Discussing Disney programming, which executives say will include more “queerness” according to this stringer for Fox, genderless Fox host Tucker Carlson says that even acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people in Disney films and productions “sounds like the behavior of a sex offender.  Normal people don’t sexualize underage children.”

First, it’s nice that Tucker realizes Matt Gaetz is not a normal person.  Second, no one is “sexualizing” children; acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ people isn’t sexualizing children in anyway.  It’s helping their understanding of the human condition, which Carlson refuses to do.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened an investigation into threats made against key figures in the trial of four men accused of conspiracy to kidnap and try Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer over coronavirus restrictions, Reuters reports.

The FBI’s Detroit office is looking into threats received by the judge in the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker, as well as two of the defense attorneys, Josh Blanchard and Christopher Gibbons.  The manner and nature of the threats were not disclosed.

Prosecutors rested their case against Adam Fox, Brandon Caserta, Barry Croft Jr. and Daniel Harris on Wednesday after three weeks of testimony tying them to a 2020 plot involving the so-called Wolverine Watchmen, a Michigan militia.

Dane County, Wisconsin Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn found Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in contempt of court Wednesday for failing to produce documents related to his chamber’s bullshit “review” of the 2020 election and the fat idiot with braces they hired to run it, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports. Vos has 14 days to comply or he faces a fine of $1,000 per day thereafter.

A large clinical study of more than 1,300 patients found ivermectin ineffective against treating Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, the latest blow in the conservative campaign to make Donald Trump not look more like an idiot.

The New York Times reports that the study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, includes all data for skeptics who wish to examine the evidence that ivermectin is no better at treating Covid than a Trump steak.

“There’s really no sign of any benefit,” said Dr. David Boulware, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota.  “Now that people can dive into the details and the data, hopefully that will steer the majority of doctors away from ivermectin towards other therapies.”

“I welcome the results of the other clinical trials and will view them with an open mind, but at some point it will become a waste of resources to continue studying an unpromising approach,” Dr. Paul Sax, an infectious-disease expert at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said.

For the past two months a federal grand jury has been issuing subpoenas to the right wingers who planned and financed the Jan 6th, 2021 Trump “Stop the Steal” rally where the Donald incited the MAGA marauders who attacked the Capitol shortly thereafter, the Washington Post reports.

A federal judge tasked with overseeing reform of the Texas child welfare system said the federal government needs to step in to investigate allegations of sex trafficking at a teen shelter as she has lost trust in state authorities to do so, the Texas Tribune reports. US District Judge Janis Jack’s comments at a Wednesday hearing strongly imply that agents of the government led by a triad of corrupt, white nationalist Republicans – Governor Greg Abbott, Lt Governor Dannie Goeb, and Attorney General Ken Paxton – is engaging in sex trafficking of minors. It’s quite possible the triad themselves are sacrificing children and consuming their adrenochrome, because that’s the natural conclusion here. There’s credible evidence that employees a state-licensed Bastrop shelter for teenage victims of sex trafficking actually sex trafficked the victims themselves, so we can use that as our reality-based starting point to say it goes all the way to the top.

We’ll forget about the victims themselves because they’re not important. What’s really important is that Beto O’Rourke get elected as governor of Texas, so we’ll make up some horrible shit about Greg Abbott and his two scumbags. Even if they are actual scumbags, it’s not enough. We need to convince Texans those three are Satan-worshipping rapists who engage in all sorts of horrific blood rituals. We need to keep repeating this shit until we believe it. It’s the only way to win.

House Minority Cuck Kevin McCarthy’s big sex talk with Madison Cawthorn about special grownup things, like cocaine use and orgies, things that Madison doesn’t understand yet, reportedly went okay, Axios reports. “I just told him he’s lost my trust, he’s gonna have to earn it back, and I laid out everything I find is unbecoming. And, you can’t just say ‘You can’t do this again.’ I mean, he’s, he’s got a lot of members very upset. It’s just frustrating. There’s no evidence behind his statements. And when I sit down with him … I told him you can’t make statements like that, as a member of Congress, that affects everybody else and the country as a whole,” McCarthy told Axios, adding that Cawthorn had admitted the claims were untrue and “exaggerated”.

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok obtained a court order demanding the Bill Barr and the office of the US Attorney General turn over all documents they possess relating to his firing and the office’s efforts to smear him in the press during the Trump administration.

According to Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes, the court ordered Barr and current Attorney General Merrick Garland to turn over any documentation and communications produced by the Department of Justice from mid-2017 through 2018 relating to his firing.

Strzok also will get records from the Department relating to media contacts relating to him and Lisa Page, a fellow FBI agent with whom Strzok had an affair.  Strzok specifically seeks information about conversations Sarah Isgur, the DOJ spokesperson during Barr’s time as AG, about Strzok and Page. 

A previously reported call from the Orange God Emperor to lowly supplicant Utah Senator Mike Lee in the middle of the mayhem at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 was placed from a White House landline phone was squarely within the 7 hour and 37 minute gap in the official phone records of the day first made public on Tuesday, the Guardian reports. Meaning the call was never recorded in the first place or someone deleted it, which either way is a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

The Trump-Lee call, which happened at 2:26 pm on January 6th has long been public knowledge – Lee freaked out over potentially being called as a witness in the middle of Trump’s second impeachment trial in February 2021 – but until the Guardian’s confirmation from multiple sources it hadn’t been established that it was routed through the White House switchboard. It’s bad enough that the Donald was using burner phones and borrowing phones from his aides to make calls to avoid having them logged on official White House records, now there’s strong evidence he and his staff tampered with official government documents to hide their evil fuckery.

Just as every autocrat like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin has his own squad of sycophants who tell him exactly what he wants to hear, and they’re completely misleading him about the impact of the Ukrainian invasion, Reuters reports.

US and European intelligence officials say Putin is being told the sanctions enacted after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are having little impact on the country, when in fact, the ruble has collapsed and the Russian economy is significant damaged.

“We have information that Putin felt misled by the Russian military, which has resulted in persistent tension between Putin and his military leadership,” Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, told reporters during a press briefing.  “We believe that Putin is being misinformed by his advisers about how badly the Russian military is performing and how the Russian economy is being crippled by sanctions because his senior advisors are too afraid to tell him the truth.”

Freshman Republican North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn appears to have puffy, reddened eyes as he left a meeting with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Whip Steve Scalise where he was chastised for blurting out that Republicans have cocaine-fueled orgies.

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Responding to Iran firing missiles into Kurdistan and Yemen, the United States imposed sanctions Wednesday on a number of Iranian companies which were involved in the development of the technology used in the weapons, Reuters reports.

The sanctions against Iran-based Jestar Sanat Delijan, Sina Composite Delijan Co. and P.B. Sadr Co will bar them from working with American companies and using American banks to transfer funds for international business.

“While the United States continues to seek Iran’s return to full compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, we will not hesitate to target those who support Iran’s ballistic missile program,” the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said in the statement.

Using images and data from the 32 year old Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have identified the oldest star ever identified by humans, a 12.8 billion year old object that formed about 900,000 years after the Big Bang, the Associated Press reports.

“We’re seeing the star as it was about 12.8 billion years ago, which puts it about 900 million years after the Big Bang,” said astronomer Brian Welch, a doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University and lead author of the study appearing in Wednesday’s journal Nature.  “We definitely just got lucky.”

Nicknamed Earendel, the star is two billion years younger than the previous record holder, which was formed 9.4 million years ago.

New Trump lawyer Peter Ticktin, brought in the help with the Donald’s insane lawsuit against Hillary Clinton and 48 other defendants for the Russia investigation, goes way back with the Donald, the Daily Beast reports. As a classmate at the all-male New York Military Academy in the early 1960s, Ticktin claims he rigged a fabricated recognition for the Donald in the school yearbook. “Somebody else got ‘Most Popular,’ and we wanted to give him something, so we made him ‘Ladies’ Man,’ which to us was kind of an inside joke because there really were no ladies,” Ticktin told the Beast about how the future Fat Orange Ex-President was given the unearned accolade.

Ticktin is also a poet who posts his verses on a section of his law practice’s website, has been suspended from the Florida bar association twice – the second time while serving the first suspension – and wrote a book titled What Makes Trump Tick: My Years with Donald Trump from New York Military Academy to the Present. Doesn’t exactly sound like a Roy Cohn.

Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins will vote yes on confirming Judge Kentanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, erasing any doubt KBJ will become the first ever Black female justice. “I have decided to support the confirmation of Judge Jackson to be a member of the Supreme Court,” Collins told the New York Times in an interview shortly after meeting with KBJ on Tuesday.

Irritable, spandex-wearing freak Congressman Jim Jordan has been granted with an elite honor in the GOP world: unearned sales of his book, subsidized by National Republican Congressional Committee donors who are being given copies of “Do What You Said You Would Do: Fighting for Freedom in the Swamp” as “mementos”, Politico Playbook reports. “We set aside a signed copy of Jim Jordan’s new book just for YOU! Order now and help retake our House majority!” says one NRCC Facebook ad touting a tome that would otherwise have sat in a warehouse for half a year before being sold by the pallet to a piñata factory in Northern Mexico for three cents a pound.

Jordan joins Don Jr, Sean Hannity, Ted Cruz, and Dan Crenshaw on an exclusive list of Republican figures whose books would have otherwise sold jack shit that can now technically claim to be “bestselling authors” solely on the backs of GOP donors (actually Hannity probably did alright on his own with book sales before the RNC padded his numbers anyway in 2020).

And to be fair, it does look like “Do What You Said You Would Do” is doing pretty well in its own niche market too. Currently sits at #1 on Amazon… in the category of “Wrestler Biographies.” Really.

Vladyslav Atroshenko, mayor of the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, tells CNN the Russians have actually increased their assault on his town despite a Russian official claiming at peace talks in Istanbul on Tuesday their forces would soon ease up. “They’re saying reducing intensity, they actually have increased the intensity of strikes. Today we have a colossal attack on the center of Chernihiv. Twenty-five people have been wounded and are now in hospitals. They’re all civilians. So whenever Russia says something, this needs to be checked carefully,” said Atroshenko.

The Republican Jewish Coalition has endorsed Jennifer Strahan, a Republican running an all-but-certainly doomed primary campaign against space laser conspiracy theorizing white nationalist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jewish Insider reports. “If you are a conservative Republican who cares about the issues facing America, if you are a Trump conservative in that district, you will get somebody in Jennifer Strahan who shares those views without all the baggage that comes with Marjorie Taylor Greene,” says RJC executive director Matt Brooks.

Though they already opposed Greene in her 2020 primary, the RJC does not normally oppose incumbents and had been expected to simply stay out of the 2022 primary in Georgia’s 14th district. However her insane bullshit – especially appearing at a conference with anti-semite Nick Fuentes – made it an easy call for the RJC. “Jennifer is a terrific candidate and she’s the strongest one running against Marjorie Taylor Greene,” said Brooks, adding Strahan is a “a true conservative who doesn’t traffic in antisemitic conspiracy theories, doesn’t speak to white nationalist organizations and doesn’t applaud and cheer on [Russian dictator Vladimir Putin].”