For the fifth time since the Supreme Court struck down a person’s right to an abortion, Lousiana courts have reversed a previous court decision on the state’s law banning the medical treatment, this time allowing abortion services to continue, the Associated Press reports.

Citing the “vagueness” of the law, state district judge Donald Johnson in Baton Rouge issued an injunction preventing the state law from taking effect that was triggered by the Supreme Court striking down Roe.  Johnson gave lawyers on both sides of a lawsuit, brought by one of the state’s three operating abortion clinics, thirty days to set a schedule for an upcoming trial on the law’s legality.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry indicated that he would appeal the judge’s order, stating that he expects the case to end up at the state Supreme Court.

Verizon announced Thursday that as of July 31st, far right propaganda network OANN will no longer be carried on their FiOS TV service, the Daily Beast reports. “Our negotiation with OAN has been a typical, business as usual carriage negotiation like those that routinely happen between content distributors and content providers. These negotiations were focused on economics, as they always are, but OAN failed to agree to fair terms,” a Verizon spokesperson said in a statement to the Beast. “Since we were unable to reach an agreement, effective July 31, 2022, we will no longer have the rights to provide our customers with this programming, and it will be removed from the Fios TV lineup.” The loss of Verizon is yet another major blow to OANN, already reeling from a loss of licensing fees from being dropped by AT&T-owned DirecTV in April and a maniacal delusion from CEO Robert Herring that Elon Musk wanted to buy them in June.

At least one police officer and four others were killed Thursday in a raging gun battle between more than 400 cops and a criminal gang in the Complexo do Alemao favela (slum) neighborhood of Rio de Janiero, Brazil, the AP reports. The raid, possibly egged on by right wing asshole President Bolsonaro trying to hype his “law and order” bullshit ahead of October’s election which he’s widely expected to lose, began in the pre-dawn hours and continued throughout the day as locals caught in the crossfire begged cops to stop shooting. The reported death toll of five is certain to increase.

“It’s a massacre inside, which police are calling an operation,” one local woman told the AP on condition of anonymity as she feared reprisal from police. “They’re not letting us help (the victims),” adding she saw a man arrested for trying to help a wounded person. Video of the raid showed residents waving white sheets from roofs and windows, pleading for the shooting to stop.

Alcoholic degenerate white nationalist Steve Bannon was convicted of criminal contempt of Congress on Thursday for defying his subpoena from the House January 6th Select Committee after only three hours of deliberation by the jury, CBS News Congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane reports. Bannon’s lawyers did not present a defense to the jury and kind of like in football, when you don’t defend, the other other team runs right into the end zone.

UPDATE 7/21/2022 2:57 PM EDT: Fuck you Chris Hayes. The Washington Post reports closing arguments are set for Friday in Bannon’s trial. What CBS’s Scott MacFarlane was actually reporting was that a Capitol rioter named Matthew Bledsoe, in a courtroom down the hall from Bannon’s trial, was convicted by a jury of a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding plus multiple misdemeanors. Bledsoe is the seventh MAGA insurrectionist to be found guilty at trial.

Hey if you’re wondering what happened to the last headline-only story that said “Fox News to carry Thursday hearing uninterrupted” then the answer is we fucked up and misread the tweet, rushing to post the headline on what would’ve been a surprising development.

Fox News is NOT airing the Thursday night hearing uninterrupted and will instead do the same splitscreen with the hearings on mute format as they broadcast Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity’s propaganda shows as they did during the first primetime hearing in June, the New York Times reports. Smaller sister network Fox Business News will carry the hearing live. The smart money also says that Fox News will again not have any commercial breaks as to prevent viewers from channel surfing and watching the hearing on CNN or MSNBC. Can’t have that happening.

A criminal investigation into the deletion of Secret Service text messages on and around January 6th, 2021 has been opened, says a CNBC report with zero other details as of publication.

It’s Mega Millions mania as the multi-state lottery’s Friday jackpot, which you will not win, has risen to $660 million, after no one – including you – drew the winning numbers, WABC reports.

The winning ticket, which you will not buy or otherwise have in your possession when the winning numbers are drawn on Friday night, is worth $359.70 million in a lump sum payout option, a choice which you will not be presented with, because you will not win. It’s the largest jackpot since someone else, not you, won $1.05 billion back in January. That person, whoever they are – again, not you – is living their dreams and maybe even yours too. Like if you ever wanted to dine privately in the Louvre after-hours in front of the Mona Lisa or buy a seat on a private spaceflight or whatever then great, those are nice dreams to have. The winner of this Mega Millions jackpot can actually do that kind of stuff because they can afford it and you can’t. Because you won’t win.

But hey, get out and buy your lucky Mega Millions ticket, because you know what they say: You lose 100% of the lotto tickets you don’t buy and 99.999999999999999% of the ones you do!

Government produces nothing.

Every dollar they have is taxpayer money.

There is no such thing as government money – it all has to come from us.

Keep that in mind.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) July 21, 2022

A House bill to protect contraception from Supreme Court extremists passed 228 to 195 on Thursday, with only seven Republicans voting in favor, the Huffington Post reports.

Lorde of the Medieval Times faire promotion, Perico Montaner, forfeareful of the churlish rebelling of the leigeman and maid within his regne, hath proclaimed an increase in wages paid for their vassalage afollowe-ing the formation of a guilde in the keep in the towne of Lyndhurst, New Jerseyshire, located acroth the pathe from masonr’y merchante ADEX USA Ceramic Tiles.

Hearkened the Lorde: “2022 has been challenging and in April we started to see a rise in inflation, but we thought it would be short lived. In May we discussed amongst the corporate team and the shareholders as well, the possibility of doing a mid-year raise to try to adjust for inflation as much as we could. We have been collaborating with your General Managers over the last month to see what the adjustment should be. We did this by location and with great care to be fair to everyone’s needs. We have now decided to give you a much-needed wage increase. You will see an increase in your pay, effective the July 22nd, 2022 pay date. We will still be doing end of year increases as we have always done. Stay safe, stay healthy, and THANK YOU! Perico Montaner”

Don’t sell your shoes and jersey, we’ll help with the funeral.

I’m sorry for your loss.

🙏🏼 https://t.co/gMttmVGZCL

— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) July 21, 2022

Many readers on NatZero are not sportsball fans.  We don’t typically cover sportsball player, though lately we’ve had a lot of stories of CTE patient Herschel Walker.  However, we’re making an exception to this to show that fine people with sympathy and care still exist.

J.J. Watt is a professional football player with the Arizona Cardinals.  Seeing a tweet from a fan saying that she’s selling some Watt memorabilia to pay for her grandfather’s funeral, Watt stepped in to volunteer to help pay for the service.

President Joe Biden has tested positive for COVID-19, CNBC reports. The 79 year old has been vaccinated and boosted repeatedly. In other news, National Zero is now 2 for 2 versus The Hill in reporting positive presidential COVID-19 infections first. Sucks for them.

Said the White House in an official statement: “This morning, President Biden tested positive for COVID-19. He is fully vaccinated and twice boosted and experiencing very mild symptoms. He has begun taking Paxlovid. Consistent with CDC guidelines, he will isolate at the White House and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time. He has been in contact with members of the White House staff by phone this morning, and will participate in his planned meetings at the White House this morning via phone and Zoom from the residence. Consistent with White House protocol for positive COVID cases, which goes above and beyond CDC guidance, he will continue to work in isolation until he tests negative. Once he tests negative, he will return to in-person work.”

“Out of an abundance of transparency, the White House will provide a daily update on the President’s status as he continues to carry out the full duties of the office while in isolation. Per standard protocol for any positive case at the White House, the White House Medical Unit will inform all close contacts of the President during the day today, including any Members of Congress and any members of the press who interacted with the President during yesterday’s travel. The President’s last previous test for COVID was Tuesday, when he had a negative test result.”

Alana 'Honey Boo Boo' Thompson to undergo $13K weight-loss surgery https://t.co/rnLZnqNqAo

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 21, 2022

A former beauty pageant queen widely considered to be a paragon of conservative rural America’s values is headed to degenerate leftist shithole New York City next month to undergo an important medical procedure, Fox News reports. It’s not clear why the young woman snubbed the expertise of physicians in her region of Alabama or Mississippi or wherever it is and instead chose that of a New York-based surgeon – one far more likely to be either an Asian immigrant or Jew than a white Christian who would be far more trustworthy to the former reality star’s fans.

It also raises a similarly premised question about Fox News itself: Why is the favorite network of rural Americans based in the heart of the apocalyptic urban hellscape they see as the very embodiment of the failures of multiculturalism and liberal governance? Why would a network that espouses nothing less than a deep antipathy toward this “rotten apple” continue to call it home? Sure, there’s the fact that many of its current and former major personalities were born and raised in the region – Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Jeannine Pirro, Brain Kilmeade, Dan Bongino, Geraldo Rivera, and others, as well as regular guests Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump. But it’s not like they couldn’t simply relocate to Joplin, Missouri or Huntington, West Virginia if they really wanted to create jobs and stimulate the local economies for their viewers.

The political and spiritual delta between those who Fox News serves information to and whose economy it actually benefits obviously does not vex its fans at all, at least not out loud. But it’s hard not to notice that, like a former beauty queen whose weight got a little out of control, the biggest name in right wing media depends on this urban death maze more than they want to admit.

A few years after a mob egged on by the opposition ransacked the presidential palace of Madagascar and overthrew the government in 2009, Atlantic writer Brain Klaas travelled there and asked the new leaders – the guys who had incited the insurrection – how they were supposed to govern with any legitimacy after having seized power violently. One of the generals shot back at Klaas, asking “How can you Americans lecture us on democracy? Sometimes, the president who ends up in your White House isn’t even the person who got the most votes.”

“Our election system isn’t perfect. But, with all due respect, our politicians don’t incite violent mobs to take over the government when they haven’t won an election,” Klaas says he replied to the general back then, a scene he describes in the opener to his essay “How Democracy Dies in the 21st Century – The U.S. still has a chance to fix itself before 2024. But when democracies start dying – as ours already has – they usually don’t recover”, published in The Atlantic on Thursday.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi resigned for good on Thursday a week after first signaling his intent over a collapse in his governing coalition, Axios reports. The country that invented pizza and the Roman Empire has an often chaotic political system – there have been 67 governments in the last 75 years. It’s not clear when they’re going to get their shit together and establish something a little more concrete and orderly like neighboring France. Every country has its problems, but ordering “snap elections” every time some asshole drops out of a coalition and ending a premiership does not seem like it lends itself toward any sort of continuity of governance. Then again it is sort of impressive they’re still able to make the day-to-day business of actually running a major economic power actually happen when the prime minister could be canned any given week.

The House January 6th Select Committee has outtakes of the January 7th, 2021 Trump video in which the fat former president pledged an “orderly transition,” a message that was only a few minutes long but reportedly took over an hour to record an acceptable version as the Donald kept trying to say the rioters were patriots, that the election wasn’t over, and so on and so forth, clips which the committee might show during the Thursday night hearing, the Washington Post reports.

The highly anticipated Thursday prime time hearing, reportedly the last one planned for at least the nearer term, will focus on the Orange God Emperor’s inaction inside the White House during the 187 minutes of the Capitol insurrection and the culmination of their case that the riot was no accident and that Trump had wittingly unleashed it upon Congress in order to prevent them from certifying the result of the 2020 election after all other means had failed.

Seven trees at the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany that had been planted in memory of Holocaust victims were found chopped down Wednesday by parties unknown, though it’s probably a pretty safe bet that it wasn’t just some landscapers who fucked up, the AP reports.

The foundation that maintains the Buchenwald memorial tweeted they were “appalled at the deliberate attack on remembrance,” and said they had filed a criminal complaint to police. Buchenwald was established in 1937 by the Nazis and held an array of ethnic and political minorities – Jews, Slavs, Roma, Poles, Communists, intellectuals, and people with physical and mental disabilities. Over 56,000 of the 280,000 prisoners held at the site died there – and later by the Soviets – over 7,000 of the 28,000 interned by the Russians died between 1945 and 1950.

A legal assistant to MAGA lawyer Alina Habba claims in a lawsuit her boss is an unhinged racist who would regularly repeat the N-word whilst singing along to rap lyrics and screamed “I hate that Black bitch!” about New York State Attorney General Leticia James earlier this year after taking a beating in a hearing in the AG’s lawsuit against Trump, the Daily Beast reports.

The Department of Homeland Security Inspector General’s office knew five months ago that the Secret Service had purged text messages from the time around the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress but failed to inform the House Select Committee investigating the attack, the Washington Post reports.

The preservation of the text messages should have been a standard step in reviewing the protection detail for the President and Vice President during an event that ended in violence, injury and attack to law enforcement officers, Secret Service agents and even the protesters.

However, the Secret Service, which falls under the management of DHS, deleted all text messages in what it claims was a standard changeover of cell phone carriers and equipment.  The Secret Service has claimed that it was the responsibility of individual agents to back up their devices, which the individuals did not do.

In their march to shred the Constitution and establish an authoritarian state, Republicans in various state legislatures are proposing bills that would criminalize a pregnant person traveling outside the state to seek an abortion, which these Republicans have made illegal in their states after the jerry-rigged Supreme Court revoke the Roe decision.

Based on two parts of the Constitution–the Privileges and Immunities Clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 1) and the Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3)–courts have reinforced the right of citizens to travel freely between states for nearly any reason.  Perpetually ignorant of what the Constitution says, Republicans now want to introduce laws upending those rights.

Even the prospect of these laws is ludicrous.  If states could punish people for doing something in another state that was illegal in theirs, Las Vegas would not be.  It would have been illegal to gamble in Sin City and to bring those winnings home.  Going to a dog race in Florida would have landed a Kentuckian in jail.  If an Arizonan were to travel to New Mexico and spit on the sidewalk, he would face a six-month prison sentence upon returning home.  (Yes, according to Arizona state law, it’s illegal to spit in public.)