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An Arizona appeals court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s rejection of the Arizona Republican Party’s post-2020 election lawsuit challenging the results of Maricopa County’s audit of the ballots from almost two and a half goddamned years ago, and awarding legal fees to the Secretary of State’s office to boot. We’ve seen enough. Joe Biden wins Arizona in the 2020 election.

Legendarily uncourageous and compromising Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on Thursday refused to address the still ongoing revelations about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas being owned by a Texas MAGA billionaire with a Hitler fetish. In related news, Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin on Thursday invited Chief Justice John Roberts to come in and testify about the court’s ethical shitshow, which ought to be interesting either way if Roberts declines or accepts.

“I invite you, or another Justice whom you designate, to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 2, 2023, at 10:00 am in room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building to testify at a public hearing regarding the ethical rules that govern the Justices of the Supreme Court and potential reforms to those rules. In extending this invitation, I offer that the scope of your testimony can be limited to these subjects, and that you would not be expected to answer questions from Senators regarding any other matters. Your last significant discussion of how Supreme Court Justices address ethical issues was presented in your 2011 Report on the Federal Judiciary.”

“Since then, there has been a steady stream of revelations regarding Justices falling short of the ethical standards expected of other federal judges and, indeed, of public servants generally. These problems were already apparent back in 2011, and the Court’s decade-long failure to address them has contributed to a crisis of public confidence. The status quo is no longer tenable,” wrote Durbin.

The Manhattan federal judge overseeing next week’s trial in writer EJ Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against disgraced former President Trump on Thursday rejected Team Orange lawyer Joe Tacopina’s request that the court inform the jury that Trump really wanted to be there for every day of the proceedings but didn’t want to burden New Yorkers with his presence and security requirements.

“Mr Trump’s lead counsel expresses Mr Trump’s alleged desire to testify at trial but seeks an order from the Court excusing his presence unless either party calls him as a witness and, in the event he does not testify, instructing the jury that his ‘absence… by design, avoids the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City.’ First, the Court neither excuses nor declines to excuse Mr Trump from attending the trial or from testifying in this case… the Court notes but does not accept Mr Trump’s counsel’s claims concerning alleged burdens on the courthouse or the City were Mr Trump to attend or testify. Mr Trump is entitled by law to the protection of the United States Secret Service, which he now has enjoyed as a former president for more than two years… Moreover, the Court notes from Mr Trump’s campaign web site and media reports that he announced earlier this week that he will speak at a campaign event in New Hampshire on April 27, 2023, the third day of the scheduled trial in this case. If the Secret Service can protect him at that event, certainly the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the City of New York can see to his security in this very secure federal courthouse.”

“The question of the requested jury instruction is premature. Mr Trump is free to attend, to testify, or both. He is free also to do none of those things. Should he elect not to appear or testify, his counsel may renew the request. In the meantime, there shall be no reference by counsel for Mr Trump in the presence of the jury panel or the trial jury to Mr Trump’s alleged desire to testify or to the burdens that any absence on his part allegedly might spare, or might have spared, the Court or the City of New York,” wrote Judge Lewis Kaplan in his ruling siding with Carroll’s team.

Wisconsin MAGA lawyer Cleta Mitchell, who was forced out of her law firm in early January 2021, just days after she sat in on disgraced former President Trump’s infamous “Find 11,780 votes” call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, delivered a presentation on voter suppression tactics to the RNC donor retreat in Nashville last weekend, selling them hard on legislation limiting voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration, and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters, the Washington Post reports on a possible renewal of the GOP offensive against voting rights that had been at least somewhat on pause for the last year or so.

“What are these college campus locations?” Mitchell asked in audio obtained by the Post. “What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed and then just go back to bed… The Left has manipulated the electoral systems to favor one side… theirs. Our constitutional republic’s survival is at stake.”

Mitchell also complained bitterly about Virginia’s early voting period length, and hoped Republicans would make gains in the state legislature this November to eliminate it. “Forty-five days! “Do you know how hard it is to have observers be able to watch for that long a period?”

I’ve ordered FL Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie to bring swift accountability for the test of the emergency alert system in the wee hours of the morning. This was a completely inappropriate use of this system.

Stay tuned.

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) April 20, 2023

The Floridians not already up all night tweaking on meth and bath salts got woke up at 4:45 AM EDT on Thursday when the state sent out an emergency alert test to smartphones, CBS Miami reports on a temporary distraction to heels-wearing Gov Ron DeSantis’s pursuit of a petty vendetta against Disney World. Sucks for him that he has to stop campaigning and instead deal with an actual issue, even if it’s to simply find a scapegoat and fire them in the most publicly embarrassing way possible.

Remember when MyPillow assclown Mike Lindell threw that stupid “Cyber Symposium” in August 2021, offering a $5 million reward to anyone who could debunk his “proof” that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump by malevolent hackers from China and Venezuela? Well one is finally going to collect, as CNN reports an arbitration panel has ruled in favor of Robert Zeidman, one of the experts who showed up to the symposium, squashed Lindell’s inane claims about “packet data” and all sorts of other nonsense, then predictably had to sue the mustachioed pillow man for the prize.

“Based on the foregoing analysis, Mr Zeidman performed under the contract. He proved the data Lindell LLC provided, and represented reflected information from the November 2020 election, unequivocally did not reflect November 2020 election data. Failure to pay Mr Zeidman the $5 million prized was a breach of the contract, entitling him to recover,” wrote the arbitration panel in its ruling.

Florida MAGA Congressman Michael Waltz on Thursday became the ninth Sunshine State US House member to snub heels-wearing Governor Ron DeSantis and endorse fat former President Trump’s 2024 primary campaign, continuing an accelerating collapse in GOP support for Mickey Maoist – who hasn’t even officially announced a challenge to the Orange Allah yet, Breitbart reports.

We could go back and forth all day about whether these endorsements really truly matter. Outside of the GOP universe of course nobody really gives a shit about who supports who when in the end they’re all going to worship the nominee as a living God. On the other hand, you can’t deny that this adds to the perception that Tiny D is walking into a buzzsaw who really truly might be better off just not launching a campaign this cycle at all and wait for 2028 instead, when Trump will be out of the picture one way or another, no matter what happens in the 2024 election.

Worse, Politico reports that Republican Florida legislators (anonymously quoted, of course) are getting sick of catering to Ron’s every political whim, with one saying “People are deeply frustrated. They are not spending any time on the right problems… Most believe that the balance of power has shifted too far and the Legislature needs to re-establish itself as a coequal branch of government.”

The grandson of the Missouri man charged with shooting Black teenager Ralph Yarl in the head after Yarl rang the doorbell at the wrong address spoke to the Kansas City Star and described his 84 year-old grandfather Andrew Lester as exactly the kind of MAGA maniac you would have expected.

Klint Ludwig, 28, said he used to be close with the old man, “but in the last five or six years or so, I feel like we’ve lost touch. I’ve gotten older and gained my own political views, and he’s become staunchly right-wing, further down the right-wing rabbit hole as far as doing the election-denying conspiracy stuff and COVID conspiracies, fully buying into the Fox News, OAN kind of line. I feel like it’s really further radicalized him in a lot of ways. And then the NRA pushing the ‘stand your ground’ stuff and that you have to defend your home. When I heard what happened, I was appalled and shocked, but I didn’t disbelieve that it was true. I was like, ‘Yeah, I could see him doing that.'”

When asked if his grandfather is racist, Luwig said “I believe that there have been some positions that he’s held that have been bigoted or sort of disparaging. But it’s stock Fox News, conservative American stuff. It’s ‘anybody who gets an abortion is a murderer.’ And ‘fatherless Black families are the reason why crime exists in this country.’ It’s stuff everybody’s heard at the Thanksgiving table every year… I hesitate to say he got more extreme, because all this stuff has been extreme, and it’s been the same story for decades and decades, and generation to generation of people believing the same things. It’s just nowadays people are acting on it a little bit more.”

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday morning abruptly derailed former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz’s scheduled 10 AM testimony to Congressman Gym Jordan’s House Judiciary Committee effort to impede the prosecution of fat former President Trump in New York.

“Alvin L Bragg and Mark F Pomerantz appeal from a district court order denying a temporary restraining order enjoining enforcement of a subpoena issued to Mr Pomerantz by the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee. The subpoena return date is April 20, 2023 at 10:00 am. Appellants have filed an emergency motion seeking an interim administrative stay and a stay pending appeal of the return date of the subpoena. Appellees oppose the motion. IT IS HEREBY ORDERED, that an administrative stay of the return date of the subpoena is granted so that a three-judge panel may consider the motion seeking a stay pending appeal of the district court’s order. This order reflects no judgment regarding the merits of the parties’ respective positions,” said the order from Second Circuit Appeals Court Judge Beth Robinson and man that’s gonna chafe Old Gymbo.

A Democratic-aligned watchdog group has filed an ethics complaint against spandex-wearing grapple freak Jim Jordan for touting his efforts to derail Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of disgraced former President Trump over the Stormy Daniels payoff, Axios reports.

“At an April 2023 fundraiser, Representative Jordan ‘pointed to his clash with Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan prosecutor whohas criminally charged former President DonaldJ. Trump, as the kind of pursuit [the donors] money was helping support.’ Representative Jordan said, ‘[(The district attorney in Manhattan used federal funds to indict the former president for no crime, and then ‘when we start our investigation, they take us to court. That’s how crazy it’s gotten. So we say thank you for the hard-earned money,'” says the complaint from the Congressional Integrity Project to the Office of Congressional Ethics. The complaint also names Homeland Security Committee chairman Mark Green for more or less the same shit with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Like we’ve written before, these outside watchdog complaints are usually meaningless and go nowhere, but why not call Jordan out on it, especially amid ongoing litigation over his transparently obnoxious effort to derail a legitimate prosecution of his Orange God Emperor.

Fat former President Trump is among the Republicans worried that Pennsylvania GOP primary voters are going to nominate bald QAnon freak Doug Mastriano to run against incumbent Dem Senator Bob Casey and damage Donald’s chances in the Keystone State next year, Politico reports.

A Trump adviser tells Politico the twice-impeached loser regrets endorsing the loyal soldier in the gubernatorial primary last year because he “blew it,” as if Pennsylvania GOP voters weren’t going to end up nominating him anyway. Trump was particularly annoyed with Mastriano’s stance on abortion and pushing a “no exceptions” platform, according to the adviser. Again, this is as though Donald didn’t nominate three abortion extremists to the Supreme Court who overturned Roe v Wade.

At least 78 people were killed Wednesday when a crowd waiting for $9 worth of free stuff to celebrate the end of Ramadan into a school in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa surged, CNN reports.

“What happened tonight is a tragic and painful accident, as dozens of people were killed due to a large stampede of a number of citizens caused by a random distribution of sums of money by some merchants and without coordination with the Ministry of Interior,” said Ministry official Abdul al-Ajri.

Sir, the “they” here is you. You work in the government https://t.co/jOokqflCck

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 20, 2023

The Republican operatives running the Florida legislature are pushing through a new law that would exempt the governor’s travel details from Florida’s public records laws, a move designed to stop critics from scrutinizing Republican Governor and Tweedledee cosplayer Ron DeSantis’s use of the state-owned plane and other resources, Politico reports. Republicans say the change is needed for security reasons.

They’re also looking at legislation that would revoke a law mandating a governor who declares a campaign for President resigns his state office.  DeSantis has been on a thinly-veiled campaign tour, poorly disguised as a book tour, using private transportation provided by the publisher or other benefactors; he’s not traveling on commercial airlines.  While he’s been on the tour in the battleground state of Ohio, massive rains left Fort Lauderdale flooded.

This is where you understand that once you’re an educator, you’ll always be an educator. So it goes for Democratic New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a veteran of New York City Schools, contributing to the continuing education of Florida Republican Congressman, nine-time nominee for Speaker of the House and one-fifth of the Republican Black Congressional Caucus Byron Donalds on how systemic racism continues to impact Black Americans.  To which Donalds replies something about “incomes are not equal because people have different talents, abilities,” but he does, in the end, acknowledge inequality in society.

A “career IRS Criminal Supervisory Special Agent” is seeking whistleblower protections before disclosing information they have regarding the agency’s investigation into Hunter Biden, the President’s son, NBC News reports.  Speaking through an attorney, the unnamed agent claims they have information that will directly contradict testimony given by a senior agency official, a political appointee, gave before a Congressional committee.  The agent also says they can provide evidence that issues such as conflicts of interest with some of the investigators have not been resolved.

“Well, imagine that the Trump Administration had made it mandatory for American citizens to buy MyPillow–that’s one of Fox [cable network]’s biggest advertisers–Imagine if the administration declared if you didn’t rush out and buy at least one MyPillow and then at least another booster pillow you would not be allowed to eat out.  You couldn’t reenter your own country.  You couldn’t have a paying job.  MyPillow, they told you with a straight face, was the very linchpin of our country’s public health system.

“I have my story.  I am George Santos.  I am the son of immigrants, a kid who came from a basement apartment.  Worked my butt off to get to where I did,  honestly.  I didn’t steal, cheat, kill or anything, right?  The reality is, is that people want to make this about these personal issues.  Here’s the deal:  politics.  My job is to represent and deliver on what I promised.  I’ve done that.”

Well, George, you promised a former investment banker who worked for Goldman Sachs, a man who was a star of the Baruch College volleyball team, would be sitting in that seat, and you ain’t him.

The sheriff of Gem County, Idaho has told a local hospital suing Ammon Bundy that it will no longer deliver court orders to the noted ammosexual anti-government rancher, saying doing so puts his deputies at risk of violence and physical harm, the Idaho Stateman reports.

Gem County Sheriff Donnie Wunder said it cannot serve Bundy papers in the defamation case St. Luke’s Health System filed against him because of Bundy’s increasing hostility to deputies who have previously interacted with the family and a group of followers camped around the ranch.  Wunder said he spoke to Bundy on the phone April 10th, and Bundy complained that he was fed up.  “Mr. Bundy went on to also say that he is at his breaking point,” Wunder said. “By the tone in his voice, I believe he is,” adding, “In my opinion, if this continues, there is potential for someone to get hurt.”

On Wednesday Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina submitted a letter to the court ahead of next week’s trial in writer EJ Carroll’s defamation case against the fat former president calling her a liar after she credibly accused him of raping her in a department store in 1995, with Tacopenis asking the judge to specifically instruct the jury not to hold Donald’s lack of full attendance on every day of the proceedings against him given his position as the twice-impeached former president.

“Although Defendant Trump wishes to appear at trial, in order to avoid the burdens outlined above, if he does not do so, we respectfully request that the Court issue to the jury the following preliminary instruction: ‘While no litigant is required to appear at a civil trial, the absence of the defendant in this matter, by design, avoids the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City. Accordingly, his presence is excused unless and until he is called by either party to testify,'” Tacopina wrote in the request to SDNY Judge Lewis Kaplan.

EJ Carroll’s lawyer Roberta Kaplan (no relation) responded with the respect the bullshit request deserved. “Mr Trump’s position is especially difficult to credit in light of his own recent activity. Over the past few weeks, Mr Trump attended the Ultimate Fighting Championship 287 event, spoke at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting, and appeared for a deposition in the New York Attorney General’s civil case against Mr Trump, his adult children, and the Trump Organization. On Monday, he announced that he has scheduled a New Hampshire campaign event for next Thursday, April 27 – in other words, in the middle of the trial in this case. If Mr Trump can find a way to attend wrestling championships, political conventions, civil depositions, and campaign functions, then surely he could surmount the logistics of attending his own federal trial,” wrote Kaplan in her response.

Keep in mind she isn’t arguing that Trump be required to be present for every day of proceedings in the trial, but against the judge instructing the jury to give him a pass for not showing up.