The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday partially stayed the ban on mifepristone.

“For the reasons given below, IT IS ORDERED that defendants’ motions for a stay pending appeal are GRANTED IN PART. At this preliminary stage, and based on our necessarily abbreviated review, it appears that the statute of limitations bars plaintiffs’ challenges to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone in 2000. In the district court, however, plaintiffs brought a series of alternative arguments regarding FDA’s actions in 2016 and subsequent years. And the district court emphasized that its order separately applied to prohibit FDA’s actions in and after 2016 in accordance with plaintiffs’ alternative arguments. As to those alternative arguments, plaintiffs’ claims are timely. Defendants have not shown that plaintiffs are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their timely challenges. For that reason, and as more fully explained below, defendants’ motions for a stay pending appeal are DENIED IN PART. Defendants’ alternative motions for an administrative stay are DENIED AS MOOT. Plaintiffs’ motion to dismiss the appeal is DENIED. The appeal is EXPEDITED to the next available Oral Argument Calendar,” wrote a three-judge panel.

A three-judge federal appeals court ordered former Trump administration advisor Peter Navarro to turn over more than 200 emails he kept in a personal email account after he left the government, Politico reports.

Navarro admitted to using a Proton Mail account for official government business, something that reportedly was common with Trump administration officials.  At least seven Trump White House officials used private, non-sanctioned communications tools like personal email accounts or messaging apps that would avoid official channels.  Even though Donald Trump frequently called for Hillary Clinton to be jailed extrajudicially for using a private email account and server, Trump was silent when aides nightwalker Jared Kushner, daughter Ivanka Trump, shirt aficionado Steve Bannon, Hitler Youth alum Steven Miller and guy who doesn’t rate a sobriquet Reince Preibus all used private apps for messages.  Trump never called for their arrest, nor did his administration investigate their use of personal accounts.

Navarro had claimed he could hold on to the government records which fall under the Presidential Records Act because he’s a Republican and the rules don’t apply to Republicans.  No, that’s not true; the truth is even worse:  Navarro claimed the government had no mechanism to enforce the law and said that turning over the documents would violate his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.  The panel disagreed:  “There is no public interest in Navarro’s retention of the records, and Congress has recognized that the public has an interest in the Nation’s possession and retention of Presidential records.”

Wednesday wasn’t a great day for Trump in the news on both the Mar-a-Lago stolen classified documents side or the post-2020 election coup attempt side of the two-pronged Smith investigation and damn does it show. Donald’s so rattled he’s forgetting to call the reporting “fake.”

Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinstein asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to temporarily place a colleague on the Senate Judiciary Committee, acknowledging that the 89-year-old’s medical absence has caused significant problems confirming President Biden’s judges, CBS News reports.

Feinstein was hospitalized earlier this year with a severe case of shingles, but was discharged in early March.  Her continued absence from the Judiciary Committee delayed the process of confirmation nominations, pushing some to suggest she should step down from her Senate seat.  Feinstein announced in mid-February that she would not seek reelection in 2024.

MSNBC broadcast audio tapes taken by former Fox producer Abby Grossberg of conversations between her host, Maria Bartiromo, and people attempting to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election.  Grossberg reportedly turned over the tapes to Fox Corporation attorneys as part of the Dominion lawsuit, but Fox apparently failed to turn them over to Dominion.  Grossberg filed the tapes as evidence in her lawsuit against Fox, and Dominion lawyers received them from from Fox recently, after the recordings were listed on the evidence sheet in the Grossberg case, indicating Fox failed to turn them over to Dominion in a timely manner during in the defamation case.

The tapes include Rudy Giuliani telling Bartiromo immediately after the election they have no evidence that Dominion machines malfunctioned or were in other ways corrupted.  In another tape recorded in December, members of Trump’s campaign went “off the record” to admit the audits done on Georgia’s ballots were “pretty close” to the reported counts.  MSNBC included video of Giuliani, Trump and sanctioned lawyer and Rudy fart sniffer Jenna Ellis directly contradicting the information on air or at rallies–either on the days the tapes were recorded or within days of the conversations showing that, like Fox on-air hosts, the Trump “election fraud” team knew they were lying.

Gerry Filippatos, Grossberg’s attorney, told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner that Grossberg took the recordings regularly using an app on her cell phone, and distributed transcriptions to Bartiromo and other Fox executives, showing various levels of management knew their on-air claims about election fraud were false.

Ever the racist with an audible dogwhistle in front of a bullhorn, Fox host and Donald Trump’s new bestie Tucker Carlson tries to denigrate newly reinstalled Tennessee state legislator Justin Pearson using claims that Pearson engages in code-switching to pretend to be whiter than his Black skin should portray–without evidence, Carlson claims this is how got into Maine’s Bowdoin College.  Saying Pearson “[talks] like a sharecropper”… ’cause that ain’t racist.  Also note how Carlson integrates the word “transition” into the screed, attempting to imply by word association that Pearson is somehow connected to the transgender movement.

Carlson may feel that he’s on solid ground now that he’s kissed Trump’s ring after debasing Trump in private messages, celebrating his belief that the network would be rid of the obese blowhard–Trump, not Hannity–after his 2020 election loss.  Don’t be surprised to learn Trump demanded a full hour of primetime with Carlson subservient to him to make up for Carlson’s slander to avoid Trump denigrating Fox too much in his stump speeches, which would shuffle his cult to lower-tier conservative propaganda outlets and costing Fox revenue from its discount advertisers.

The terrorist wing of the Republican Party, angry that Donald Trump is being held to the same laws as everyone else, send Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg another envelope containing white powder, NBC News reports.  The powder was tested and found to be harmless.

The letter containing the powder was addressed to Bragg and made disparaging remarks about Bragg’s stature, at five foot seven inches tall and weighing around 200 pounds, putting his BMI at less than a 6’2″ 280 pound Donald Trump.  Bragg has indicted Trump for financial felonies related to laundering money to pay off a porn star with whom he had a very brief sexual encounter.

Heels-wearing Florida Gov Ron DeSantis’s minions have been calling Sunshine State Republicans to stop them from endorsing disgraced former President Trump after four GOP members of the state’s US House delegation have already thrown their support to the orange bastard, NBC News reports.

Team Tiny D started trying to staunch the bleeding after butthole Congressman Byron Donalds announced his endorsement of the twice-impeached criminal defendant last week. Two Republican members of the House – neither from Florida – have endorsed DeSantis’s not-yet-official bid.

This article in Alaskan Public Media about Nanuq, a loveable family dog who go separated from his family on the remote St Lawrence Island when a chunk of sea ice broke off, sending Nanuq out onto adrift in the Bering Sea before the ice floated 150 miles to the Alaskan mainland, where a kind stranger found Nanuq and posted a photo on social media which the family saw, and then arranged for the 1 year-old Australian shepherd to be flown back to St Lawrence to be reunited with them is kind of hackneyed and derivative. Like didn’t we already see this same plot in that lame Homeward Bound movie back in the 1990s? Nanuq’s story even includes a harrowing encounter with an angry seal or polar bear (the family isn’t sure which, they just know Nanuq was bitten on the leg by some asshole animal). Something kind of like that happened in the Homeward Bound movie, right?

The better, more original harrowing sea journey St Lawrence Island story was the one from last year about those two Russians who drifted there from Siberia after fleeing conscription into the war in Ukraine. That was an edgier, more adult-oriented action-comedy with more convincing villains.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team are looking into disgraced former President Trump’s fraudulent fundraising off stolen elections claims in the immediate aftermath of his humiliating defeat to now-President Joe Biden in the 2020 election, the Washington Post reports while specifically mentioning wire fraud as a possible charge for the fat fuck and his minions.

BREAKING: Chinese Bank Voluntarily Gives Republicans Damaging New Financial Records On Hunter Biden https://t.co/MdgMgFavkY

— Jenna Ellis (@JennaEllisEsq) April 12, 2023

The Arizona state House on Wednesday voted to expel state Representative Liz Harris over her batshit “drug cartel bribery” hearing from February, 12 News Phoenix reports.

“Congressman Russell Fry (SC-07) has introduced the No More Political Prosecutions Act, legislation that would give Presidents and Vice Presidents, both former and current, the option to move their own civil or criminal cases from a state court to a federal court. Presidents and Vice Presidents are among the most visible politicians in the United States government – making them a target for rogue prosecutors looking to build up their profile and make a name for themselves on the political stage. Because of that threat, it’s important for Presidents and Vice Presidents to have the option to move their case to a federal court – where judges are confirmed by the US Senate, serve in their role for life, and don’t need to win an election to keep their position,” says a statement from Fry’s office.

The proper response for Chuck Schumer to this sort of moronic bill is not to dismiss it outright, but to instead say “Okay, let’s compromise. We’ll pass this into law if there’s an amendment attached that bans the sale of AR-15s and legalizes abortion in all 50 states.” If these hicks want to “message” with dead end legislation to protect their Orange Allah (which wouldn’t really help him that much anyway) then Dems should highlight it by tying it to actually doing something for Americans.

The Shelby County, Tennessee Commission on Wednesday unanimously voted to reappoint Dem state Representative Justin Pearson to his seat in the state House, joining fellow Dem Justin Jones in returning to the chamber after their expulsion last week, the Tennessee Holler reports.

Normally we would’ve just wrote a text article sourced from Fox News’s “exclusive” about the fat former president’s lawsuit against his ex-lawyer, but rather than get into the bullshit details, we’d rather just marvel at this subheadline. They really fucking printed that at the top. It really is the second-most important point to this Trump legal team press release disguised as a news article.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team are asking witnesses questions about fat former President Trump showing off to his buddies at Mar-a-Lago a classified map containing sensitive intel data he had to stolen from the White House, the New York Times reports.

The investigators are pretty sure this happened at least once after Donald left office in disgrace in January 2021. It’s not clear if Trump sharpied any of the map’s content or if he simply wrote “DECLASSIFIED” in large letters to preemptively declare himself immune from charges.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis on Wednesday expressed his suspicion that Fox News has been withholding key evidence in the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems over Fox’s 2020 election bullshit and indicated he’s likely to appoint a special master to investigate if Fox is fucking around, CNN reports on a situation going from bad to worse for their right wing rival.

“I am very concerned that there have been misrepresentations to the court. This is very serious… I am very uncomfortable right now,” Davis said as he lit into Fox’s lawyers during a pretrial hearing coming just days before the big showdown is set to begin. Davis ordered the propaganda network’s legal team to preserve “any and all communications” related to the precise nature of newly single and ready to mingle oligarch Rupert Murdoch’s role with the company and its board.

Responding to a request for comment from VoteBeat’s Jessica Huseman about Florida’s decision to withdraw from the interstate Electronic Registration Information Center – the compact designed to keep voter rolls clean and prevent people from voting in more than one state in a single federal election, like at least five Floridians, most of them MAGA and from notorious senior living shithole The Villages, were caught doing in 2020 – a spokesman for heels-wearing Governor Ron DeSantis’s office told Huseman “You will get whatever comment we decide to provide and nothing more.”

The cuntishness of DeSantis’s minions when asked to address a situation just slightly edges out the situation itself for the headline and lede. Like we buried in a long piece on George Soros recently but have covered elsewhere, the ongoing exodus of Red States from ERIC is a significant win by the far-right propaganda site the Gateway Pundit’s long campaign against the system, turning MAGA dumbasses against it because its funding at launch came in part from a grant by Soros’s Open Societies initiative. It’s obvious that DeSantis’s office doesn’t want to come clean on admitting that they were motivated to drop out by some bullshit Gateway Pundit fantasy – especially considering it was DeSantis’s idea to join in the first place. “We want to make sure that the voter rolls are accurate, and one of the best ways to do that, I think, is for Florida to join the Electronic Registration Information Center, known as ERIC,” Tiny D said at a news conference in August 2019.

That’s not even the best right wing self-own on ERIC that Huseman raises in her report. That would go to Judicial Watch douchebag Tom Fitton, who is 2023 calls the system “a syndicate founded by leftists” and whose group successfully sued Kentucky to force them to join ERIC in 2018.

Defund NPR.

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) April 12, 2023

This storyline was the wrong kind of stupid for our coverage until Jim Jordan, tweeting under the account of the majority side of the committee he chairs, stepped into the ring. In a vacuum a Republican calling for NPR to be defunded is about as noteworthy as them saying they want to lower taxes or allow industrial concerns to pollute the environment. On Wednesday however, it’s obvious that Jordan is now saying this in direct response to NPR’s announcement they would stop using the platform, which in turn was a response to Elon Musk’s shitbrained move last week labelling them as “State-funded media,” a pre-Musk marker originally intended to make Twitter users aware that information was coming from authoritarian regimes in Beijing, Moscow, Riyadh, et cetera. Now Jordan wants that marker removed – along with the very tiny fraction of NPR’s operating budget that comes from the federal government – because, for now at least, they’re exercising their right to not post links to their news on a platform owned by a third of Jordan’s Holy Trinity.

Senate Democrats led by Chuck Schumer on Wednesday will deliver a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to open an investigation into the expulsion of Tennessee state House Representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson and to determine whether their removals violated the Constitution or federal civil rights law, the Washington Post reports.

Now we’re not lawyers or constitutional experts – and “however” sounds like a good pick for an annoying contrasting conjunction to use here after qualifying our lack of knowledge in this field – however, this obviously nobly intentioned response to an undemocratic abuse of power by a rogue legislature just doesn’t sit quite right and (again, even after admitting we don’t know shit) we have a hard time seeing how it ends with a judge ruling that the Tennessee state House majority violated the civil rights of voters and/or Justins Pearson and Jones barring an extremely narrow and creative case brought by the DOJ. They’re a gerrymandered nuthouse full of fascist criminals and deranged scumbags who were nevertheless duly elected and empowered under the state constitution to run their chamber by the express consent of their voters. The expulsions were both a moral disgrace on top of another moral disgrace and by all appearances a legitimate exercise of sovereign legislative power for which the DOJ better have some really strong fucking evidence was anything otherwise.

If the FBI finds the NRA delivered a crate full of AK-47s to the House speaker and his buddies to get them to push to expel the Jones, Pearson, and Gloria Johnson then by all means they should be prosecuted. Otherwise it’s hard not to see certain similarities to Jim Jordan’s lame attempts to derail Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s prosecution of disgraced former President Trump.