In an interview published Monday in Insider, disgraced Trump 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort straight up admitted to passing internal data on voters to a Russian-allied Ukrainian political consultant Konstantin Kilimnik for his own purposes. “The data that I shared with [Kilimnik],” Manafort told Insider, “was a combination of public information and stuff for the spring that was – it was old.” This is bullshit as the Mueller Investigation obtained emails showing the data sent to Kilimnik was less than two weeks old when he had sent it in late July 2016.

Manafort maintains that his feeding the data to Kilimnik was not intended for propaganda farms to pinpoint where to target their Facebook ads, but it “was meant to show how Clinton was vulnerable,” and demonstrate that Paulie Smallnuts had not outlived his usefulness to his Kremlin paymasters and would have access to a future Trump White House. It’s not clear why Manafort thinks this explanation somehow makes him look better than if he had been giving them the data so the troll farms knew where to hit, or how it’s supposed to be mutually exclusive and it isn’t simply true that he was playing both angles – showing them how Trump could be elected and making the Russian troll brigades’ jobs easier. He even plays dumb and pretends he had no idea Kilimnik was in the Kremlin’s pocket. “None of us believed KK worked for Russian intelligence,” said Manafort.

Rejoice National Zero commenters! No more, for now at least, will you be stuck with inexplicable and insane “Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by National Zero” when posting a comment that doesn’t contain any obvious racial, homophobic, or transphobic slurs. We apologize for the year-plus of frustration, but unfortunately it was necessary to kill off spam bots that sometimes choose our humble site to propagate their bullshit. As it’s been a while since some Russian asshole has sicced bots posting URLs containing “.ly/” or “.la/” and other strings on National Zero, we’re again allowing, for now at least, those to be posted in our comments.

Again, we know this is hard to grasp for some of our less tech-savvy readers, but please trust us, this had been the most effective way to keep the site clean. So, for example, before today a URL like “www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am” would have been stuck in pending because we had to add “.ax” due to spammers posting some “W0rk frOm h0me” bullshit links ending in “.ax” (though we should have made it “.ax/” with the forward slash). We will update our list again if and when more spambots come, but for the time being at least you won’t be stuck with random holds.

Photos of disgraced former President Trump’s handwritten notes torn up and tossed in toilets, sent to New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman from an unnamed former White House staffer, published by Axios on Monday in a preview of her upcoming book “Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America.” The pic on the left is from the White House, on the right is a toilet during an overseas trip. It sure looks like the Donald’s handwriting, done with his typical Sharpie. No wonder he complained about toilets not flushing thoroughly enough.

Despite MAGA freakouts and media coverage over increases in violent crime since the pandemic began in 2020 – which right wing media assclowns sometimes forget happened while Trump was still in office – a New York Times analysis of FBI data shows that shootings have dropped 4% and murders in big cities are down 3% in 2022. It’s the first drop recorded since 2018.

Democrats in Congress have been throwing up procedural hurdles to completing a previously unreported Trump-era agreement to sell 220 Javelin missiles to Brazil over far-right President Jair Bolsonaro’s freakout over his impending election loss, Reuters reports. Expect a lot of equivocation to what happened with Trump and Ukraine should this story come on the right wing media’s radar.

The problems hitting the US aviation industry continues, as more than 900 flights were canceled on Sunday alone, with an other 6,300 flights delayed nationwide, CNN reports.

Part of the issue came from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, which saw heavy rains throughout the day–rain so heavy the city was under a flash flood warning for part of the day, forcing the cancelation or delay of hundreds of flights.  That had a cascading effect on other flights at airports across the country.

It was a significant increase from Saturday, when 657 flights were canceled and another 7,267 were delayed.  The trickle-down impact of flight cancelations has to do with the fact that aircraft have to be relocated and flight crews have to go under mandatory rest periods, even if their flights were canceled.

At the CPAC convention of incels, a girl shows up.  But that’s not the best part:  after Donald Trump introduces University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines–seriously, that’s like her qualification for speaking at CPAC:  she’s a college swimmer–creepy old man Trump goes in to smooch the comely butterflyer, only to have her cringe and back away, leaving Trump with a lipful of hair.

It’s not Trump’s fault, though.  The 76-year-old is compelled to try to kiss her.  At least he didn’t try to grab her by the pussy.  That probably happened backstage, which prompted her fear of Trump.

Our past coverage of the Wisconsin GOP in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s narrow win there in the 2020 election is too unwieldy to recap in one lede and we’ve seriously just barely scratched the surface of the fucking hilarious and outrageous absurdity of the past year and a half there. But we still have to try. So here it is, as straightforward and linear as we can make it right now:

Last year, Trump exploded with rage at the Republican leadership of the Wisconsin state Assembly and Senate over them not overturning the 2020 election there. In a panic move, Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hired former State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman to conduct a “review” of the election, paying him $11,000 a month (later cut in half).

It’s been an absolute shitshow and both Gableman and Vos have been held in contempt of court over failure to keep records of their moronic fake review. Gableman has asserted that Vos has to move forward on a bill to “decertify” the 2020 election, which is impossible and would be legally meaningless even if they did. Trump is still pressuring Vos to do it, or was until he gave up and endorsed a MAGA challenger named Adam Steen to take down Vos in Tuesday’s primary. Now Gableman is endorsing Steen too, joining the Orange Tyrant in attempting to decapitate an otherwise ruthless, McConnell-level effective GOP leader in one of the most important swing states ahead of an extremely crucial governor and Senate races in November. That’s some serious MAGA.

In the “What Could Possibly Go Wrong” Department, a North Carolina county school system decided last week it will store AR-15s at each of its schools as a resource to be used if a person with ill intentions should enter the building, the Asheville Citizen Times reports.

The decision to turn the schools into a mini-armory was made with the local county sheriff, who will be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the weapon and ammunition.  The guns will be stored in safes that will be placed in each school, and the safes will also contain breaching equipment.

“We were able to put an AR-15 rifle and safe in all of our schools in the county,” Sheriff Buddy Harwood said said. “We’ve also got breaching tools to go into those safes. We’ve got extra magazines with ammo in those safes.”

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has petitioned her state’s prosecutorial governing agency to appoint a special counsel to investigate her opponent, MAGA lawyer Mathhew DePerno, over his involvement in a scheme to try to seize voting machines and tamper with equipment, Politico reports. In the request Nessel notes that tabulators unlawfully taken from a county clerk’s office were taken to a hotel room for “testing” and it was determined that DePerna was present.

Hard to see how Nessel loses here. She can recuse and make herself look good for doing so while still calling attention to her opponent’s involvement in an illegal scheme to tamper with elections.

And it is illegal. DePerno is not a government official. He’s a private attorney. A shitty one too. He has no business being around publicly owned voting equipment. If the goddamned FBI and courts said there was no voter fraud you don’t have to like it, but you sure as shit need to stay away from any scam that involves stealing them. DePerna should’ve “recused” himself from this “investigation.”

This week’s edition of the Otter Globe and Intelligencer examines the possible criminal liabilities House Minority gummy worm Kevin McCarthy may have exposed himself to with his threats of retribution for companies which complied with document requests from the January 6 Committee.

Hours after city officials announced that the murders of three Muslim men in Albuquerque were apparently linked, police reported the murder of a fourth Muslim man in an apparent continuation of the murder spree, according to the Washington Post.

The man was killed Friday, but the police did not announce the murder until Saturday.  The victim, Naeem Hussain, was in his mid-20s.  His body was discovered in the street by police responding to a call about shots being fired.  He had attended the funerals for two of the other victims, Muhammad Afzaal Hussain and Aftab Hussein, earlier Friday at the mosque where all three were members.

Funeral services were held for two of the men killed were held Friday at their mosque, and a reception was held at a gathering at the Islamic Center of New Mexico, where all three men were active. His body was found Friday night in the parking lot of Lutheran Family Services Rocky Mountains, which provides adoption and refugee assistance services.  There’s no known connection between Hussain and the location where he was found.

A 15-year-old Baltimore girl was shot in the head and killed Saturday night by a nine-year-old boy playing with a loaded handgun registered to a female relative of the boy who is employed as an armed security guard, according to WBAL NBC-11 in Baltimore.

The victim, identified as Nykayia Strawder, lived in the boy’s neighborhood and was walking along the street when she was shot.  The boy dropped the gun and ran home, where he was found later by police.  State law prevents a child under 10 from being charged with a crime.

Since the beginning of 2022, around 1,027 children under the age of 18 have been killed by guns, according to the Gun Violence Archive, with nearly 2,700 injured.

This is the headline of the New York Post story we sourced for our article “Most migrants get off bus from Texas before it reaches NYC” published earlier Sunday. Well actually it’s the current headline. They plugged in the word “suggests” at some point after we had published. The headline at the time we published said “Adams greets border-crossers in NYC – but most skipped town over fear of crime.” We don’t have an archived version of the article with the headline circa 1:45 PM EDT on Sunday, however you can see it without the “suggests” when we tweeted it to bookmark it and on some spammy auto-aggregator site called “granthshala.com,” plus on a handful of other verbatim search results on Google. The point is they fucking changed it and we can prove it.

That a Murdoch-owned media outlet lamely spins to obscure a failure in execution of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s trolling is no surprise. But this is one is especially bullshit. Nobody even knows where the roughly 26 or so migrants got off the bus. For all we know they jumped out the emergency exit on the approach ramp to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and are in Manhattan right now. Or they got off a block away from wherever they boarded in Texas. Or anywhere in between. Adams never said the word “crime,” he simply speculated “that because of the fear that something was going to happen to them if they came to this location,” which could mean anything but was probably along the lines of them fearing they’d be detained by authorities here.

The thing is though that the Post simply ascribed it to fear of crime, as if they knew exactly what these people were thinking, irrespective of Adams spitballing. It was already terrible spin. Then they changed the headline without issuing a correction. What a piece of shit newspaper. We always knew they sucked but this is beyond the pale and shows a serious lack of respect for readers.

National Zero, in contrast is 100% perfect and has never fucked anything up, ever. And never will.

Imagine, the emotional complexity of being the elected governor of a state and you boastfully issue a design for a government-mandated registration that the government makes you pay for, which openly promotes resisting the government that your followers claim is tyrannical.  Well, that’s Ron DeSantis.

According to the Palm Beach Post, the Republican Florida governor has issued a new license plate design featuring the Gadsden flag with the slogan “Don’t Tread on Me,” popular with anti-government groups, so-called sovereign citizens and domestic terrorists.  It became popular with Tea Baggers, QAnon conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters.

The Colonial-era flag features an image of a coiled snake and served as a warning to the British government which was actually oppressing the American colonists with a heavy tax burden and no representation in Parliament. 

“Today, Senate Democrats sided with American families over special interests, voting to lower the cost of prescription drugs, health insurance, and everyday energy costs and reduce the deficit, while making the wealthiest corporations finally pay their fair share. I ran for President promising to make government work for working families again, and that is what this bill does – period. This bill caps seniors’ out of pocket spending for prescription drugs at $2000 per year – no matter what their drug bills would otherwise be, seniors will not have to spend more than $2000.”

“In addition, 13 million Americans, covered under the Affordable Care Act, will see their health insurance premiums reduced by $800. This bill tackles inflation by lowering the deficit and lowering costs for regular families. This bill also makes the largest investment ever in combatting the existential crisis of climate change. It addresses the climate crisis and strengthens our energy security, creating jobs manufacturing solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles in America with American workers. It lowers families’ energy costs by hundreds of dollars each year. Finally, it pays for all this by establishing a minimum corporate tax so that our richest corporations start to pay their fair share. It does not raise taxes on those making under $400,000 a year – not one cent. I want to thank Leader Schumer and every member of the Senate Democratic caucus for supporting this bill. It required many compromises. Doing important things almost always does. The House should pass this as soon as possible and I look forward to signing it into law” proclaimed the Warlord of Democracy from atop a (metaphorical) mountain of his enemies’ skulls.

After over a year of false starts, the Manchin-Schumer-Biden Build Back Socialism spending bill passed the US Senate on a party line final 51-50 vote Sunday, and was sent to the House where it was expected to pass on a party line vote and destroy traditional Christian America forever.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Western governments to implement heavier sanctions on Russian government and energy interests after the Russian military conducted a sustained artillery attack on the area containing the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, the largest nuclear power generating station in Europe, Politico reports.

“Talked with @eucopresident Charles Michel, told about the situation on the battlefield, in particular at the Zaporizhzhia NPP. Russian nuclear terror requires a stronger response from the international community – sanctions on the Russian nuclear industry and nuclear fuel,” Zelenskyy posted on Twitter. “Positively assessed the start of grain export by sea. Coordinated preparations for the Crimea Platform Summit and other events. Emphasized the importance of unblocking the package of macro-financial assistance for Ukraine as soon as possible.”

This isn’t the first time Zelenskyy has called for action against Russia for targeting nuclear stations.  Soon after the February invasion, Russia took over the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site, sickening thousands of their soldiers and leading to fears of radiation leakage because the Russians didn’t know how to manage the site.  An errant shell at Zaporizhzhia would contaminate an area where hundreds of thousands live and knock out power to millions in and around Ukraine.

More than half of the migrants sent on a bus from Texas to New York City got off before it reached the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan on Sunday, the New York Post reports, calling into question the effectiveness of shitweasel autocrat Governor Greg Abbott’s strategy for sticking it to the libs. “We were led to believe about 40 people should have been on that bus. Only 14 got off,” said Mayor Eric Adams who was on hand to greet the migrants at 7am on Sunday.

The Murdoch-owned New York Post naturally tried to sell this exodus as “most [of the bussed migrants] skipped town over fear of crime,” concluding this because Adams had said “that because of the fear that something was going to happen to them if they came to this location, people got off earlier.” Never mind these people had walked into Texas through Northern Mexico – a region which is actually way more fucking dangerous than even the most hyperbolic right wing portrayals of Manhattan have imagined. Adams appeared to have been simply spitballing on if the migrants believed ICE would be waiting for them in NYC or they would otherwise be detained. But whatever the case was, it’s undeniable that Greg Abbott’s “genius” plan to troll New York City failed and it’s highly likely that most, if not maybe even all, of those 26 migrants got off in Red States.

Republicans in the Senate succeeded in having a provision that would cap the cost of insulin in private insurance plans stripped from the wide-ranging economic, environmental and tax bill being debated on the floor, CNN reports.

After appealing to the Senate Parliamentarian to exclude the price cap in general, the Parliamentarian ruled that the provision should cover only Medicare and Medicaid programs and could not be applied to non-governmental insurance programs.  With that, it would require 60 votes to be included in the bill, and 43 GOP Republicans voted to allow private insurance companies to price-gorge diabetics reliant on insulin.

The insulin price cap for Medicare programs caps out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 dollars per month; life-saving insulin through private insurance plans can cost patients $100 or more per month.