New York City cops are investigating the circumstances of Ivana Trump’s death, having responded to a call and finding her at the bottom of a flight of stairs, WABC reports. The circumstances automatically raise the ever-important question: What did Hillary know and when did she know it?

In related news, Ivana’s fat ex-husband Donald included a “DONATE” button on the emailed press statement about her death – which was just a screenshot of his Truth Social post. It’s not directly fundraising off her death because that’s in every statement – hell you could argue National Zero did it too because our donate button was there in our article about it – but Trump forgetting to remove it when announcing the death of the mother of his children was still fucking pretty tacky.

CNN reports that text messages from January 5th and 6th, 2021 sent and received by members of the US Secret Service on their cell phones were deleted after oversight agencies started to request them in the investigation into the USSS role in the events, according to a letter the Secret Service’s Inspector General sent the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress.

According to the USSS IG, the messages were erased as part of “scrubbing” phones that are being replaced and taken out of service.  There currently is no information to know if the messages can be obtained from other sources, such as other people involved in the text exchange or from the cell phone service provider.  It’s also not disclosed if this includes encoded text messages using a third-party app.

The actions of Secret Service agents before and during the terrorist attack are coming under scrutiny as reports that Vice President Mike Pence refused to get into a USSS vehicle at the Capitol because he did not trust the driver.  There is also conflicting accounts of what Donald Trump did in a USSS SUV after inciting the crowd at a “Stop the Steal” rally January 6th.

Thanks to AreYouPreparedToGoToCourt? for the tip.

Bennie Thompson, the chair of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, confirmed Wednesday that the committee was working with the Department of Justice to provide information on the various fake electors schemes the Trump cabal attempted to submit to disrupt the certification of the 2020 election win of Joe Biden, CBS News reports.

“The only issue that we’ve engaged them on is the list of the fraudulent electors that were submitted.  That’s the first tranche that we’ve been talking to them about,” Thompson said Wednesday, adding that they’ve also shared information “about who we interviewed and what kind of thing pursuant to what they requested.”

Republicans from seven states–Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada and Wisconsin–prepared alternate slates of electors that overruled the certified results in the state and gave the electors to Donald Trump.  Some, like Pennsylvania’s, explicitly said it would not be official unless a court ruled to nullify the results.  Others, like Wisconsin’s, made no such qualification.

A bipartisan Senate bill to clarify the Electoral Count Act and squash the ambiguity John Eastman and the other MAGA coup plotters tried to exploit on the day of the Capitol insurrection could come up on the chamber’s agenda as early as next week, CNN reports.

The bill, first proposed in early 2021, has been a long time coming over issues more technical than political as there’s little doubt doing the bare minimum to prevent a repeat of the tedious objection shitshow that happened in Congress (that would’ve happened even if the rioters hadn’t forced a six hour pause) on that day would be able to get to 60 votes. The kinks are mostly over jurisdictional issues, where separate Senate committees hold separate bailiwicks over separate agencies and entities involved with transitions, mainly Congress itself, the Postal Service, the Department of Homeland Security and others that need to be coordinated during a presidential election.

Ivana Trump, the first wife of disgraced former President Trump and mom to jackass kids Don Jr, Ivanka, and Eric Trump, has died at the age of 73, ABC News reports.

Investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board determined that 38-year-old Henrich Siemens was behind the wheel of a pickup truck that caused a head-on collision in March in Texas with a van carrying a college golf team that resulted in nine dead, after the initial investigation by local officials claimed his 13-year-old son was driving, the Associated Press reports.

Siemens and his 13-year-old son were killed in the crash, as were six members of the University of the Southwest golf team and one of their coaches.  Texas officials said that the son was driving Siemens’ pickup truck.  Postmortem toxicology reports show presence of methamphetamine in Siemens’ blood.

The Seminole, Texas community where Siemens and his family lived assisted the family after their house burned down in 2021.  The cause of the fire, which started in the kitchen, was not determined.

MAGA Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly is now blaming staff for coordinating with piece of shit Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson on a plan for Johnson to hand slates of fake Trump 2020 electors for the Cheesehead state and neighboring Michigan to Vice President Mike Pence during the joint certification session on January 6th, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.

“Our current chief-of-staff has begun conducting an internal investigation, which Rep. Kelly is aware of and takes seriously,” said Kelly spokesworm Matt Knoedler. The reversal comes weeks after Kelly denied any knowledge of the plan, claiming he hadn’t spoken to RonAnon in years, a denial that was blown up when the fucking weasel Senator showed the Journal-Sentinel a screenshot of a call to Johnson’s chief of staff Sean Riley from Kelly’s then-chief of staff Matt Stroia at 11:58 AM on January 6th, 2021. It’s not clear why Johnson’s staff think this is supposed to be exculpatory, though they could be simply throwing Kelly under the bus and hoping he stays there.

“Rep. Kelly’s office keeps denying that he and Sen. Johnson have spoken, but that is something we have never claimed,” said RonAnon spokesworm Alexa Henning. “Confirmed from phone records, his former chief of staff spoke to ours. Our office statements have been 100% accurate and true.”

Meet Catherine Glenn Foster, M.A., J.D., the President and CEO of Americans United for Life, a forced pregnancy organization. In a House committee meeting Thursday, Foster claims that terminating a pregnancy in a hypothetical 10-year-old who was raped actually isn’t an abortion, saying, “I believe that [carrying a pregnancy to term] would probably impact her, her life, and so therefore it would all under any exception and would not be an abortion,” a statement which makes California Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell pause in disbelief.

Asked about her quizzical statement, Foster continues babbling:  “If a ten-year-old becomes pregnant as a result of rape and it was threatening her life, that’s not an abortion.”  A follow-up witness, Sarah Warbelow, counters Foster’s disinformation by noting that abortion is a medical procedure terminating any pregnancy, regardless of how the patient became pregnant.

Apparently, this is going to be a new talking point in an effort to redefine abortion to make their draconian laws more palatable:  they want people to believe that abortion is only an elective procedure, but terminating a pregnancy for medical reasons isn’t *actually* an abortion.  They are, of course, lying.

Italian Prime Minister “Super” Mario Draghi has been politically met with a “Game Over” screen as too many goombas attacked and drained all of his extra political lives, the BBC reports. Draghi will be okay as his next game at some lobbying shop has lots of coins to collect on every level.

We all know that Republican Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan routinely dismisses claims of sexual assault from victims, refusing to act when told attacks are happening, but Jordan went a step further by accusing of lying the 10-year-old victim of rape who had to flee his home state to get an abortion in Indiana.

Asked why he deleted the tweet in which he called the girl and people disgusted by her treatment liars, Jordan blamed everyone but himself for his accusation.  “Well, because we learned this illegal alien committed this crime, so we deleted the tweet,” Jordan asserted.  “Never doubted the child. Ah, I was, I was responding to a headline from, from ah, from ah, your profession, the news profession, which happens all the time on Twitter, uh, doubted Joe Biden which is usually a smart thing to do.”

Politically “smart” to coddle the far-right base with lies, perhaps, Gym, but ethically, morally, and patriotically stupid when you rely on an unspecified headline to make a judgment on a child rape case.  Just a note, Gym:  Maybe actually read the article in its entirety.  Oh, and maybe help a child from your state get medical treatment rather than trying to absolve yourself of stupidity and depravity.

Republican Mesa County, Colorado clerk Tina Peters, facing trial on a 13 count indictment over her tampering with Dominion Voting Systems election equipment is now a wanted fugitive after she violated the terms of her pretrial release by leaving the state without permission from the court, leading a judge to revoke her bond Thursday, the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reports.

Peters’ flight from justice comes just days after a second accomplice of hers was arrested for her involvement in the moronic scheme to steal the software code from Dominion’s tabulation devices and leak it to associates of MyPillow assclown Mike Lindell to prove the 2020 election was stolen via remote hacking of the air-gapped ballot counting equipment.

The fall and fall of prominent South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh who was allegedly shot in the head on a desolate highway on September 4th, 2021 (but wasn’t actually shot, per a police report), the day after he quit his law firm to enter rehab under suspicion of having embezzled money, two months after his wife Margaret Murdaugh and son Paul Murdaugh were found dead on one of the family’s properties shot with an assault rifle and a shotgun, respectively, three years after Paul drunkenly crashed a boat into a bridge pylon, killing a 19-year-old female acquaintance and had been facing trial for felony charges related to her death, and six years after his other son Buster Murdaugh might have also kind of murdered another kid, continues apace as Murdaugh on Thursday was charged with the murder of his wife and son, Palmetto State blog FITS News reports.

This is on top of 78 other felonies he’s been hit with since we last published an earlier version of this run-on sentence. So insane and prolific is this fucking guy and his sons’ crime spree that FITS News’s homepage nav links are “HOME,” “MURDAUGHS,” “VIDEO,” “SC,” “SUBSCRIBE,” “LOGIN,” etc.

Crude oil prices have dropped to levels not seen since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, indicating a normalization in the commodity market while oil companies continue to enjoy record profits due to price gouging on fears of losing shareholders’ yachts and mistresses.  (And yes, we know that a lot of pension funds own these stocks, but many are divesting investments from the planet-killing companies.)

Portland, Oregon-area QAnon fan Lilith Saer aka Drakken Saer aka Ian Anton Coutu, was arrested last week on charges of entering and remaining in a restricted building with the intent to impede or disrupt an official proceeding and disorderly or disruptive conduction in the Capitol buildings or Capitol grounds during the January 6th, 2021 MAGA insurrection.

Above is a video of Saer being interviewed in 2019 by lefty freelance journalist Shane Burley. Saer is reportedly affiliated with Patriot Prayer, the Portland-area fascist street gang known for brawling alongside the Proud Boys during their regular weekend get-togethers with Antifa.

A third 2020 election truther scumbag has been arrested for her involvement in Mesa County, Colorado clerk and QAnon freak Tina Peters’ insane attempt to “expose” Dominion Voting Systems ballot tabulation devices’ non-existent internet connection, NBC News reports.

Sandra Brown, Mesa County’s former elections manager who reported to the failed Secretary of State candidate Peters, turned herself in Monday to the county sheriff’s office on an arrest warrant for suspicion of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and attempting to influence a public servant. Brown joins Peters and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley in facing time for their batshit stupid leak of video of Dominion’s software, implicating themselves by using a unique password that had been issued to their office by the Secretary of State. The whole shitshow was masterminded by MyPillow assclown Mike Lindell and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne with the encouragement of QAnon fan and alleged prostitute Congresswoman Lauren Boebert.

Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel has warned disgraced former President Trump the party’s donors will stop paying his legal bills for shit he did that has literally nothing to do with his time as president or as candidate if he announces his comeback run for the White House before the 2022 midterms, the Washington Post reports.

The threat is about the best she can come up with to dissuade the would-be dictator from officially launching his campaign, which sources tell the Washington Post is coming in September at the latest. While we’ve been suckered into relaying these reports of an imminent announcement at least twice over the past few months only for nothing to happen, the fact remains that it’s the best way for the fat bastard to get ahead of Ron DeSantis, who realistically cannot launch his own campaign while running for reelection in Florida. As such, we still think it’s significantly more likely than not it happens before the midterms, something Republicans are terrified will take even more momentum out of their already downgraded forecast of a “Red Wave” after the Roe v Wade decision.

“Of all the selfish things he does every minute of every day, it would probably be the most. Everything we are doing that is not talking about the economy is going to be a disaster,” one “prominent Republican strategist” told the Post, “speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment,” because he’s afraid of his angry, vengeful Orange God Emperor’s wrath. Others tried to find a silver lining. “You might as well get the benefit if you’re going to take the lashes too. If you want to energize the base and get the base out, no one does it better than Trump,” said GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, resigned to the fact that there’s nothing the party can do.

Sumpter County, Florida prosecutors declined to charge a Villages Karen arrested and jailed following a perilous June 27th altercation with the kitchen staff of her assisted living facility over the way her chicken was prepared, Villages-News.com reports.

The incident began when Sumter Senior Living resident Karen Elaine Linder, 79, a registered Republican, pulled a total Karen move and got into “a disagreement,” with a staff member “about the type of chicken which she was served and that it was the wrong type.” Karen then followed the female staff member into the kitchen and “pushed her with both of her hands.” Sumpter County Sheriff’s deputies responded, placing Karen in handcuffs and transporting her to the county jail, where she spent the night before being released on her own recognizance the next afternoon. It’s not clear why the Sumpter County District Attorney’s office dropped the charges last week.

A proposal to create a system allowing current and former military personnel and civilian contractors to report UFO sightings was added as an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act military budget bill, passing the House easily on a bipartisan voice vote Wednesday, Politico reports on yet another sign the government is taking the issue of unexplained aerial phenomena more seriously than they had in past decades.

Co-sponsor Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher told Politico the aim is “to further Congress’ ability to fact gather and further prove or disprove the origin and threat nature of whatever seems to be flying in our skies,” adding “I believe it’s possible that folks may be precluded from being fully transparent with Congress due to their being bound by non-disclosure agreements.”

After a brief stopover in the Maldives, loser President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who hasn’t officially resigned yet, has fled to Singapore following his hasty departure from the millions of citizens who want to kick his ass over 54% inflation, Bloomberg reports.