Senate Republican campaigns looking for some help from Trump’s “Save America” slush fund have been impolitely told to fuck off, per a Politico report on the “political campaign” money Donald has sucked up for shit like Melania’s dresses not being deployed to help the GOP win Congress.

“It’s not Trump’s job to elect a Senate majority,” one source, described obnoxiously and in typically grating mainstream media fashion as being from “Trump World” told Politico. This, despite a recent “Save America” fundraising email saying literally “Thanks to your generous support, we’ll win BACK our Republican Majority in the House AND the Senate,” is the life that Republicans will have to adjust to. Or, more accurately, have been living in for years and still somehow act fucking surprised when they find out that Trump does not now and never will give a shit about them.

“There really were good people on both sides at the wedding of Tess Owen and Andrew Campbell” is how the New York Times wedding announcement for the Vice and Huffington Post (respectively) domestic extremism reporters should’ve started, but it’s the Times and they’re not really cheeky.

It’s a shame though. It was right freaking there. Owen and Campbell met in Charlottesville the day after the 2017 “Unite The Right” rally and their love quickly burned with all the heat of a Tiki Torch carried by a cargo shorts-wearing antisemitic Trump fan – and goddammit that would’ve been perfect too! The Times did at least include how they asked guests to “Keep it light on the fascism” in their toasts and that Owen said “This is our one day to not think about far-right extremists.”

We’re not going to badmouth Queen Elizabeth II. She was a graceful, determined leader who served her people admirably for eight decades, going all the way back to World War II. We express our deepest condolences to the British, Bahamian, Jamaican, Belizean, Kittitian, New Zealander, Nevisian, Canadian, Solomon Islander, Australian, and at least 10 other demonyms for people living under her reign in various other commonwealth realms and British territorial possessions.

We enjoy covering international politics. Insight into what’s going on elsewhere in the worldwide fight against fascism, racism, and corruption is important. What happens in the UK, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere certainly has implications for our readership who call those countries home, and it affects us here too, even if that may not always be on our radar.

But the British Royal family is not politics. It’s monarchy. This is over and done with for our purposes. We’ve said what we’re going to say about Elizabeth II already and – unless it’s something really wacky or outrageous we can relate to – we’re finished covering the passing of a 96 year old woman, much as we respected and liked her for who she was and the work she did.

We’re Americans. Our Queen is democracy. She lives for now, but she is threatened everywhere, not just here, and we’re not going to ask for forgiveness for keeping our focus on every minute change in her condition while the other guys do wall-to-wall coverage of the freaking 17-day mourning period for Elizabeth in Britain and elsewhere. We want to know and we want you to know more about Liz Truss than Liz the Queen as Truss takes over. Or this Pierre Poilievre asshole making gains among the Canadian Conservatives. And most importantly, what’s happening right here, under the unblinking eyes of our green queen in New York harbor.

Continuing their pattern of utter douchebaggery in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, Minnesota Republicans are again no so quietly backing a candidate from an obscure pro-legal marijuana party’s US House campaign in the swingy 2nd district, the Minnesota Reformer reports.

Dem Congresswoman Angie Craig already lost once, in 2016, when Legal Marijuana Now Party candidate Paula Overby took 28,869 votes, while Republican Jason Lewis squeaked by Craig with a 6,655 vote win. Craig then won the 2018 rematch, without Overby on the ballot, by more than 18,000 votes. Next, in 2020, after Legal Marijuana Party nominee Adam Weeks died of a fentanyl overdose in September of that year – but not before telling a friend Republicans had paid him $15,000 to run – Craig beat GOP challenger Tyler Kistner by a little under 10,000 votes.

Now both Overby and Kistner are back this November, and Minnesota Democrats have had enough of this shit. “Given her close ties to Republican operatives who have pulled this same trick before, it is clear that Paula Overby is another Republican spoiler candidate who is running for office to get Republican Tyler Kistner elected,” said state Democrat-Farm-Labor Chairman Ken Martin.

If it wasn’t obvious enough after the Weeks debacle in 2020, it should be considering Overby’s campaign manager’s Facebook profile features that stupid Trump Rambo flag on it, and that her campaign has made at least $2,000 in payments to a business owned by a MAGA activist and former Republican state House candidate who goes by the name “Liberty Longbeard.”

A Florida federal judge on Friday dismissed disgraced former President Trump’s batshit insane lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and literally dozens of others over the 2016 election and the Russia investigation. The case had been on life support following the dismissal of the counts against former FBI employees James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok in July.

In his ruling, Southern Florida US District Court Judge Donald M Middlebrooks wrote that Trump’s “theory of this case, set forth over 527 paragraphs in the first 118 pages of the Amended Complaint, is difficult to summarize in a concise and cohesive manner. It was certainly not presented that way… Defendants now move to dismiss the Amended Complaint as ‘a series of disconnected political disputes that Plaintiff has alchemized into a sweeping conspiracy among the many individuals Plaintiff believes to have aggrieved him.’ They argue that dismissal is warranted because Plaintiff’s claims are both ‘hopelessly stale’ – that is, foreclosed by the applicable statutes of limitations – and because they fail on the merits ‘in multiple independent respects.’ As they view it, ‘[w]hatever the utilities of [the Amended Complaint] as a fundraising tool, a press release, or a list of political grievances, it has no merit as a lawsuit.’ I agree,” and goddamn this is hilarious.

Following Trump-endorsed far-right asshole state House Rep Chuck Gray’s win in the Wyoming Republican Secretary of State primary last month, which guaranteed he will be serving in the office come January as the Dems didn’t field a candidate (who would not have won anyway, let’s be honest), several Republican state lawmakers are so unnerved by the shit the maniac says they now are working to remove the position’s ability to oversee elections in the state, NPR reports.

Probably realizing that Gray’s “election integrity” batshittery would affect the outcomes of not just general elections, which Dems usually lose, but GOP primaries, the state House chair of the Joint Corporations, Elections, and Political Subdivisions Committee, Rep Dan Zwonitzer filed a bill to create a separate state elections commission, similar to that of Wisconsin’s. It passed the committee by voice vote and will hit the floor next month. “We may be in a precarious position when it comes to election administration for the next four years. And I would feel more confident and comfortable, personally, having a separate operating agency of government made up of all five statewide elected officials who oversee a director of an office of elections,” Zwonitizer said.

Republican Rep Brian Boner was stiff in his resistance, saying “I do understand some of the concerns,” Boner said. “I think Rep. Gray might have a hard time delivering on any of the promises that he made during the campaign season. But we also need to acknowledge the results of the election as well,” whatever the hell that means. Gray plans to ban all ballot drop boxes, fire every Secretary of State’s office employee who doesn’t “share his vision,” force voters to use paper ballots, and probably implement a whole shit ton of other terrible ideas.

The House January 6th Select Committee are eyeing Wednesday, September 28, as the date of the next hearing, Punchbowl News reports. No word yet on witnesses or subject matter.

“This is the reality of our situation right now, America.  We are literally in the most dual– as you said, there are dual systems for justice,” Trump lawyer and future client of a collections agency Alina Habba claims.  “If you are Trump, if you are anybody else, it’s different, it’s not right.  And if Hunter was Eric Trump or Don Jr. or Ivanka, God knows there would be some monster investigations.  They’d be in cuffs, paraded around, um, the FBI.  It, it, it’s actually absurd.”

Pay attention to this nugget of wisdom:  “If you are Trump, if you are anybody else, it’s different.”  She starts by claiming that there are two justice systems, but what we want is for Trump to be treated like anyone else.  And if Trump is treated like everyone else, as she claims, there’s not a two-tier system.

The one-time mayor of West Bountiful, Utah who served for decades as a bishop in the Mormon church has been arrested on suspicion of seven counts of sex abuse of children for incidents that happened in the 1980s and -90s, ABC News reports.

Seventy-seven year old Carl Matthew Johnson admitted to investigators to molesting three children at various times around 1985, 1993 and 1996, and estimated that he had molested at least six children, including one as young as two years old.

Some of the incidents overlap to when Johnson was mayor of West Bountiful, located ten miles north of Salt Lake City, from 1990 to 1997.  In each case, Johnson was in a “position of trust” with each victim, according to police, who did not elaborate on what that means.

Two Cobb County, Georgia sheriff’s deputies were killed Thursday evening as they attempted to serve a warrant on a person who pulled a gun, and now the gunman is barricaded in his home, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

As of 9:50 p.m. ET, the situation was still on-going, according to a tweet by the sheriff’s office, which detailed the location of future media updates. “This remains an active incident. No additional information is available at this time,” the office tweeted.

A former soldier assigned to Fort Bragg who was discharged from the US Army two weeks ago and is facing charges for lying on his security clearance application told investigators that he enlisted in the military to become “more proficient in killing” Black people, NBC News reports.

Entering active duty in May 2020, Killian M. Ryan stated on a clearance application that he had had no contact with his father, a convicted felon with a lengthy history of drug dealing and theft, in more than a decade.  Investigators conducting the security check, however, found that Ryan had posted photos on social media of him and his father together as lately as 2019, when Ryan graduated from high school.

The background check also found Ryan had at least five separate Instagram accounts through which he would communicate with his father.  He used these accounts and other to communicate with and follow white nationalist and white power organizations.  One of the Instagram accounts Ryan set up used Naziace1488@gmail.com as the contact email.  It was on one of these Instagram accounts that he commented, “I serve for combat experience so I’m more proficient in killing n——.”

QAnon-aligned Her Royal Majesty, Queen Romana of Canada, who drives around in her royal RV encouraging her loyal sovereign subjects not to pay taxes or their utility bills, was oddly nonchalant about the death of the actual recognized Queen of Canada, Elizabeth II on Thursday, posting a link to the news on the BBC website on her Telegram channel without any further comment.

Then again since Romana believes Elizabeth was already dead, having been executed for her crimes and replaced with a hologram at least a year ago maybe it’s not that weird. Well everything about her is pretty fucking weird – that a middle-aged, impoverished Filipino immigrant with no family with a false claim to be the reigning monarch could somehow in a few short years command a following numbering in the tens of thousands who give her an RV and free buzzcuts, buy her official merchandise, and trying to effect citizen’s arrests of police officers.

So maybe saying basically nothing about the death of the true claimant to Canada’s throne is consistent for Romana Didulo. As was her next Telegram post which listed her platform including the line “Vril energies and occupation End ✅️✅️??????,” whatever the hell that means.

“Not a single Republican, not a single one, House or Senate, voted for that legislation.  We also passed once in a generation investment in our roads, highways, bridges, railroads, ports, airports, water systems, high-speed internet,” President and grampa who always knows where the butterscotch candy is Joe Biden says.  “We got a little help from Republicans, but not a lot, but enough to get it passed.  But the truth is, there are a lot more Republicans taking credit for that bill than who actually voted for it.  I see them out there:  ‘And now we’re gonna build this new bridge.  We’re all for it.  And by the way, this new road and we’re gonna have an internet that’s going to be–‘  I love ’em, man.  They ain’t got no shame.  They don’t have any shame.”

Digital World Acquisition Corp.’s shareholders failed to provide the vote of confidence for the company needed to extend its existence for 12 months, possibly torpedoing the planned merger with the Trump Media & Technology Group, Reuters reports.

DWAC is a so-called “blank check acquisition firm,” which exists to essentially fund a new or existing business through a merger agreement.  Trump Media’s proposed merger with DWAC would have infused $1.6 billion into the company, which does little more manage the operation of a floundering right-wing social media platform that censors users.

DWAC needs 65% of shares to vote to extend its existence–ostensibly to keep the organization alive for a merger with Trump Media–in an endorsement of the plan.  They got 40%.  DWAC directors pushed back another vote to October 10th.

File this in the “We Didn’t Think We Get Caught” drawer:  The governor of Pennsylvania will look into a photo posted on the profile page of Donald Trump’s Trope Slacker Tromp Sickle Truth Social page showing him posing with more than 30 Pennsylvania State Troopers in uniform, PennLive reports.

The Pennsylvania State Police basically responded with:  Oops!  You caught us!  “According to PSP, this was a private photo opportunity with the former president and it was not approved for use by the former president for public purposes,” a spokesperson for Democratic Governor Tom Wolf states.

Read more at WJLA.

The Michigan state Supreme Court on Thursday gave the green light for the November abortion rights ballot measure, held up by the Republicans on the state Board of Canvassers over – no joke – the fucking kerning on the measure’s explanatory text as it would appear on the ballots.

A ruling on the voting rights ballot measure it was to be paired with is still pending, as it was also blocked by the Republican canvassers over the same kerning bullshit, but by itself the abortion referendum is seriously bad freaking news for Republicans at all levels in Michigan who were already facing an uphill battle in the statewide races. Now with a number of swingy US House districts on the line for the GOP, a surge in women voters is the last thing they needed.

After a not particularly-lengthy search of Los Angeles-area bookstores, NPR reporter Tom Dreisbach was able to find a copy of the print adaptation of Dinesh D’Souza’s shitty election that the staff of a Barnes and Noble did not send back to the publisher following its abrupt recall.

And, hoooo boy, as Dreisbach writes, it “does not appear to suffer from an obvious production error which might explain the delay – a misaligned photo, incorrect page numbers or blank pages,” but some bad, bad, naughty defamation stuff so ugly that D’Souzas partners in the film, MAGA activists Cathy Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips of “True the Vote” wanted nothing to do with the book.

Long and very stupid story as short as possible: D’Souza, Engelbrecht, and Phillips took random GPS data from cell phones moving around the metro Atlanta area in the five weeks before the 2020 election – for which Phillips paid $2 million to obtain from a vendor – and claimed in the movie it showed repeated patterns of individual unidentified smartphones going from ballot drop boxes to unnamed Dem-aligned organizations’ offices, thus “proving” that there was a whole syndicate of illegal ballot harvesters throwing the election to Biden. Thing is they didn’t actually name these organizations in the film since – surprise! – they were afraid of getting sued for it, because God forbid D’Souza and pals might have to prove their allegations in a court of law, thus vindicating themselves and pretty much every other 2020 election conspiracy theorist out there.

Anyway the organizations are named in the book. Dreisbach doesn’t mention their names in his article, but it’s doubtful he’s the only one out there with a copy that survived the recall, so stay tuned for that and some defamation lawyers’ eyes turning into large cartoony dollar signs.

Justice Department lawyers on Thursday filed a notice of appeal of Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling that her client, disgraced former President Trump, was entitled to a special master to review the documents that Trump stole and were seized by the FBI during last month’s raid at Mar-a-Lago.

UPDATE 9/8/2022 4:15 PM EDT: The Justice Department also filed an application for a stay pending appeal on Thursday, writing “Although the government respectfully disagrees with the Court’s injunction as to a much broader set of seized materials already in the possession of the investigative team, it is not at this time seeking a stay as to the vast majority of those materials. Instead, this motion is limited to the Order’s directives with respect to the seized classified records because those aspects of the Order will cause the most immediate and serious harms to the government and the public. The classified records – a discrete set of just over 100 documents -have already been segregated from the other seized records and are being maintained separately.”

Which we believe means they can move forward with prosecuting Trump for stealing the classified shit while the special master circlejerk would continue separate and apart. Very bad for Donald and showing that his grossly incompetent lawyers moved way too slow in asking for the special master.

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— Domino's Pizza UK (@Dominos_UK) September 8, 2022

They even turned their iconic domino logo black in solidarity with the British people as their beloved monarch passes on. Everyone should order Domino’s in gratitude for the beautiful gesture.