Two men in Washington, DC were arrested by FBI agents Wednesday for posing as federal agents, but these two weren’t acting out some wannabe cop fantasy or trying to impress a woman, the Associated Press reports.

Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 36 were arrested at a luxury apartment building in Southeast DC.  Prosecutors say the two men tried to integrate into groups of federal law enforcement officers by providing access to luxury vehicles and a penthouse apartment, which they would provide to real federal agents at no cost.

In one case, the pair promised to buy a federal agent a $2,000 assault weapon.  For others, they bought iPhones, surveillance systems, a drone, flat screen television, a generator, gun case and other policing tools. 

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that he would take undocumented migrants caught at border crossings in the state and bus them to the steps of the Capitol in Washington, DC to show his contempt for the Biden Administration lifting the pandemic-era Title 42 provision that allows immigration officials to turn migrants away at the border, the Texas Tribune reports.

The image of Texas Rangers dressed in riot gear forcing immigrants on a bus to be trucked to DC to satisfy the governor’s sadism was apparently a little to much even for the governor’s office, who rolled back the statement to say all those immigrants who would be trucked to DC would be volunteers.  (And we should point out that if Abbott wants to protest Biden’s policies, may send them to where Biden works, which is the White House, not the Capitol.  Do these people not take civics?)

“If Abbott focused on solutions instead of stunts, then Texas could have made some real progress on the issue over the last seven years,” Democratic candidate for governor Beto O’Rourke said in a statement.

And if you’re wondering–and I know you’re not–Tucker’s next segment was on Hunter Biden.

Put on your Party armbands and gussy yourself up for announced “special guest” Paul Gosar, the Republican Congressman from Arizona, speaking at the American Populist Union’s special event commemorating the birth of Adolf Hitler!

According to the Arizona Mirror, Gosar will be the guest of honor at the event April 20 in Tempe.  Will Gosar blame his scheduler for appearing at another white nationalist meeting, as he did when he appeared via video at the December meeting of AFPAC, the group led by white supremacist Nick Fuentes.

Another speaker at the event is John Doyle, a YouTube personality who has a following among “groypers,” the losers who follow Fuentes.  No word if Marge Three Toes, the Rifle Rodent or Keybump McOrgymisser will make appearances.

We won’t bore you with the text, but unsurprisingly, Donald Trump endorsed fellow conspiracy theorist and wannabe social media star Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Ga.).  The Congresswoman sans Committee, Trump says, “has ALWAYS been with ‘Trump’,” with his characteristic self reference in the third person and improperly capitalized letters.

In the required attempt by a Republican candidate to relate to actual working adults, performance artist and political dilettante Mehmet Oz makes the rounds at a grocery store, which is likely a Weis Market (identifiable from the Wine and Beer Cafe sign) which Oz mispronounces as “Wegner’s.”  Pretending that he’s shopping for his wife, Oz suddenly discovers that fresh veggies, packaged guacamole and prepared salsa are [shocker!] expensive.

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to refer Trump minions Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino to the Justice Department for prosecution for contempt of Congress after they refused to comply with subpoenas from the Jan 6th Select Committee. The committee is 1-for-2 on getting the DOJ to act against the sons of bitches: Steve Bannon was indicted for contempt in November, 3 weeks after he was referred by the House, while Mark Meadows has yet to face justice after his contempt referral in late December – though it’s possible prosecutors are holding that back to bundle it in with another indictment related to Meadows’ scumbaggery. Or he’s secretly flipped.

Remember back in December 2020 when Donald Trump claimed that the United States had developed “hydrosonic” weapons–apparently using the same technology as an Oral B electric toothbrush?  He claimed not only that the US had this mythical technology, but that it was already deployed and frighteningly powerful.  Well, he was lying.

Not only is there no such thing as a “hydrosonic” propulsion, but the high-speed hypersonic weapons are at least one year away from deployment by the US military, Bloomberg reports.  The Pentagon had hoped to deploy the missiles by September 30, 2022, but production delays will push that off by at least six months.

The hypersonic missile, being developed by Lockheed Martin, will travel more than five times the speed of sound, making it exceptionally difficult to intercept.  Dubbed the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, the weapon had “recent flight test abnormalities” which will delay the first test of the entire system from October to December 2022.

A pathetic attempt to escape a contempt of Congress charge by Steve Bannon, who claimed he was told by his lawyer that he didn’t have to because Donald Trump illegally exerted executive privilege, has been tossed by the court, Politico reports.  There was no report if the court laughed while reading the decision.

Bannon said that his lawyer, Robert Costello, told him that Trump’s executive privilege claim nullified any need Bannon had to respond to two separate subpoenas from the House Select Committee responsible for investigating the January 6th domestic terrorist attack; one subpoena was for documentation and communications, while the other was for his testimony.  Bannon did not respond to either.

U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, ruled that the “advice of counsel” defense, which can shield a client due to poor advice from his lawyer, was not applicable in a contempt of Congress case due to a 1961 precedent.  Bannon will not be able to use the defense strategy in his contempt trial, Nichols ruled, severely weakening the likelihood Bannon will escape punishment.

A man who recruited students from Sarah Lawrence College, where his daughter attended, has been convicted of fifteen counts relating to a sex trafficking and racketeering charges for what authorities described as a cult he headed, the New York Times reports.

Lawrence V. Ray started to recruit students at the college when he moved into his daughter’s dorm on campus, making meals and holding discussion sessions on morality and honesty with the residents, after he had been released from prison on charges from a child custody case.  He regaled them in stories of his military glory, and informed them that a former friend–Rudy Giuliani associate Bernard Kerik–was responsible for his unjust prison sentence.

Ray then took control of the students’ lives, isolating them from family and dictating every aspect of their lives:  whom they dated, what they ate, even when they slept.  He would solicit false confessions for accused “sins” and use them to blackmail the students for money.  In one case, he forced a female student to become a prostitute and collected more than two million dollars from her over four years.

A man who recorded himself entering the Capitol amid broken windows and other debris during the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress was acquitted of all charges because the Trump-appointed judge believed his story that he was invited into the building by police, NBC News reports.

Matthew Martin, a New Mexico defense contractor with a security clearance, was cleared by federal judge Trevor McFadden, a 2017 Trump appointee to the bench and a member of the Federalist Society.  McFadden said that the first charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building was a “close call,” but that he could not conclusive determine Martin knew he was entering a restricted area.

McFadden also stated that it was “not unreasonable” for Martin to believe that police had allowed the terrorists into the Capitol because they were outnumbered and prosecutors could not prove Martin crossed into the building after facing officers trying to keep people out. 

There’s this ultra expensive, ultra exclusive theme hotel in Florida where guests immerse themselves in a fictional universe. The place is filled with unsavory criminal scum and misshapen freaks from the dregs of society, jockeying for advantages over one another in the aftermath of a destructive civil conflict. There’s mystery, intrigue, and a lot of cosplayers who pretend to believe the out-of-this world mythology behind the “experience” to earn a paycheck.

Media critic Eric Boehlert, the founder of Press Run media and a former fellow at Media Matters for America, died in a bicycle accident Wednesday at the age of 57, journalist Soledad O’Brien reports.

A fierce critic of conservative propaganda networks, Boehlert was equally critical of mainstream networks that slanted their coverage to favor Republicans and conservatives in a quest to appear fair, while rejecting objectivity.

Boehlert is survived by his wife and two children.

Bob Gibbs, the Republican Congressman representing the Ohio 7th Congressional District, has announced that he will not seek reelection as he faces a Donald Trump-endorsed candidate in a redrawn district, Politico reports.

The six-term Congressman’s withdrawal from the race comes after ballots have already been printed and early voting has begun for the primary.  Max Miller, a former official in Trump’s highly-controversial Presidential Personnel Office, is expected to take the nomination.

Miller is a vocal advocate that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump despite a dearth of evidence to support his claim.  “This circus has provided me the opportunity to assess my future,” Gibbs said in a statement. “To that end, after considerable deliberation, I have decided to not seek re-election this year. This was a difficult decision, one which I did not make lightly.”

Governor Gavin Newsom press release: “Today, the California Senate Judiciary Committee passed SB 1327, private right of action legislation authored by Senator Robert Hertzberg (D-Van Nuys) and sponsored by Governor Gavin Newsom to limit the spread of assault weapons and ghost guns. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last December allowing Texas’s ban on most abortion services to remain in place, Governor Newsom directed his Administration to work with the Legislature to propose a measure, modeled on the structure of Texas’s abortion law, to enable private citizens to hold the gun industry accountable through civil litigation for the proliferation of illegal firearms. ‘This week’s unconscionable act of gun violence is a tragic reminder of the lives that are at stake in this crisis that endangers communities across the country,’ said Governor Newsom.”

“‘Today, the Legislature took an important step towards holding the gun industry accountable for mass shootings in our communities involving illegal firearms and protecting residents, utilizing the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that allowed private citizens in Texas the ability to sue abortion providers. So long as the Supreme Court has set this precedent, California will use it to save lives.’ SB 1327 allows private citizens to bring civil actions against any person who manufactures, distributes, transports, imports into the state or sells assault weapons, .50 BMG rifles, ghost guns, or ghost gun kits. Senator Hertzberg’s bill is part of a larger legislative package supported by Governor Newsom to strengthen gun laws and protect Californians.”

The United States announced additional sanctions targeting Russians supporting Vladimir Putin and his regime, including his two adult daughters, and stated that an international effort also broke up a Russian cybercrime operation, the Associated Press reports.

Putin’s two adult daughters, Mariya Putina and Katerina Tikhonova, are having assets accessible to US financial institutions frozen, and they will face travel restrictions.  Putin is suspected of having other children, but they are not officially recognized by the Kremlin.

Also sanctioned was Konstantin Malofeyev, a Russian media mogul who helped finance disinformation campaigns during the Crimea invasion and whose outlets have been promoting Russian propaganda during the Ukraine invasion.  He was targeted for attempting to circumvent the sanctions by hiring a former Fox propaganda producer and US citizen, Jack Hanick, to produce segments to be aired on US outlets.  Hanick, who also worked for CNBC, is facing his own charges in federal court.

More than two decades after they were discovered to be missing, two of Charles Darwin’s early notebooks in which he outlined his first concept of natural selection were mysteriously returned to the Cambridge University library last month, the Washington Post reports.

Known as Notebooks B and C, the postcard-sized books from 1837 were found in a pink gift bag in a hallway in the library offices with a note attached to it:  “Librarian, Happy Easter, X.”  After examination by police, librarians unwrapped the notebooks from their plastic wrap and authenticated the items.

“It quickly became apparent to us that we were indeed looking at what we’d been hoping would be returned to us one day — the two precious Charles Darwin notebooks,” Cambridge University librarian Jessica Gardner said in an interview.

“Today, the United States, with the G7 and the European Union, will continue to impose severe and immediate economic costs on the Putin regime for its atrocities in Ukraine, including in Bucha. We will document and share information on these atrocities and use all appropriate mechanisms to hold accountable those responsible. As one part of this effort, the United States is announcing devastating economic measures to ban new investment in Russia, and impose the most severe financial sanctions on Russia’s largest bank and several of its most critical state-owned enterprises and on Russian government officials and their family members. These sweeping financial sanctions follow our action earlier this week to cut off Russia’s frozen funds in the United States to make debt payments. Importantly, these measures are designed to reinforce each other to generate intensifying impact over time,” says a White House press release.

The main highlight is “Full blocking sanctions on Russian elites and their family members, including sanctions on: President Putin’s adult children, Foreign Minister Lavrov’s wife and daughter, and members of Russia’s Security Council including former President and Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people. Some of them are responsible for providing the support necessary to underpin Putin’s war on Ukraine. This action cuts them off from the U.S. financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States.”

Fat former guy Donald Trump hosted a MAGA star-studded world premiere of “Rigged: The Zuckerberg Funded Plot to Defeat Donald Trump” at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night, drawing a who’s who of right wing royalty to watch the 42-minute white nationalist science fiction thriller about a Jew using his vast fortune to influence an American election, the Washington Post reports.

Among the luminaries gathering to reenact scenes from a Riefenstahl reel were dental braces-wearing fat former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, Sephora-caked MAGA town bike Hope Hicks, QAnon freak Arizona Gov candidate Kari Lake, conspiracy aiding and abetting lawyer Cleta Mitchell, board game entrepreneur Peter Navarro, Kristi Noem-fucking sleazebag Corey Lewandowski, and ultra-successful tech executive Devin Nunes. The MAGA celebs mingled with their Orange God Emperor while sipping the finest Trump-branded wines paired with pigs in a blanket and fried shrimp, and gossiping over the ongoing federal criminal and Congressional investigations into their attempted destruction of American democracy.

Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a complete asshole who probably deserves it, is on the brink of an ouster just a little under a year into his tenure after his ruling coalition’s whip in parliament defected to the opposition, Axios reports. The best part is that the whip Idit Silman, shanked Bennett over the dumbest shit possible: a Ministry of Health memo sent to government hospitals a few days ago commanding them to adhere to a court order allowing people to bring leavened foods into hospitals on Passover. “I couldn’t allow it to harm Israel’s Jewish identity,” said Silman.

Silman’s departure deprives Bennett of his majority and will likely trigger new elections after the Knesset reconvenes on May 8th, though he does have the month to maneuver and bribe some other asshole to come into his fold. The outlook is bearish however after some key cabinet ministers expressed support for Silman’s stand. What can be ruled out completely is a return to power for Benjamin Netanyahu, who does not have nearly enough support to get to 61 votes.