!”

“They’ll come down fast, they’ll come down easy and, if they don’t take the DEAL, it will be my Honor to do what has to be done, which should have been done to Iran, by other Presidents, for the last 47 years. IT’S TIME FOR THE IRAN KILLING MACHINE TO END!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Sunday morning, about 24 hours after the Iranian attacks on ships in the strait.

You can argue it’s a hell of a collectors’ item but it never actually was tested as a flotation device in the frigid waters that so many perished in. CBS News reports that a lifejacket worn by Laura Mabel Francatelli, a first-class passenger on the doomed Titanic and signed by her as well as other survivors, sold for $906,000 to an unidentified enthusiast who called in the bid via phone at auction by Henry Aldridge and Son auctioneers in Devizes, western England on Saturday.

That amount would’ve bought nearly four tickets on the Titan submersible to actually see the Titanic up close… If OceanGate was still running those tours. And the Titan was still in operation.

Extremist septuagenarian freak Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, aged 76 and 77, respectively, are not planning to retire this year, CBS News reports citing sources close to Clarence and an earlier Fox News report specific to Sedition Sam. MAGA federal judges Aileen Cannon and Matthew Kacsmaryk did not comment on the story and there’s no word yet if they’ve been working on a Plan B to hire a Blackwater hit squad to create openings on the highest court.

The simplest explanation is that the two are arrogant and overconfident of their ability to defy entropy in the same way Joe Biden and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were, that they’ll be able to call it a career on their terms and there’s no way their advanced age could ever have catastrophic downstream consequences for their side and even unravel so much of what they and others had worked so hard to build. They are, after all, boomers who think themselves invincible.

Then there’s the not that distant second most likely, lib hopium explanation: One or both of them floated retirement to John Thune and he told them point blank he couldn’t 100 percent guarantee 51 votes for a replacement with the midterms coming up. Thune also could’ve said they cannot at all rely on Trump not to nominate Mike Lee or some other mental patient now that Donald’s on the outs with Leonard Leo and might not look at anyone in the Federalist Society talent pool. Either way – or both ways since those possibilities aren’t necessarily in tension – it’s better to just keep their fingers crossed and hope that the Senate doesn’t flip, buying them another two years to figure it out even if their majority is likely to be smaller if it survives into next year. The worst outcome would be that one or both of them retire, the replacement nominations fail, the Senate flips, and then the seats stay empty going into a presidential election year that, at this point at least, favors the Democrats.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps gunboats fired on a tanker ship transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday after Tehran announced its re-closure, the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Republicans are breathing a little easier this weekend, cautiously optimistic that President Donald Trump has found an off-ramp to end the war in Iran,” says the lede to Politico’s top story, printed at 7:00 AM EDT, headlined “‘Big sigh of relief’: Republicans finally get some good news,” lol.

A Friday New York Times investigation headlined “Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media” gets right at the inevitable endpoint of a decade of manipulation of social media by MAGA propagandists, a welcome streamlining for a movement that once relied on sophisticated algorithm-jacking by Cambridge Analytica before the 2016 election – and the Russian troll farms that put half-assed, comically inept efforts to keeping the zone flooded with their broken English and obvious copypasta well after the Orange Degenerate did scam his way into power the first time.

Sorry, “Internet Research Agency” dipshit, but Mother Russia still needs someone to test for Ukrainian landmines along the front. Show the same patriotic zeal there as you did on The Hill.

Anyway, the Times’s article’s pretty funny when they get down to the part where they write “It’s not clear who created the AI accounts, and determining whether they are the product of a hired content farm, a foreign influence operation, an experiment or something else is difficult,” as though it actually matters when TikTok is controlled by a pro-Trump cabal, Twitter by Elon Musk who is at the very least anti-anti-Trump these days, and Facebook/Instagram by fucking wiener Mark Zuckerberg who sucks up to the Orange Allah even after Trump threatened him with prison time. The platforms themselves could be generating the ridiculously anodyne content from within for all we know.

A filing in convicted felon President Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS spotted by Lawfare’s Anna Bower says “Good cause exists to grant an extension in this matter while the Parties engage in discussions designed to resolve this matter and to avoid protracted litigation. This limited pause will neither prejudice the Parties nor delay ultimate resolution,” which is certainly one way to write “I, the undersigned IRS counsel, will be fired by the President of the United States, acting in his official capacity, if I do not give the President of the United States, acting in his personal capacity, a $10 billion settlement whose cost will be borne by taxpayers. But we need more time to figure out which Sunday he’ll bomb Denmark at 2:00 AM EDT on so we can wire him the $10 billion at 2:07 AM.”

With the caveat that this is an internal poll from Platner’s campaign, it’s still aboslutely brutal for her as Platner leads the sitting Maine Governor in the Dem primary race to take on Susan Collins in November. “In an initial vote, Graham Platner leads Governor Janet Mills by 35 points, avoiding triggering a Ranked Choice Vote roll up and winning outright in the first round. Voters were also asked how certain they are to vote for their first choice candidate. Three-quarters of Platner voters say they are ‘very certain’ to vote for him (76 percent), which is half of the Democratic Primary electorate (49 percent). Only half (51 percent) of those who choose Mills are certain they will vote for her, just 15 pecrent of voters,” says the polling memo from the wacky Bernie-backed lib’s team.