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The deadline for fat former President Trump to notify federal Judge Lewis Kaplan of whether he would come to testify in his defense in the civil trial over EJ Carroll’s credible rape accusation before the case goes to the jury came and went at 5 PM EDT on Sunday with no new filing of such notice from Donald’s lawyer Joe Tacopina, Law and Crime’s Adam Klasfeld reports.

Meaning, to the surprise of no one, Trump was full of shit about returning to New York to “confront” Carroll at the trial and his defense won’t be reopened. Closing arguments will begin on Monday.

The shooter who killed at least eight people and wounded several others in a Saturday rampage at the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, Texas, just now identified by law enforcement as Mauricio Garcia, was wearing “patches or stickers on his clothing that raised suspicion he may have gravitated toward right-wing extremism,” according to an ABC News report on the massacre.

Garcia, age unknown but possibly in his late thirties, was killed at the scene by a cop who had been responding to an unrelated call at the mall when the gunfire erupted, but not before he mowed down nearly 20 people – children among them – with his trusty AR-15 personal defense weapon.

At least seven people are dead and another six wounded after a car plowed into a crowd of migrants at a bus stop adjacent to a shelter for migrants in the border city of Brownsville, Texas on Sunday morning, the AP reports on more violence and insanity in the Lone Star State.

In response to an application from Canuck LGBT rights group Egale, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission this month opened up a public comment period to take citizens’ input on whether the Fox News propaganda network should be banned from cable TV.

“On May 4, 2023, the Canadian Radio-television commission (CRTC) opened a Part 1 Application (2023-0210-8 – Egale Canada) for the removal of Fox News from the list of non-Canadian programming services authorized for distribution. This is in response to Egale’s submission to the CRTC on Fox News being in clear violation of Canadian broadcasting standards – as Fox News incites hate, violence, and discrimination in its programming against the 2SLGBTQI people and other equity-deserving communities,” Egale wrote in a statement about the successful application.

The Russian Wagner mercenaries on Sunday appeared to be waffling on their plan to withdraw from Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, saying the Kremlin answered their pleas for more ammo and support and that they may continue their bloody, desperate, attempt to take the town, Reuters reports.

Heidi and I are praying for the families of the victims of the horrific mall shooting in Allen, Texas. We pray also for the broader Collin County community that’s in shock from this tragedy.

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) May 7, 2023

Heidi and I are praying for the entire Nashville community right now. May God's comfort be with the Covenant School in the wake of this evil atrocity.

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 27, 2023

Heidi and I are praying for the entire Arlington, TX Lamar High School community in the wake of the shooting that took place this morning.
 
Thank you to the brave men and women of law enforcement who swiftly took the perpetrator into custody. https://t.co/vQAkN5PZdB

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 20, 2023

Police say there are multiple victims, possibly including children, of a mass shooting at the Allen Premium Outlets shopping mall outside Dallas Saturday, KTVT CBS-11 Dallas reports.  Officials say the shooter exchanged fire with responding officers and was killed.  No good guy with a gun was available for comment on why they, again, were ineffective in another mass shooting.

#FBIWFO released photos of this woman who allegedly participated in the U.S. Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. If you recognize her, call 1-800-225-5324 or visit https://t.co/t8G7LO4hxu to submit a tip. Refer to photo 537 in your tip. pic.twitter.com/cJ9oYfSxxu

— FBI Washington Field (@FBIWFO) April 27, 2023

After his friend came across a tweet last month featuring his ex-girlfriend directing insurrections as they stormed the Capitol, a man identified his ex-girlfriend to the FBI as “Pink Beret,” a January 6th insurrectionist who was promptly arrested.  Besides the sobriquet for her pink beret and black Dolce & Gabbana purse–fashionable choices when one is toppling a government–Los Angeles resident Jennifer Inzuza Vargas was also called “Insurrection Eva Braun” and “Fascist Matilda” by the volunteers working online to identify the secessionists who wanted to undermine the Constitution.

An insane in-depth report by VoteBeat.us details how Republican now-former Pinal County, Arizona elections director Virginia Ross falsely asserted to the county Board of Supervisors that the vote count in the November 2022 midterms was correct, collected a $25,000 bonus for the “correct” total, then sold her house and fucked off to a small town in East Texas before anyone knew she had lied about it, with the discrepancies in the tabulation found after a recount nearly enough to overturn the result of the state Attorney General race, which Democrat Kris Mayes beat crazy MAGA asshole Abe Hamadeh by an ultra-tight 320 votes out of 2,512,390 ballots cast.

Even better was how Ross had stepped in to take over for previous elections director David Frisk, an alt-right 2020 conspiracy freak after the board fired him in August 2022 over a complete shitshow of a primary in the county. Ross, in her former elected post as county recorder had overseen elections until that job function was separated from the recorder’s office in 2017, making her an apparently natural fit. That is until she knowingly lied about discrepancies in tabulations totaling hundreds of ballots and was already on her way out of town when the subterfuge was revealed. Give VoteBeat’s reporting on Virginia Ross a read, it’s a hell of a story that would take us a while to do it justice.

Wind energy developer funneled cash to Dem senator pushing offshore wind https://t.co/vWbLXJC095

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 6, 2023

Ukrainian Air Force officials on Saturday said they utilized a US-built Patriot defense system to take down a Russian “Kinzhal” hypersonic missile two days earlier, a successful field test on the first time Kyiv’s forces even used the advanced platform, the New York Times reports.

“I congratulate the Ukrainian people on a historic event,” Ukrainian Air Force Lt General Mykola Oleshchuk wrote in a statement on Telegram. “Yes, we have shot down the ‘unparalleled’ ‘Kinzhal.'”

• Clarence Thomas can prove that it was never about the money by paying back Harlan Crow every cent out of his own pocket.  But he won’t do that of course, because it was always all about the money.
• Proud Boys, Proud Boys, whatcha gonna do, whatcha gonna do when they come for you…  No, seriously, whatcha gonna do, ya punk?
• Propublica showing people what journalists really are; Fox showing people what journalists most definitely are not.
• Fox attendees reportedly got offended by Joe Biden’s jabs at its $787 million payment to Dominion Voting Systems for defamation during the Correspondents’ Dinner; CEO Suzanne Scott dashed out of the ballroom the moment Biden finished. They were also offended that their colleagues in the media reveled in their misery, which shouldn’t surprise anyone given how Fox personalities demean and target those same peers on a daily basis.  
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXX”

Saying the nation is one the precipice of widespread political violence like Stewart Rhodes promoted, federal prosecutors have recommended the Oath Keepers leader get a 25-year prison sentence for his conviction on seditious conspiracy and other charges related to his role in the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress.  (Per Kyle Cheney)

The mercenary forces used by Vladimir Putin to do his dirty work have finally had enough:  Politico reports leaders of the Wagner Group said they would withdraw their forces from the battle for Bakhmut in Ukraine by May 10th.  Saying the Kremlin wasn’t providing sufficient support, Wagner leaders claimed Russian commanders were intentionally causing mass casualties for the independent unit because they were jealous of the unit’s success.

This could be a ploy for Wagner’s commanders to get more of whatever they want from Putin–money, weapons, power–by leveraging his dependence on them to their advantage.  Or it could be the latest sign that the invasion of Ukraine is not going in Russia’s favor, as US analysts say Russian forces have suffered 100,000 casualties since the beginning of the year.

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, himself indicted, has launched an investigation into a Texas hospital for providing gender-affirming care to minors, something conservatives have decided to attack instead of developing policy positions that might be popular with voters.

Per NBC News, Paxton claims to have received numerous reports that the Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas in Austin has been “unlawfully” providing care to trans minors.  “It is now alarmingly common for fringe activists to use their positions in medicine and health care to force experimental, life-altering procedures onto children,” Paxton stated without evidence.  “Across the country, there are doctors and health care professionals who appear willing to sacrifice the long-term health of American children, all in service to the increasingly dangerous fad of ‘transgender’ extremism. It is deeply disturbing, and there is no place for it in Texas.”

After the video of Donald Trump’s deposition in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit was released, a number of outlets focused on the fact that Trump confused Carroll with his second wife Marla Maples when he was shown a photo of them together from the 1980s.  Lost in the interchange:  Donald Trump, the idol of people who claim Joe Biden has mental deficiencies, cannot identify Ivana Trump, his wife at the time the photo was taken and the mother of three of his children, who is also in the photo. “Who is that?  Who is this?” Trump asks at the 82:19 timestamp pointing to the woman on the right side of the photo; someone tells him, “That’s your wife.”  The person conducting the deposition says, “And the woman on the right is, I assume, your then-wife Ivana–” when Trump responds, “I don’t know. This was the picture,” before identifying other people in the pic.

DC Federal Judge Amit Mehta on Friday sentenced Pennsylvania Capitol rioter Peter Schwartz to 14 years and two months in prison for assaulting cops during the January 6th, 2021 MAGA insurrections at the US Capitol, the longest sentence so far for a participant in the mayhem by several years, one exacerbated by Schwartz’s long prior rap sheet, WUSA’s Jordan Fischer reports.

Prosecutors had sought 24 years for the 53 year-old Schwartz, who had written on Facebook “What happened yesterday was the opening of a war. I was there and whether people will acknowledge it or not we are now at war,” and pleaded for four years in his memo. Mehta split the difference.

In a letter responding to Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis’s move to have her disqualified from representing the Republicans who in December 2020 signed false electoral votes for fat former President Trump, MAGA lawyer Kimberly Debrow on Friday revealed that Willis had gotten eight of the 16 fake electors to agree to immunity deals to testify against other traitors.

If you’d think one place racist, pants-shitting right-wing musical-ish ammosexual pedophile Ted Nugent (please click through the links to see the background of each of those adjectives) would find a friendly ear for his pro-gun, anti-hygiene, little girl lovin’ schtick would be in Alabama.  But apparently, it doesn’t work in areas of the state with widespread indoor plumbing.

According to AL.com, Nugent’s planned July 18th concert at Avondale Brewing Co. in Birmingham was canceled Thursday after the business received a barrage of negative feedback from customers on social media. “I will never spend another dollar in your establishment. Grotesque that you would book such trash. Do better,” David Symonds commented on a venue’s Facebook post announcing the concert.

“We have heard the concerns of the Avondale community, which is so important to us, and in conjunction with our partners, have taken the necessary steps to cancel the Ted Nugent concert scheduled for July 18,” the venue said in a post on Instagram Stories.