Disgraced former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro arrived back home in Brazil in on Thursday, three months after fleeing to Florida ahead of the expiry of his term following his defeat to returning leftist President Luiz Lula, the AP reports. The “Trump of the Tropics” was greeted by hundreds of fans in Brasilia, the capital city they trashed in a tantrum on January 8th in a scene very much reminiscent of their American compatriots’ rampage at the US Capitol two year and two days earlier.

Bolsonaro faces multiple criminal investigations on everything from his post-election loss coup plot to his alleged theft of state gifts like jewels from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bonesaw.

President Biden and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg derailed another freight train in rural Kandiyohi County, Minnesota on Thursday, this one sparking a raging ethanol fire and prompting evacuations at 1:00 AM for locals who voted for Trump 2-to-1 in 2020, CNN reports.

It’s just the latest in a string of mostly rail-based industrial “accidents” being weaponized in Biden and Buttigieg’s genocidal race war against rural white conservatives. And even if stuff like this happened all the time before Biden took office and Buttigieg was confirmed as Secretary of Transportation in 2021, that it just feels like it’s happening more is evidence enough to conclude this is a systematic campaign to wipe out MAGAmerica. Still, being right about this is cold comfort to the Christian families getting woke up in the middle of the night to evacuate from toxic fumes. It’ll take a visit and free McDonald’s food from former President Trump to bring true justice here.

National Zero will resume our regular news coverage now that we’ve alerted our right wing readers to yet another train-based mini-9/11 against them. We hope they’re now extra angry this morning.

Jailed Trump Org CFO Allen Weaselberg’s lawyer Nicholas Gravante has been replaced for not being “Trumpy” enough. Literally that’s the reason cited by an anonymous source to the Daily Beast: that Gravante wasn’t “Trumpy” enough. Jesus Christ. Specifically that means that Gravante was more about his actual client’s interests than fat former President Trump and his corrupt businesses.

Weaselberg’s new attorney is Seth L Rosenberg, a former rackets prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office – the decision reportedly made by Trump Org Vice President Eric Trump.

Non-Correction: The current version of this article and headline misspelled Jen Weisselberg’s last name as ‘Weaselberg.’ National Zero does not regret the error and will not be correcting it.

The Russian FSB announced Thursday they had arrested Wall Street Journal Moscow correspondent Evan Gershkovich on charges of spying, CNN reports. “The illegal activities of the correspondent of the Moscow bureau of the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, US citizen Evan Gershkovich, born in 1991, accredited at the Russian Foreign Ministry, suspected of espionage in the interests of the American government, have been suppressed,” said the FSB in a statement.

Probably not a coincidence that Gershkovich on Wednesday filed a story titled “Russia’s Economy Is Starting to Come Undone” quoting indicted scumbag oligarch Oleg Deripaska as saying “There will be no money next year, we need foreign investors,” at a recent economic conference.

Los Angeles prosecutors have charged seven California Highway Patrol officers and a nurse with involuntary manslaughter in the 2020 death of motorist Edward Bronstein, who was arrested on the suspicion of drunken driving but died after officers restrained him to facilitate a court-ordered blood draw, NBC News reports.

After Bronstein was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving, he was taken to a CHP station, but refused to submit to a blood draw.  After a judge issued a warrant to get the blood drawn, six officers and a sergeant held Bronstein down while the nurse drew the blood sample.  In 18 minutes of body cam footage, Bronstein repeatedly tells officers that he can’t breath as he struggles, which prompts the officers to press down on him more.  Bronstein then goes silent, and six minutes pass before anyone checks on him; he had stopped breathing and his skin was ashen.

This is fun to watch.  During Wednesday afternoon’s Oversight Committee, held to allow Republicans to whine about municipal operations like they know how the complicated operations of an urban democratic government, failed restauranteur and soon-to-be-a-36-year-old-gramma Lauren Boebert spends her time questioning DC Council member Charles Allen, accusing him of wanting to decriminalize public urination.  In fact, Allen led a panel that reviewed the DC criminal code but he voted on the council to retain the act’s criminality.  After nearly two minutes of Allen telling Boebert she’s wrong, and Boebert persisting that she is not wrong, Boebert ambiguously says “we have records that show [Allen was] in favor” of the downgrade, despite Allen’s actual record because it feels true to Boebert, even though it’s not.

Republicans in the Ohio legislature are attempting to use a parliamentary procedure to circumvent the Democratic-supported GOP speaker of the house to get a proposition on the ballot that would raise the level of voter support needed to pass some amendments to the state constitution to 60% for a Spring special election.

According to the Associated Press, the change to the level of voter support needed to pass amendments–which would only be increased for amendments that did not pass through the GOP-dominated legislature–is being pushed through because Republicans want to head off ballot initiatives slated for the fall elections that protect abortion rights in the state and ensure voting power by adopting a less-gerrymandered map than the ones pushed by Republican legislators.

Republicans will stand for neither of those things, and intend to have the change to the state constitution on the special election ballot in May, when far fewer voters cast ballots.  The measure to raise the level to pass voter-initiated amendments to 60% will need only 50% +1 vote to pass.

As freshman New York Democratic Congressman Jamaal Bowman announces to onlookers that Republicans are “gutless” and “cowards” for their failure to act after the latest, not last, mass murder at a school by an attacker using an assault rifle, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie, a co-chair of the Second Amendment Caucus, attempts to confront Bowman, claiming guns save lives.  Telling Massie he doesn’t have facts, Bowman notes that gun death rates are higher in states that have open carry and other laws that provide easy access to guns.  Steny Hoyer, an embarrassed senior statesman in the House, tries to de-escalate the situation unsuccessfully.

“On Friday, March 31, the President and the First Lady will travel to Rolling Fork, Mississippi. The President and the First Lady will visit with first responders, state and local officials, and communities impacted by the devastation from recent storms, survey recovery efforts, and reaffirm their commitment to supporting the people of Mississippi as long as it takes,” says the White House.

Poor paunchy oaf Governor Tate Reeves, having to pretend he’ll be grateful for the help from the Biden Administration when all he wants in life is his Orange Antichrist back in office.

Heels-wearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s already watered-down plan to get revenge on Disney for daring to question his homophobic regime by putting his loyal minions in charge of the Reedy Creek Improvement District – Disney World’s self-governed municipality – appears to have been ratfucked (or mousefucked) even further as a series of last-minute maneuvers to implement their own 30-year development agreement by the entertainment giant have effectively neutered DeSantis’s hand-picked state oversight board, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

We don’t really need to get into the weeds about what exactly Disney pulled off here and pretend to understand as the reaction by one of DeSantis’s goons says more than enough. “We’re going to have to deal with it and correct it. It’s a subversion of the will of the voters and the Legislature and the governor. It completely circumvents the authority of this board to govern,” said some plainly frustrated wiener conservative lawyer Tiny D had appointed to the now-toothless board.

For their part Disney corporate sounded pretty confident it’s a done deal and that they’re in the clear on this. “All agreements signed between Disney and the district were appropriate and were discussed and approved in open, noticed public forums in compliance with Florida’s Government in the Sunshine law,” the company said it a statement. Again, DeSantis’s reichsministers only found out they’ve been shut down for the next 30 years after the paperwork had been publicly filed by Disney.

Fat former President Trump on Wednesday filed an appeal of DC Circuit Judge Beryl Howell’s ruling from earlier this month voiding his claims of executive privilege and ordering disgraced former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Trump social media dipshit Dan Scavino, former National Security Advisor Bob O’Brien, Nazi creep Stephen Miller, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, failed MAGA dating app entrepreneur Johnny McEntee, and some asshole aide named Nick Luna to testify to the federal grand jury investigating the failed coup attempt in the aftermath of their Orange Allah’s humiliating defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

A little-known Alabama Congressman decided to make his name on the GOP’s radar by using a dogwhistle racial slander to criticize the DC government during a committee meeting Wednesday, calling Washington, DC schools “inmate factories,” according to NBC News.  Aside from repeating a racist trope, however, the Alabaman may want to look at his state’s record first.

Representing a state ranked in the bottom 10% for education and in the top 20% for highest incarceration rates in the United States, Alabama Congressman Gary Palmer decried DC’s schools, telling D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson during a hyperbolically named “Overdue Oversight of the Capitol City Part 1” meeting,  “You’ve got crappy schools. Your schools are not only dropout factories, they’re inmate factories.”

The incarceration rate in Washington, DC–a self-enclosed urban federal district where residents are still taxed but have no federal representational power–has an incarceration rate of 899 per 100,000 residents, including those on pre-trial detention and minors in juvenile facilities, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.  (DC’s prisons are more crowded thanks to the influx of “correctional tourists” from out of state serving sentences in federal facilities within city limits.) According to the same source, Alabama incarcerates people at a rate of 938 per 100,000 residents.  Because Alabama’s schools are so poorly rated, someone needs to explain to Palmer that 938 is greater than 899, meaning Alabama has a wider school-to-prison pipeline.

Emails released in a document dump from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox show a member of the network’s so-called “brain room” telling staff the on-air claims by Donald Trump and others about vote flipping by Dominion machines is false.  “There’s no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election or of major problems with Dominion’s systems,” an email from brain room “information specialist” and occasionally reporter Leonard Balducci, who at that time had been with the network about eight years.  Megan Ilievski, whose LinkedIn profile shows she now works for Newsmax, was an associate producer and guest booker for Jeanine Pirro’s on-air Happy Hour.  Kevin Ward is listed as a “legal information specialist” in Fox’s Brainroom.

Former Vice President Mike Pence was swinging around in Iowa on Wednesday, trying to rope in voters’ interest in a presidential bid when a journalist asked for the latest noose on a DC federal judge’s Tuesday ruling ordering Pence to testify to the grand jury investigating disgraced former President Trump’s post-2020 election coup attempt, the Huffington Post reports.

“I have nothing to hide. I have written and spoken extensively about that day. At the end of the day, we’ll obey the law,” Pence said, further fueling speculation he won’t stick his neck out for Trump and appeal the ruling as DC Circuit Judge James Boasberg let Pence hang on to his Speech and Debate privilege claim on certain questions pertaining to the electoral count session. “Now, for the first time ever, a federal court has recognized that these protections extend to a vice president,” said Pence about the topics that probably are of little to no interest to Jack Smith.

The grand jury investigating fat former President Trump’s 2016 hush money payoff to pornstar Stormy Daniels is going on a “previously scheduled hiatus” until the end of next month, pushing any indictment vote likely to late April at the earliest, Politico reports while adding “although it is possible that the grand jury’s schedule could change.” That’s like complete and total exoneration.

A new Quinnipiac University survey finds that 57 percent of respondents agree that disgraced former President Trump should be disqualified from running again in 2024 if charged with a crime, while 38 percent disagreed. Among Dem respondents the number unsurprisingly went up to 88 percent disqualify to 9 don’t, with Republicans it was 23 percent disqualify, 75 percent don’t, and with Independents it was close to the overall finding at 55 percent disqualify to 36 percent don’t.

Obviously Trump will not be legally disqualified if (really when) he’s charged with a crime, but that this many voters overall would say that the mere accusation of a crime (and not an actual conviction at trial) should be disqualifying, coupled with that he’s almost certain to win the 2024 GOP nomination (the survey finds him leading Ron DeSantis 47 to 33 percent with a full field including Mike Pence and Nimrata “Nikki” Haley) ought to be pretty fucking terrifying for Republicans.

But by far the funniest finding in this survey is that 62 percent agreed that the Donald’s likely coming indictment in NYC “is mainly motivated by politics.” The fanboys are probably going to run wild with that one while pretending that the very same survey and the very same sample did not also say by a slightly lesser margin that those charges should still disqualify Trump in 2024 anyway.

The Buncombe County, North Carolina Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday announced the arrest of verified Trump fan Jacob Hanalei Boyd and his politically unaffiliated accomplice James Edd Ligon Jr, charging both with multiple counts of Third Degree Sexual Exploitation of a Minor after a search warrant on a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children revealed the two to be in possession of nearly 1,000 child pornographic images, WECT reports.

“The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office Special Investigations Unit is dedicated to investigating domestic violence, sex offenses, and crimes against children,” said BCSO Major John Ledford in a press release on the MAGA scumbag’s arrest. “Violence and abuse have no place in our community. Our SIU detectives will continue to fervently pursue all offenders and investigate all tips.”

Boyd’s Facebook profile describes him as “Christian, Biker, iced coffee addict, Not Vacationed !” the last one we’re pretty sure is a misspelling of “vaccinated.” Only the best people.

Since the school closures, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in trans identifying children, which is something that was not normal nor common many years before this, and I think that’s completely devastating. pic.twitter.com/UhUnm8jCLk

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) March 29, 2023