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An unidentified US citizen has been charged with espionage in Russia, German state media Deutsche Welle reports, citing an FSB press release. It’s unclear if the person has actually been arrested (even though the DW headline says “detained,” the text of the article says otherwise).

“The American is suspected of collecting intelligence on biological topics directed against the security of the Russian Federation,” the FSB press release says. In lieu of other details, we’ll simply add that maybe American citizens should just stay the fuck out of Russia rather than be arrested on bullshit charges and held hostage by the Putin regime for months or even years.

Team investigating Trump classified docs includes seasoned DOJ officials who prosecuted his top allies https://t.co/WG1ly109XC

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 19, 2023

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has triggered the Kremlin with a conspiracy theory questioning whether Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is even still alive, the Daily Beast reports.

“I don’t quite understand who to speak with and about what. I’m not sure the president of Russia, who sometimes appears against a green screen, is the right one. I don’t quite understand if he is alive, if he is making the decisions, or who is making the decisions there,” said Zelensky in a video address to the Davos crowd, which pissed the Kremlin off enough to respond. “Clearly, Zelensky would prefer for neither Russia nor Putin to exist. The sooner he realizes that Russia exists and will exist, the better for such a country as Ukraine,” said Kremlin spokesworm Dmitry Peskov.

Asserting that it violates his state law about teaching Critical Race Theory–spoiler alert: it doesn’t–Republican Florida Governor (and bigot for his political ends) Ron DeSantis has denied a request from the company that approves Advanced Placement curriculum in schools to certify African Studies course in Florida public schools, something that will put students who want to study the field in college at a significant disadvantage.  And shockingly, the majority of students who will want to study African Studies are [switch to stage whisper voice] Black.

According to the Daily Beast, the action continues a line of censorship DeSantis is imposing on public schools and teachers in Florida in an effort to stifle any recognition that some people experience a different society than a rich, straight, white, christian-ish, doughy, Ivy League-educated Republican male.  DeSantis has also taken such actions against LGBTQ educational material and anything he deems insufficiently “christian.”

Denying actual history, DeSantis’s Department of Education rejected the request from the company, The College Board, to certify the program saying, “as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.”  A spokesperson later added, “If the course comes into compliance and incorporates historically accurate content, the Department will reopen the discussion.”

“Oh boy, those dems aren’t very inclusive, are they?”

– The current top comment on the Twitchy article “MSNBC columnist confirms that George Santos was a drag queen named Kitara,” posted Wednesday night. This was not easy to find as it appears every other right wing site (out of the ones that use Disqus at least) was avoiding the Santos drag queen story like the plague. Probably a smart move since it causes this kind of cognitive meltdown.

Fat former President Trump mistook a photo of rape accuser EJ Carroll for that of his second ex-wife Marla Maples during a deposition in Carroll’s defamation suit against him, potentially seriously undermining his already stupid “she’s not my type” defense, the Washington Post reports.

“That’s Marla, yeah. That’s my wife,” the fat idiot said to Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan showing him a photo of him with Carroll in the 1990s during the deposition, to which Trump’s marginally less mentally incompetent lawyer Alina Habba quickly corrected him that it was in fact Carroll.

As we’ve written before, of course the now-79 year old Carroll is not going to be Donald’s type given her age nowadays, but that’s how entropy works. Ivana Trump sure as shit wasn’t his “type” anymore either before she passed away at 75 or whatever last year. Carroll looked different in 1995.

Very different, and nobody really seemed to want to acknowledge that in 2019 when she first came forward, even those who believed her and wanted to see her nail Donald to the wall, probably out of unease with how to frankly discuss a woman’s looks – particularly an alleged rape victim – ceding the ground to Trump and his fanboys. The fact is the “defense” was always complete bullshit and still the orange dumbass managed to undermine it in a sworn deposition.

Defying first-time-elected Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, the Democratically-led New York state senate judiciary committee rejected her nominee to lead the state’s supreme court amid concerns that his judicial record is too conservative, Reuters reports.

The senate judiciary committee voted 10-9 to withhold the nomination Hector LaSalle, the chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals, from a vote on the floor of the senate, killing his opportunity.  Seven members of the committee did not vote and another was not present at the meeting.

A prosecutor for 15 years before becoming a judge, liberal groups has criticized LaSalle’s decisions, saying they favor police, prosecutors and anti-abortion groups, as well as putting employer rights over those of workers.  Hochul claims that she could sue to have a vote on the floor of the senate, although that route is still unclear.

Researchers announced Mosaico, the only vaccine for HIV in late-stage clinical trials, has failed, a stunning defeat in the effort to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS around the globe, NBC News reports.

Developed in a private-public partnership between the US government and Flemish pharmaceutical company Janssen, the effort united scientists and government programs to develop and test the drug, which was in a trial involving 3,900 men from eight European countries who have sex with men and trans people, the group most likely to contract HIV.

Initial reviews appeared to show Mosaico reducing the rate of HIV transmission.  However, a review of the data in the latest clinical test by an independent medical research firm found the drug did not significantly impact the rate of HIV transmission.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern abruptly announced her resignation, effective February 7th, during a speech at her party’s annual meeting on Thursday, the New Zealand Herald reports.

“I’m leaving, because with such a privileged role comes responsibility. The responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple,” said the third ever female Kiwi prime minister to the Labour Party caucus meeting. While we at NZ have a deep affinity for the other NZ given our shared abbreviation, we’re not exactly clued in on the political situation on the ground. If Ardern’s exit is for the best, we support it. NZ 💙 NZ always.

Republican Congressman Greg Steube was hospitalized Wednesday after falling off the roof of his home somewhere in the Sarasota area, Florida Politics publisher Peter Schorsch reports. No word on Stuebe’s condition yet, but you know thoughts and prayers and all that shit for him.

MSNBC contributor Marisa Kabas says she spoke with a Brazilian drag queen by the name of Eula Rochard, who told Kabas that the member of the Anti-drag queen story hour party Congressman George Santos is “Kitara” on the right hand side of that photo. Not much else to add here.

Ruslan Obiang Nsue, the Hunter Biden of Equatorial Guinea, has been arrested on charges he sold a plane owned by the state airline and pocketed the cash, the BBC reports. We call Nsue the “Hunter Biden of Equatorial Guinea” around here because that little rascal is always getting in to some sort of hijinks and his dad is President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. In a hilarious twist, Nsue’s half-brother, Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue was the one who ordered the arrest.

So to recap, the President is Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, son is Veep Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, other son Ruslan Obiang Nsue is the fuckup ex-state airline director, and thank Christ for copy and paste as we would never have been able to type those names from memory.

90s-era sitcom star Ben Savage on Wednesday officially filed for the Democratic nomination for the 2024 race in California’s 30th district, currently held by Congressman Adam Schiff.

Savage lost a 2022 West Hollywood city council race, but what’s US politics without failing upward sometimes? It’s also sort of newsworthy that the star of Boy Meets World is apparently confident that Schiff will run to replace senile Senator Dianne Feinstein, at least enough to file the paperwork.

Just throwing this out there: How many homes in Florida actually have natural gas hookups? If not, how many of them even bother to hook up propane instead? Is it even a thing there?

A three-judge panel on the Arizona Court of Appeals on Tuesday denied state GOP Chairhag “Chemtrails” Kelli Ward’s attempt to ban mail-in voting in the state, rejecting the crazy asshole’s argument that the practice violates constitutional requirment for a secret ballot, KAWC reports.

Ward’s lawyer had argued the requirement “that secrecy in voting shall be preserved” was impossible to meet if there isn’t an election official present to observe the voter casting a ballot, which doesn’t make any fucking sense but they still tried to sell it anyway. Judge Cynthia Bailey disagreed, ruling that the safeguards in place in the no-excuse early voting system Arizonans have enjoyed since 1991 were more than suffice. Chemtrails Kelli vowed to appeal to the state Supreme Court as if she hadn’t already wasted enough taxpayer time on this stupid bullshit.

Independent journalist Murray Waas reports Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith is looking closely at disgraced former President Trump’s handling of documents related to the Russia investigation and the 2016 election, specifically the failed last minute attempt to declassify them before he left office, as a possible motive for Trump’s theft of the papers.

This tracks with a New York Times report from October in which Trump at some point in 2021 ordered his minions to tell the National Archives they could have other, unrelated documents back if they would give him whatever he thought would “exonerate” him in the Russia scandal.

At least one person has been called in to testify to Smith’s grand jury on this specific line of inquiry, according to Waas, who also reports disgraced former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is seen as a prime target to flip against the Orange God Emperor. “It was very clear from what they asked that their emphasis was on Trump and Meadows,” a source told Waas.

There’s an absolute shit ton of news to get caught up on this morning, requiring a consolidation better than that lame and unserious rundown from Monday. Alright ramblers, let’s get ramblin’:

Fat former President Trump is planning to return to Twitter following Elon Musk’s reinstatement of his account and is working on ideas for his big first new tweet in two years, NBC News reports.

The batshit House GOP plan to abolish the IRS and replace income tax with a national sales tax was reportedly a condition of the Freedom Caucasians’ support for Kevin McCarthy’s speakership, a plan so bad even Conservative anti-tax nerd Grover Norquist said “This is a political gift to Biden and the Democrats. I think that this is the first significant problem created for the Republican Party by the 20 people who thought that there was no downside to the approach they took.”

The Manhattan DA is looking seriously at prosecuting fat former President Trump over the 2016 Stormy Daniels hush money payment, the New York Times reports. The statute of limitations has been tolled due to COVID and continues to toll every minute Trump is not in the state of New York, so prosecutors can take their time building the case, according to the Daily Beast’s Joe Pagliery.

Ronna Not-Romney claims she has the votes to secure her fourth term as RNC chair over MAGA lawyer Harmeet Dhillon and allegedly former crackhead Mike Lindell. So confident is Ronna that she’s skipping a debate with Lindell and Dhillon, a choice you will not be surprised to learn came just months after Ronna criticized now-Arizona Gov Katie Hobbs for refusing to debate Kari Lake.

A new tracking survey by Morning Consult finds disgraced former President Trump leading the Republican 2024 primary field at 48 percent, damn close to a majority and ensuring that short little bastard Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (in second at 31 percent) would need to consolidate the support of every single also-ran like Vice Former Guy Mike Pence (third place at 8 percent), Liz Cheney (3 percent), Nimrata Haley and Ted Cruz (both 2 percent), plus all the one percenters including Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, Kristi Noem, and Low Energy Greg to take the nomination.

DeSantis wouldn’t have to worry about taking his predecessor, former Florida Governor and current Senate minority loser Rick Scott’s support as Rick scored a stunning 0 percent in the survey.

Newly sworn-in Republican Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen hit the ground running on pointless and counterproductive “election integrity” measures on his first full day in office Tuesday and acted on a campaign promise by immediately announcing the state would be withdrawing from the interstate Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the Associated Press reports.

“I made a promise to the people of Alabama that ending our state’s relationship with the ERIC organization would be my first official act as Secretary of State. Providing the private information of Alabama citizens, including underage minors, to an out of state organization is troubling to me and to people that I heard from as I traveled the state for the last 20 months,” said Allen in a statement.

What Allen left out however is that the whole point of ERIC is to prevent voter fraud by providing states with a single national database of registrations to ensure no one casts a ballot in more than one state in a single presidential or midterm contest, like those asshole MAGA snowbirds in The Villages, Florida were caught doing in the 2020 presidential election. It need not be stated this move is the polar opposite of a commitment to “election integrity,” and even Allen’s predecessor said as much. “[ERIC] helps identify duplicate registrations. It helps identify dual participation in elections. That’s a concern [and] there’s no other way that any state in the union can do that independently of ERIC,” now-former Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill told NPR last year.

Allen should’ve at least come up with a better excuse than the lame “sharing private information” bullshit (as if it’s not the whole point of the system) if he couldn’t be bothered to take the lead on reforming ERIC’s cybersecurity practices he’s supposedly so goddamned worried about. But hey, “if it is ‘broke’ then don’t fix it, just break it some more” is the GOP way these days.

The rest of this “explanation” is purportedly forthcoming given this post’s “Page 1” but it’s been 23 minutes and there’s no “Page 2” yet. Trump’s lawyers must be pretty busy looking over that one.