Five patrons are dead and at least another 18 were injured when a gunman opened fire Saturday at Club Q, an LGBT nightclub in Colorado Springs, CNN reports. Details about the gunman were not immediately available. In a Facebook post on Sunday, Club Q credited patrons with subduing the scumbag, writing “Club Q is devastated by the senseless attack on our community. Our prays and thoughts [sic] are with all the victims and their families and friends. We thank the quick reactions of heroic customers that subdued the gunman and ended this hate attack.”

UPDATE 11/20/2022 10:35 AM EST: The shooter has been identified as Anderson Lee Aldrich, age 21 or 22, who was previously reported to have made bomb threats against his mom.

After his idiotic poll finished with a 52% to 48% margin, Elon Musk announced that “the people have spoken” and that Donald Trump will be allowed to return to Twitter.  Trump has said he wouldn’t return to Twitter, opting to make his failing social media venture Truth Social his outlet.

UPDATE 11/19/2022 8:40 PM EST: @realDonaldTrump is live once again.

Let’s see how long Donald holds out for.

In the course of investigating the leak this spring of a draft opinion overturning the right to body autonomy and the right to access birth control, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts got a letter from a DC-area evangelical minister telling him he learned of a 2014 Supreme Court decision that allowed employers to exclude birth control from health care coverage before it was released because Justice Samuel Alito told a dinner guest.

According to the New York Times, Rev. Rob Schenck said that in June 2014, one of his donors told him she might be able to learn the unreleased outcome of the Burrell v. Hobby Lobby case because she was having dinner at Alito’s house in the coming days.  The donor knew Schenck had an interest in the case, and after her dinner, she called Schenck to say Alito told her it was decided in Hobby Lobby’s favor.  This knowledge allowed Schenck and other anti-choice/anti-birth control advocates to prepare a media blitz.

The Supreme Court is investing the leak of the draft of the decision of the Dobbs decision that eliminated a medical right to privacy for pregnant people, overturning the right to an abortion decided in the Roe v Wade case.  Alito also wrote the Dobbs decision draft, which was leaked and later published by Politico, who did not disclose the source of the text.

In what will surely come to be known as “weather reparations” in conservative media, the United States is discussing terms for which it would sign on to a new agreement between the European Union and more than 100 developing nations relating to compensation for damages from climate change, the Washington Post reports.

Negotiated during the UN climate conference, known as COP27, being held in Egypt, the agreement would provide funds to nations impacted by things like persistent droughts, rising sea levels, and changing weather patterns to help them mitigate damage or in some cases, migrate populations.  Talks about the fund started with discussions between European nations and archipelagic states for assistance programs, and progressed into a fund covering a multitude of climate issues impacting poor nations that were typically colonies of European nations.

The United States has previously resisted the formation of such a fund, feeling that previous proposals improperly assign blame or open up contributing nations to liability suits, damage claims and other potential dangers.  This fund does no imply guilt and caps potential claims.  A White House official said US contributions will come out of an $11 billion expenditure Biden has already proposed to help underdeveloped nations tackle climate change’s impact.

Somewhere out in the vast multiverse there’s a world in which National Zero is strictly publishing articles about stuff like morons getting killed dancing atop a moving 18-wheeler and snowplows being brought into clear a mass mink roadkill. Well, strictly those sort of articles rather than just the darkly humorous momentary diversions from our politics-focused coverage they were in this reality.

Because in that dimension we’re too depressed to want anything to do with politics at all really. It’s where Trafalgar polling was right and the Republicans won 60+ seats in the House, have a 55 seat majority in the Senate, and – worse yet -hardcore MAGA scumbags like Kari Lake, Tudor Dixon, Tim Michels, Mark Finchem, Jim Marchant, Kristina Karamo, and Doug Mastriano won their crucial swing state contests, positioning themselves to rig the 2024 election for Republicans.

It’s a world in which fat former President Trump this week had the wind at his back announcing his 2024 comeback bid, giddily anticipating two years of commanding his loyal scumbags in the new deep red House to impeach Joe Biden again and again and again. The MAGA trolls would take over the entire internet while libs would stare glassy-eyed at Netflix reality shows, eating bowl after bowl of Count Chocula with Nesquik in their pjs. Chuck Todd is cackling and chittering with delight.

The Board of Supervisors in rural Cochise County, Arizona, voted 2 to 1 against certifying the results of the midterm elections on Friday after some MAGA assholes convinced them the US Elections Assistance Commission allowed certifications for the companies that test the vote tabulators to lapse, which in turn voided the certifications all the state’s tabulators, the AP reports.

Naturally the people who actually know what they’re talking about called bullshit. “The equipment used in Cochise County is properly certified under both federal and state laws and requirements. The claims that the SLI testing labs were not properly accredited are false,” state Elections Director Kori Lorick told the board. Loser Republican Secretary of State candidate and hardcore MAGA election conspiracy theorist Mark Finchem was predictably thrilled by their refusal, tweeting that “Arizona cannot certify any election results until all counties have rendered certified results.”

It’s not clear if Finchem was actually citing state law or just making shit up. All 15 Arizona counties face a November 28th deadline to certify the results of the election so the state can certify on December 5th. If he’s just making shit up then it does nothing to change the outcome of the biggest statewide races, just the margin. For example, Dem Senator Mark Kelly defeated Reptilian humanoid Blake Masters 1,320,066 to 1,194,534 statewide to win a full six year term. If Cochise County is left out of that total then Kelly still wins 1,300,064 to 1,168,995. All it does is increase Kelly’s margin by 5,537 votes. So by all means, the MAGA hillbillies in Cochise should be allowed to fuck around to their diseased hearts’ content. The state can move on with or without them.

• Nancy Pelosi will go down in history as the most consequential Speaker of the House in US history.  Not just for being the first woman in the seat, but also for shepherding landmark legislation like the ACA and the Inflation Reduction Act through–and then literally staring down Trumpism.
• In the midterm, Vermont became the final state to elect a woman to Congress.  In 2022.  The state’s first female representative will take office the same day the first female Speaker steps down.
• The appointment of the Special Counsel shows (1) the investigation into Trump’s malfeasance has been going on for a long time at the DOJ and it is not complete; and (2) there are charges coming.  You don’t appoint a Special Counsel to start a new investigation or take over the end of an existing investigation, and you don’t appoint one if you think no charges are likely.
• Trump calculated the announcement of his candidacy would tamp down the various investigations into his questionable actions.  Garland countered with the appointment of a Special Counsel who will have independent indictment power.  Once again, someone calls Trump’s bluff and Trump loses.  
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume XCVI”

Reinstate former President Trump

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 19, 2022

Donald Trump’s Save America PAC and the Republican National Committee have paid at least $500,000 to three law firms defending the Trump Organization or its officers, including convicted criminal and former company CFO Allen Weisselberg, CBS News reports.

When Weisselberg’s lawyer, Nicholas Gravante of the Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft law firm was asked about a $75,000 payment his firm received from Save America PAC, Gravante could not confirm it was to cover his fees.

Law firm van der Veen, Hartshorn and Levin, representing a Trump company in the case, received $100,00 from Save Amerca PAC and nearly $150,000 from the RNC.  Michael van der Veen could not specify if his firm was doing other work for those entities.  His law firm has 13 attorneys, according to its website, and he is listed as the senior partner.  One of his partners is Bruce Castor, who represented Donald Trump during Trump’s second impeachment trial.

Attention QAnon fanboys! We made you an awesome meme template for new Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith! No need to explain it to you guys, you’ve done your own research already and decided that given Smith’s resume as a prosecutor at the Hague, he’s the vanguard of the globalist Deep State and thus a sworn enemy of President Trump and patriots like you.

To regular National Zero readers, sorry. The joke wrote itself. We couldn’t not do it when we saw the picture of Smith in his vaguely new age-y war crimes tribunal court robe. You knew where this was going anyway, that all the right wing “oppo” is going to be about Smith’s connections to the international elite and blah blah blah. Might as well get ahead of it. Figure around Monday morning at the latest the fanboys will have their talking points together about Smith. It’ll be all over Mediaite, Breitbart, the Gateway Pundit, etc… If it isn’t already. Should’ve checked first.

“I personally think that they probably have the basis for legitimately indicting the president [Trump],” Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr says in an interview on PBS.  “I don’t know, I’m speculating.  But, but given what’s gone on, I think they probably have the evidence that would check the box.”

According to testimony in the company’s criminal trial, Don Jr. and Eric Trump gave Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg a $200,000 raise on top of his million dollar salary after they learned of his efforts to avoid paying taxes by compensating himself and other employees off the books, NBC News reports.

Weisselberg testified that in 2017, as Donald Trump took office as  president and his sons worked to make the family business appear legitimate, Weisselberg told the sons about having to stop the illegal pay scam, which resulted in an effect loss of income for himself and other employees.  To compensate for the loss, the sons gave Weisselberg a $200,000 annual salary increase.

Fresh off her second defeat in three months to Dem Congresswoman Mary Peltola, dumbass former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on Thursday was the honorary first signatory to a ballot initiative petition to end ranked-choice voting in the state, the Anchorage Daily News reports.

Speaking to a crowd of several dozen fans gathered at a church in Anchorage, Palin said ranked choice voting is “whack” and promised to “fight for what’s right and to lead the rest of the nation in getting back to fair, free, transparent, clear elections.” The effort to revert back to regular voting is being pushed by a newly formed PAC called “Alaskans for Honest Government,” which – surprise! – does not publicly disclose the identities of its current financial backers.

Semi-Robin Hood-like figure Elizabeth Holmes, who stole from oligarchic criminals Rupert Murdoch, Betsy DeVos, and the Waltons of Walmart fame and gave to herself, was sentenced Friday to 135 months in federal prison for her scam with some fake blood testing device, Bloomberg reports.

We vehemently disagree with this sentence. And only half-jokingly. As far as we know Holmes wasn’t Bernie Madoff, she didn’t wipe out the life savings of regular upper middle class retirees on this scam (and if she did then fuck her, by all means lock her up then). It was all rich assholes getting bilked. Nobody suffered besides her employees who lost their jobs and if that’s not a crime when Elon Musk does it then it shouldn’t be a crime for Holmes. A few years probation and community service should do fine, incarcerating her is pointless and a waste of taxpayer resources.

A Georgia judge on Friday ordered counties to allow voters to cast early ballots on November 26th in the runoff election between Senator Reverend Raphael Warnock and deadbeat dad Herschel Walker, overturning a directive from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to close polls that day because of some stupid rule about not allowing voting on the Saturday after a state holiday. Naturally the Walker campaign and the NRSC opposed allowing a weekend day of early voting.

The hits, they keep on a-comin’.  Newly declassified documents confirm Donald Trump recklessly disclosed the capabilities of a highly classified surveillance satellite system when he tweeted a classified photo shown to him during a national security briefing, NPR reports.

On a day when the Attorney General appointed a Special Counsel to investigate multiple episodes of Trump’s malfeasance, the disclosure of the extent of a security breach Trump’s tweet created amplifies the narrative of the former president’s disregard for national security when it interferes with his self-gratification.

The photograph of an Iranian launch site destroyed by a rocket malfunction was part of a national security briefing at which Trump asked to keep a copy of the photograph; an hour later, he tweeted it out to his tens of millions of followers.  Some national security analysts speculated at the time, based on the resolution of the photograph that it was taken by a drone or high-altitude flyover.  However, due to notations and instrument readings included in Trump’s tweeted image, aerospace experts recognized it as a satellite image, likely taken by a highly classified KH-11 series satellite.

Disgraced former President Trump on Friday told Fox News he “won’t partake” in the new Justice Department Special Counsel investigation into his treasonous behavior, almost like he thinks it’s somehow optional for him, as if the American justice system has some sort of “opt-out” feature where defendants can click “unsubscribe” at any time to decline prosecution.

“I have been going through this for six years – for six years I have been going through this, and I am not going to go through it anymore. And I hope the Republicans have the courage to fight this,” Trump said, like Ted Cruz or Jim Jordan can unilaterally fire a special counsel. “I have been proven innocent for six years on everything – from fake impeachments to Mueller who found no collusion, and now I have to do it more? It is not acceptable. It is so unfair. It is so political,” the big fat baby continued whining over the increasing threat of being held accountable.

“I am not going to partake in it. I’m not going to partake in this,” he kept going, saying “I have never heard of such a thing. They found nothing. I announce and then they appoint a special prosecutor. They found nothing, and now they take some guy who hates Trump. This is a disgrace and only happening because I am leading in every poll in both parties. It is not even believable that they’re allowed to do this. This is the worst politicization of justice in our country.”

Saying “We have shown the country that extremist politicians can be defeated. Loud voices are not invincible and shouting will not solve problems,” Democrat Adam Frisch conceded the race for the Colorado 3rd Congressional District seat to incumbent Congresswoman and alleged former prostitute Lauren Boebert (Q), Politico reports.

The candidates are separated by 554 votes, a 0.16% margin, which triggers an automatic recount, something Frisch opted to go without because he didn’t believe a recount would change the result and it would be a hassle for a “handful of votes.”

“I intend to conduct the assigned investigations, and any prosecutions that may result from them, independently and in the best traditions of the Department of Justice. The pace of the investigations will not pause or flag under my watch. I will exercise independent judgement and will move the investigations forward expeditiously and thoroughly to whatever outcome the facts and the law dictate,” says new Special Counsel Jack Smith in a statement.