The National Traffic Highway Safety Administration essentially repealed the changes the Trump administration made to engine efficiency standards, reverting back to the pre-Dark Time rules that push vehicles to hit 40 miles per gallon by 2026, the Associated Press reports.

According to the NTSB, the increase from the Trump-installed standard of 28 miles per gallon would save more than 220 billion gallons of gas over the operating life of all vehicles currently on the road.

“Transportation is the second-largest cost for American families, only behind housing,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said. The new standards will help keep the U.S. more secure and preserve “the freedom of our country to chart its future without being subject to other countries and to the decisions that are being made in the boardrooms of energy companies.”

Republican North Carolina Congressman and sad wannabe debaucher Madison Cawthorn will appear with titular head of the Republican Party, himself a self-declared friend of at least THREE accused child sex traffickers, Donald Trump at a rally in Selma, North Carolina next Saturday.

The rally, lasting for at least four hours according to the schedule, will be held at a farm in temperatures predicted to be in the low 40s with a steady breeze.  Trump’s last rally, held in Georgia at night in warmer temperatures, was a disaster, with scores of empty chairs and people exiting as Trump continued to speak.

A one-time contributor to Fox propaganda, who was suspended for–get ready for this–being too racist, is hosting a viewing of his schlock political “documentary” on how Mark Zuckerberg rigged the 2016 election against Donald Trump.  The film’s producer, David Bossie, was the deputy campaign manager for the 2016 Trump campaign, so he should be aware that Trump was declared the winner of that race.  No word on the cost of the ticket, but Donald Trump is sure to get his cut from the catering at Mar-a-Lago to a personal appearance stipend.

“Devin Nunes is a former Congressman from California who served as Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from January 2019 to January 2022. On February 21, 2020, the Washington Post published an article entitled ‘Senior intelligence official told lawmakers that Russia wants to see Trump reelected.’ The article described a briefing given to members of the House Intelligence Committee by Shelby Pierson, a senior intelligence official, in which Pierson informed the lawmakers that Russia had ‘developed a preference’ for then-President Trump and wanted to see him reelected. According to the article, President Trump was ‘furious’ when he heard about the briefing and blamed Joseph Maguire, the acting Director of National Intelligence. Maguire had been under consideration for the role of permanent Director of National Intelligence, but ‘Trump’s opinion shifted… when he heard from a Republican ally about the official’s remarks’… Nunes brought suit against the Washington Post’s parent company, WP Company, LLC.” ”

Nunes alleged that the Post defamed him by implying that (1) he ‘lied to and deceived the President of the United States’… Nunes has not plausibly pled a claim of defamation by implication. To establish such a claim, Nunes had to allege facts showing that (1) ‘a defamatory inference can reasonably be drawn’ from the statement(s), and (2) ‘the particular manner or language in which the true facts are conveyed’ supplies ‘additional, affirmative evidence suggesting that the defendant intends or endorses the defamatory inference[.]’ In considering claims of defamation by implication, courts ‘must be vigilant not to allow an implied defamatory meaning to be manufactured from words not reasonably capable of sustaining such meaning'” says the decision from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which, is actually pretty embarrassing that Nunes could not prove the Post lied when they reported he had lied to Trump, who is his actual boss now.

The Biden Administration has secured the release of an American citizen and a green-card holding US resident from Afghan custody after the two were detained while doing humanitarian work in the war-torn nation, Reuters reports.

Saifullah Rauf, the U.S. citizen, and Anees Khalil, a U.S. green card-holder, who are brothers, were released into the custody of Yemeni representatives and flown to Yemen, where they will transfer to a flight to the United States.

“We are grateful for the efforts of all those who worked to secure” the release of Rauf and Khalil “but more work remains. Unjustly holding Americans captive is always unacceptable,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a statement. “We will not stop until every American who is being unjustly held against their will is able to hug their families once again.”

The House voted 220 to 204 to decriminalize marijuana on Friday in a vote mostly on party lines with 2 Dems voting no and 3 Republicans yes. We’ll track down the roll call but it’s safe to assume Matt Gaetz is one of the three Republicans given his record on the subject.

DONE WITH MICKEY: A mother explains why she's saying goodbye to Disney, urging other parents to do the same. https://t.co/WuDN0wv2cf pic.twitter.com/LenDqRNVIq

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 1, 2022

We don’t doubt Kristan Hawkins is a “mom”. We totally can buy that in her spare time she spawned with the aid of a male partner and thus is a mother of one or more children. But when the actual article itself says she’s “president of Students for Life of America, with more than 1,250 groups on college, university and high school campuses in all 50 states” it kind of makes us think Fox News is just sandbagging in the tweet to make it look like Hawkins is some “concerned” mom who came up with this on her own rather than a hardcore right winger whose career in propaganda almost certainly predates her being a parent. Oh and she’s been writing op-eds for Fox News for nearly 7 years. So that kind of seals the deal for yet another example of why Fox News are fucking liars.

Alabama MAGA terrorist Lonnie Leroy Coffman, 72, was sentenced by a federal judge Friday to nearly four years in prison after pleading guilty in November to having guns and components to make molotov cocktails stashed in his pickup truck parked near the Capitol during the legitimate political discourse that left five dead on January 6th, 2021, the Associated Press reports.

US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said she waiting for an explanation for why Coffman had “almost a small armory in his truck, ready to do battle,” on the 6th. Coffman wrote in a letter to the judge he had driven alone from Alabama “to try to discover just how true and secure was the (2020 presidential) election. If I had any idea that things would turn out like they did, I would have stayed home.” Coffman did not end up on the Capitol grounds or enter the building during the insurrection, he had been stopped and searched by cops a few blocks away and found to be carrying a pistol and revolver without a DC license. His truck was then searched and found to contain a handgun, a rifle, a shotgun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a crossbow, machetes, a stun gun and a cooler containing eleven mason jars with holes punched in the lids, per prosecutors. Each jar contained a mixture of gasoline and Styrofoam, which is extra patriotic because it’s non-biodegradable.

Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis continues the GOP fascination with Hollywood and celebrity by teaming with musicians the Van Zant brothers for a slick, sappy theme song for his gubernatorial reelection campaign.  The song, “Sweet Florida,” won’t make any Billboard lists, but becomes a tune that DeSantis hopes become the song of the summer for Florida Man.  The song has all the musicality of a Lee Greenwood tune and the lyrical brilliance of the Baha Men.

DeSantis continues to rail against the largest private employer in the state of Florida for acknowledging that LGBTQ people exist, claiming that people shouldn’t recognize reality.

The country who has sent tens of thousands of military into Ukraine and leveled entire cities is complaining that the invaded country has struck back and destroyed a fuel depot within its borders, CNN reports.

Ukraine hasn’t backed away from the Russian accusation claiming Ukraine has attacked a location in Belgorod, a city to the northeast of the Ukraine border.  “I would like to emphasize that Ukraine is performing a defensive operation against Russian aggression on the territory of Ukraine,” Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, spokesman for Ukraine’s defense ministry, said in a televised statement Friday.

Unconfirmed video shows two helicopters launching rockets at a location, causing multiple explosions.

Axios reports that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki intends to leave her position next month for a gig on liberal news commentary network MSNBC.  Reportedly, Psaki will lead a new program for NBC’s Peacock streaming service.

Psaki had said in 2020 that she didn’t intend to stay in the job for more than a year before revising the statement to say she would stay for an unspecified period.  Her departure will likely lead to a sigh of relief from Peter Doocy, Fox White House correspondent, who has been regularly humiliated by Psaki.

Amazon warehouse workers in New York and Alabama appear to be headed in two different directions with their votes to unionize, with the effort apparently succeeding in the Empire State while struggling in the South, the Associated Press reports.

After tallying preliminary counts, pro-unionization votes in New York lead the ballot in the effort to unionize a warehouse in Staten Island by a 1,518 to 1,154 margin, meanwhile workers in Bessemer, Alabama are favoring staying non-unionized by a slim 993 to 875 vote with a significant number of votes yet uncounted.

This is the second vote held at the Bessemer location:  an earlier ballot at the warehouse struck down a unionization effort last year, but the National Labor Relations Board ruled Amazon had violated workers’ rights with its wide-ranging effort to lobby workers to vote against a union.

Just some training… pic.twitter.com/PCPuByXjgr

— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) April 1, 2022

“John stole my thunder at the end of the article by referencing the daily wire and its investment in children’s entertainment. We can whine about this stuff all we want, but it’s never going to change until these companies feel the squeeze in their bottom lines. And to do that, we need to create alternatives and utilize them. The daily wire saw that Harry’s razors became super woke and combative toward conservatives, so they started an alternative razor company. Bravo.”

– The current top comment on the Power Line Blog post “Goodbye, Disney“, posted late Thursday.

We were unaware of the Daily Wire shaving company, its existence is especially surprising since by all appearances its founder Ben Shapiro is a 38 year old adolescent incapable of growing facial hair. We also have some concerns as, aside from the fact that taking on Disney from the right is supposed to be the Trump Media and Technology Group’s exclusive domain, it’s not entirely clear such an effort will be able to find a sufficient market to reach and maintain profitability given the right’s spotty history with launching alternative smartphones, streaming devices, accredited four year institutions of higher learning, ground coffee, fiat currencies, and porn blocking software.

They are pretty good at cranking out propaganda and misinformation, we’ll give them that. Ball gags too. They should stick to those industries and leave everything else to the professionals.

Since we filed suit in December, we've uncovered new information, so today, we’re adding Rhodes, Edward Vallejo, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel, and Brian Ulrich, as well as Matthew Greene — who already pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges.

And this is just the beginning.

— Archive: AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) April 1, 2022

The US economy grew by 431,000 jobs, unemployment sunk to 3.6%, wages grew by 5.6%, in March, Bloomberg reports. Hospitality, business services, retail, and manufacturing led growth.

Two Ukrainian helicopters crossed nearly 20 miles into Russian territory and destroyed an oil depot in the city of Belgorod on Friday, the first reported strike within Russia since the war began, the New York Times reports. “The fire at the oil depot happened as a result of an airstrike of two helicopters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that entered the territory of Russia at low altitude,” said Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov in a post on shitty Russian Facebook knockoff VKontakte. The strike comes a week after Russia’s top General Sergei Rudskoy declared “At present, the Ukrainian air force and air defense system have been almost completely destroyed.”

“Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro announced today that a future John Lewis-class replenishment oiler (T-AO) ship will be named USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg to honor the former Supreme Court Justice and women’s rights activist. The future USNS Ruth Bader Ginsburg (T-AO 212) will be the first U.S. Navy ship to bear her name. ‘As we close out women’s history month, it is my absolute honor to name the next T-AO after the Honorable Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She is a historic figure who vigorously advocated for women’s rights and gender equality,’ said Del Toro.”

“‘As Secretary of the Navy, it is my aim to ensure equality and eliminate gender discrimination across the Department of the Navy. She is instrumental to why we now have women of all backgrounds, experiences and talents serving within our ranks, side by side with their male Sailor and Marine counterparts.’The name selection for the John Lewis-class replenishment oiler follows the naming convention of honoring people who have fought for civil and human rights” – US Navy

Both sides in the war in Ukraine are using cell phone signals to their tactical advantages, from gathering intelligence to focusing weapons fire, an in depth report from Sky News states.

Ukrainian troops are told to ditch their SIM cards and to get one from a military-approved source at the location where they’re deployed.  Don’t accept discounted cards from locals; they could be plants from the enemy.

Soldiers are told to walk 400-500 meters away from their comrades before turning on a cell phone to call someone–and take an armed friend with you to stand guard.  Limit the time of calls, and immediate leave the area when the call is complete.

Happy Retirement, Betty!

Betty Reid Soskin, the oldest active ranger in the National Park Service at age 100, retired today after a remarkable career. Learn more: https://t.co/sUOb3R5ZFQ

📸Betty Reid Soskin @RosieRiveterNPS pic.twitter.com/u1vDWqqwwA

— National Park Service (@NatlParkService) March 31, 2022