Former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley announced that she will announce the launch of her 2024 campaign to be the first woman to win the Republican presidential nomination.

Yeah, that’s not a typo.  Per the Charleston Post & Courier, Haley is distributing a “Save the Date” for an announcement on February 15th at a visitor center in Charleston, South Carolina.  Donors are receiving emails saying it will be a “special announcement” regarding the politician’s future and her vision for America.  So 21 months until Election Day 2024, the challenge to the Trump cabal has begun in the Republican Party.

Alina Habba, a Bedminster, New Jersey attorney who shot to the top of Donald Trump’s legal team courtesy of having a law office close to Trump’s golf course and not having high standards, has advised the court that she’s left Trump’s legal team relating to the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, where Trump is accused of raping the journalist in a department store dressing room in the 1990s.

While we don’t know the cause for this–the letter to the judge in the case stresses the move was not made as another Trump maneuver to delay proceedings–but it could be because two weeks ago, she, her fellow counsel and Donald Trump were jointly fined nearly one million dollars for bringing frivolous lawsuits to the federal court.  Last week, Trump dropped another lawsuit he had filed against New York Attorney General Letitia James, a suit on which Habba served as counsel.

Two emperor tamarin monkeys that had somehow escaped their enclosure from the Dallas Zoo were found in the closet of an abandoned home in a town 15 miles away, ending the latest crisis at the Texas facility that sounds like it belongs in Florida, but leading to more questions.

Per the Associated Press, the zoo realized the monkeys were missing Monday morning and found a cut in the animals’ enclosure that would have allowed the monkeys to escape or someone to go into the pen to grab them.  Officials said earlier Monday that they did not believe the monkeys escaped on their own, and the fact that they were both found locked in the same closet a half hour drive from the zoo makes it highly unlikely it’s a monkey version of the blackout drunk night out from “The Hangover Part II.”

This is the third curious occurrence at the Dallas Zoo recently.  A rare species of vulture died of being mysteriously wounded in its enclosure in December.  A small leopard escaped in January through another cut enclosure, wandering free before being found next to its enclosure the following day.  Workers have reported finding other enclosures cut, but did not find any animals missing or harmed.

Three Haitian Americans and a Colombian have been charged by the US Justice Department for their roles in the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse because the Administration has doubts about the ability of the Haitian justice system to properly handle such an important case.

As the New York Times notes, the Haitian government has essentially collapsed since Moïse was killed in a July 7, 2021 assassination allegedly armed by plotters in the United States arming Colombian mercenaries supposedly organized by a former Haitian supreme court judge.  The US has already charged three others in connection with the assassination, but these defendants are considered to be part of the plan’s leadership; the previously indicted individuals helped supply the mercenaries when they arrived on Haiti.

This round, Haitian Americans James Solages and Joseph Vincent, along with Colombian Germán Alejandro Rivera García, were charged with conspiracy to murder Moïse.  Dr. Christian Emmanuel Sanon was charged with smuggling.

A new internal report by Republican National Committee staff plans for the party to build out a permanent “election integrity” infrastructure in all 50 states to challenge every race they lose and continue sustaining the self-created bullshit about widespread “fraud”, the Washington Post reports.

The “National Election Integrity Team” report recommends recruiting local captains to train poll watchers and observers to feed into the paranoid insanity that has fueled a lot of the right wing since fat former President Trump lost in the 2020 election. The plan reportedly acknowledges that the obsession definitely cost them in the Georgia Senate runoffs in 2021, but says the way to address that is to gain more access. “If there is corruption in the election infrastructure, then having Republicans in the system will expose many issues,” the report says as if the GOP had literally any success whatsoever in “exposing fraud” in crucial swing state contests last year.

If any of this sounds familiar… well, no shit it does, but from the RNC specifically, you may remember them coming out publicly with more or less the exact same thing two years ago when they launched an “election integrity committee.” Weird how that didn’t really work, like at all, and Dems managed to gain in the Senate and just barely lose the House, not to mention all the state-level wins, and they’re doing it again instead of just being real with their voters about the need to turn out.

US State Department officials have informed Congress it considers Russia in violation of the New START treaty, the only remaining nuclear agreement between the two nations because it’s blocking inspections within its borders, ABC News reports.

Signed and ratified in 2011, New START allows for up to 18 in-person on-site inspections of facilities to ensure the parties are complying with the limits on nuclear arms produced.  Combined with satellite and remote monitoring–the US runs radiation detection stations at allied nations along the Russian border including Ukraine–the New START treaty was meant to continue bilateral cooperation initiated in the original START treaty signed in 1991 and extended in a series of other agreements.

“Russia is not complying with its obligation under the New START Treaty to facilitate inspection activities on its territory,” a State Department statement said. “Russia’s refusal to facilitate inspection activities prevents the United States from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control.”

Since launching his fourth presidential campaign (remember:  he ran, and dropped out, in 2000 as a Reform Party candidate) in November, Donald Trump has struggled to attract donors, raising just $9.5 million for his campaign and a joint Trump-RNC committee, NBC News reports.

Just one week after the GOP suffered an essential loss in the midterms–barely taking the majority in the House and losing a seat in the Senate was far below the outcome of the predicted Red Tsumani–Trump announced his presidential bid with little fanfare outside of his typical outlets.  Trump critics questioned the timing of the launch given the vast majority of his top-ballot candidates failed to win their midterm elections; rumblings within the Party pointed to Trump as the cause of their electoral dysfunction.

Trump likely thought that getting out ahead of the fundraising rush would give him an advantage, but donors appear tired of fundraising drives and skeptical of Trump’s long-term prospects given his ongoing legal troubles and administrative gaffes.  “If you want a big fundraising pop when you announce your campaign, you don’t do it right after an election where all your donors are burned out from being bombarded by fundraising asks and you don’t have a great track record to show for it,” Eric Wilson, a Republican digital fundraising consultant, said.  Marketing genius, Trump is:  beg for money when people are tapped out and switching to holiday spending.  Brilliant.

“Today, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, applauded the selection of West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest to provide the 2023 U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree. The U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree – known as ‘The People’s Tree’ – lights up the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol during the holiday season and is selected from a different national forest each year. Today’s selection kicks off a year-long educational celebration with the theme ‘Endlessly Wild & Wonderful’ to connect people to West Virginia’s public lands.”

“‘The Capitol Christmas Tree is a wonderful, historic tradition that brings our great country together during the holidays, and I am thrilled that the 2023 tree will be from West Virginia’s Monongahela National Forest,’ said Senator Joe Manchin, Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. ‘The 2023 Capitol Christmas Tree will represent the wild and wonderful nature of the Mountain State – including our remarkable forestry and wildlife – for the first time since 1976. I’m grateful to the Forest Service for their hard work and partnership on this event, and I look forward to celebrating this honor with my fellow West Virginians,'” says a statement from Manchin’s office.

Wow that’s, uh, a lot of enthusiasm for a tree being cut down. So much so you’d think it was hundreds of trees being cut down to strip mine for coal or something. That Manchin almost certainly didn’t say all those things but instead had a staffer write it is besides the point, he still put his name on this bizarre victory lap over a wild West Virginian tree getting cut down and put on display.

And just like that, the Biden War Mongering Regime is preparing yet another $2.2 BILLION weapons package heading for Ukraine that includes "longer-range" missiles.

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 31, 2023

Now this might sound kind of wacky, but what if this guy wants to see Russia destroy the Ukrainian military and subjugate the entire country because Russia pays him? A little far out, right? Still it’s hard to come away from this with any other feeling than that this goes beyond mere reflexive opposition to anything a Democratic president does but like he’s actually getting paid by the Kremlin to type this kind of shit on Twitter because of his influence. Crazy stuff, we know, but like, what if the Russians have identified Kirk as someone with a great deal of influence over the “grassroots” of the American right and are paying him to espouse an ostensibly “anti-war” message to build momentum against US military support for Ukraine? That sure would be something else, right?

The unnamed staffer for Herschel Walker’s campaign who sued CPAC chief Matt Schlapp for sexual assault has filed a second lawsuit against Republican operative Caroline Wren for defamation after Wren identified the accuser in multiple tweets calling him a “habitual liar,” Politico reports.

The accuser seeks $500,000 in damages from Wren, who was a key player in the “Stop the Steal” rally immediately before the Capitol riot and recently ran both Kari Lake and Harmeet Dhillon’s failed campaigns for Arizona governor and Republican National Committee chair, respectively.

“I like Mr Jordan, but he should do what he has said he’ll do and what we demand of him. If he doesn’t, he’ll be turned on by Republicans as fast as they did on dizzy lizzy chaney [sic]”

– The current top comment on the Fox News article “Conservatives worry GOP will go soft on Big Tech after Jim Jordan’s surprise committee decision,” posted Tuesday. Dumb story short, Jim Jordan picked Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie to lead the House Antitrust Committee instead of Colorado Congressman Ken Buck, which isn’t sitting well with the fanboys as they see Buck as one to actually take action against Big Tech over “censorship” while Massie would just talk a lot of shit and do nothing, leading them to suspect Jordan might be in the tech giants’ pocket.

The article quotes right wing activist Mike Davis of the Internet Accountability Project complaining about the choice, but only tamely criticizing Jordan. Probably smart on Fox News’s part because if they printed Davis as saying that Jordan “talks a big game… He pretends he’s fighting Big Tech publicly, but does their bidding behind the scenes. He needs to be exposed. He’s a pretty cheap legislator to buy,” like he did on Steve Bannon’s show just a few months ago then they might be doing some serious damage to Jordan’s brand among the MAGA faithful.

Mississippi MAGA doctor John Witcher tells the Epoch Times he’s running for governor on a pro-horse paste, anti-COVID vaccine, pro-freedom platform and because he needs a new job after being fired in December 2021 for prescribing the useless salve to a patient who requested it.

“The biggest reason I’m running is because I want to bring about medical transparency,” said Witcher in an interview with the far right Chinese dissident cult propaganda outlet, explaining he’s going to launch this whole sweeping investigation into injuries and deaths caused by the COVID vaccine if he wins. He won’t, as bespectacled oaf incumbent Governor Tate Reeves is running for reelection and would almost certainly already have the Republican primary locked down.

Thanks for just admitting that I was telling the truth about EVERYTHING. 😂 Guess I'll take my "horse face" back to bed now, Mr. former "president".
Btw, that's the correct way to use quotation marks. 💋 pic.twitter.com/VSG867kwk8

— Stormy Daniels (@StormyDaniels) January 31, 2023

When a woman replied saying “I’m throwing a HUGE party at my home in the Hamptons when he is indicted. You are always on my guest list!” Daniels responded with “Will there be snacks? Say there’s going to be cheese plates and I’m there! No cocktail weenies though, please. 😂”

Well color us mildly impressed. An apparently sincere effort to combat child sex trafficking and support the victims has been launched by a prominent Trump supporter, as Goya Foods CEO Robert Uribe’s “Goya Cares” charity is on a new awareness and publicity campaign this month. It seems to have been in the works for a while as while the Twitter account for @GoyaCares joined in February 2021, it did not start posting its public service announcements until a few weeks ago.

Who the hell knows how much of the money is going to actually do what they say they’re doing but the fact that Uribe is at least pretending to focus on child sex trafficking and not just accusing Hillary Clinton, Tom Hanks, and Oprah Winfrey of murdering children has to count for something, right?

A fire that started in an Atlanta-area firehouse kitchen on Sunday because one of the firemen forgot to turn off the stove when leaving to respond to a fire was extinguished before the fire could get out of control and engulf the entire firehouse in fire, the Associated Press reports.

No firemen were injured in the fire fire fire FIRE! While we could have gone with the “gas stove” angle, that was earlier this month and apparently Biden doesn’t want to take them away any more.

Lawyers with the New York State Attorney General’s office on Tuesday asked Manhattan Judge Arthur Engoron to sanction fat former President Trump, his moron kids, and their lawyers over false statements in court documents concerning whether the Orange Tyrant was still the president of the Trump Org during the four years he was President of The United States, the Daily Beast reports.

The lie was caught when the AG’s team saw Donald claim in testimony that he was an “inactive president” of his corrupt company while occupying the White House as directly contradicting testimony in a separate case – the one over the protestors his security guards beat the shit out of in 2015 – that while in office he “was an inactive president and now I’m active again.” Trump also apparently lied in response to question on whether he had a partnership with a real state company called Vornado, which is probably something a little bit more material to the $250 million lawsuit New York Attorney General Leticia James is waging against the fat bastard.

Separately CBS News have obtained video of the August 10th, 2022 deposition in which Trump pleaded the fifth more than 440 times in response to questions about his business dealings.

FBI agents conducted a search of the Penn Center in DC in mid-November 2022, at least a week after an attorney reviewing papers in an office used by President Biden between 2017 and 2021 noticed Biden had been possessing classified documents dating from the Obama Administration and contacted the Department of Justice and the National Archives, CBS News reports.

It is not clear if the FBI found any additional classified material during the mid-November search, but they went there, just like they did with Mar-a-Lago. Not that this will make the fanboys any less aggrieved but hey it’s something. The FBI was involved in a search with Biden too.

Responding to a question from a reporter about Trump’s recent attack on DeSantis over his handling of COVID on Tuesday, Napoleonic Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said “If you take a crisis situation like Covid…when you’re an elected executive, you have to make all kinds of decisions…the people are able to render a judgement on that, whether they reelect you or not…I’m happy to say in my case… we won,” without naming names. Pretty obvious what he was saying though.

Lying piece of shit Congressman George Santos told the House Republican caucus Tuesday morning that he will step down from his seats on the House Committee on Small Business and the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Politico’s Olivia Beavers reports. It’s not clear what Santos thinks he’s accomplishing by giving in to Democrats on this, but it’s certainly surprising.

Seems like a bit of a switch from the “With murders and violent crime surging like never before in New York City, the Radical Left Manhattan D.A., Alvin Bragg, just leaked to the Fake News Media that they are still going after the Stormy ‘Horseface’ Daniels Bull…! Working closely with the Weaponized Justice Department, this is a continuation of the Greatest Witch Hunt of all time. They long ago missed the Statute of Limitations, & I recently won big money against ‘Stormy’ in the 9th Circuit – NEVER HAD AN AFFAIR. This is old news!” the fat bastard wrote on Monday.

Because if he “NEVER HAD AN AFFAIR” then why is he bringing up the statute of limitations and that his “COUNCIL” handled it appropriately? Isn’t there some old axiom about how you only argue the law if the facts aren’t on your side? And he’s wrong about that too: The statute of limitations is tolled for every day he’s not within the boundaries of New York State. If they amounted to 100 total days since late October 2016 we would be surprised. Whatever the case is, the Orange God Emperor is evidently panicked enough to public say stupid and possibly legally damaging shit like this.