Senior Biden Administration officials say Russian claims they’re removing troops from the Ukraine border is complete bullshit, and are actually increasing their presence there, Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs reports. “We hope the world is ready,” the official told reporters. Separately, the Daily Beast reports satellite photos show a pontoon bridge capable of carrying assault vehicles appearing this week on the Pripyat River inside Belarus, just miles from the border with Ukraine.

The Department of Interior inspector general ruled that Donald Trump’s first Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, used the power of his office to benefit himself, his friends and his family, the Associated Press reports.

The issue revolves around an organization Zinke helped found, the Great Northern Veterans Peace Park Foundation, which had the mission to establish a park on a piece of land donated by the BNSF Railway company.

When Zinke took office, he stated he had cut ties to the foundation to avoid conflicts of interest, however the inspector general determined that Zinke continued to work on behalf of the foundation and engaged in negotiations on behalf of a personal project to develop a portion of the donated land into a retail center, including a microbrewery. 

While normally we avoid celebrity bullshit because it sucks, National Zero is delighted to inform readers that Wisconsin insurance salesman and outspoken anti-vaxxer Karen Rodgers and his fiancee, actress Shailene Woodley, have reportedly broken up, per BuzzFeed.

Non-Correction: The current version of this article misspelled Aaron Rodgers’ first name as ‘Karen’ in the headline. National Zero does not regret the error and will not be correcting it.

A federal judge has ordered MAGA lawyer John Eastman to prove he was retained by Trump in the lead up to the Capitol riot if he wants his claim of attorney-client privilege over a large set of email evidence sought by the House January 6th Select Committee to be accepted by the court in his lawsuit against the committee. Wrote US District Judge David Carter on Tuesday:

“Dr. Eastman shall file with the Court and the Select Committee evidence of all attorney-client and agent relationships asserted in the privilege log. Dr. Eastman shall also provide evidence documenting any attorney-client relationships that existed with his clients. Evidence may include engagement letters, retainer agreements, or other writings. The evidence shall confirm the timing and scope of each attorney relationship and each agent relationship, including specific named lawsuits if applicable. If there is no written documentation, the Court will accept a sworn statement from an attorney, client, or agent in each relationship attesting that written documentation does not exist and specifying the timing and scope of the relationship”

On Tuesday we here at National Zero were to understand that, despite an hours-long hold up over what was surely intentional bureaucratic friction by Canadian customs authorities, the RSBN camera crew being denied entry to film the truck entering Canada from the other side, and other unrelated (but not really that unrelated) difficulties, Mike Lindell’s Godly mission to provide humanitarian aid in the form of pillows to the oppressed caucasians occupying Ottawa was successful as we had not seen any further reporting after the border hold up on that evening.

Well we were wrong, because on Wednesday the National Post reported that Lindell had indeed been told he and his crew were not welcome in Tim Hortons Land after all because neither he nor the driver he hired to deliver pillows to the anti-vaccine protestors were – wait for it – vaccinated against COVID-19, a requirement for entry into Canada. “We’ve been on we’ve been trying to get my trucks into Canada… we’ve been trying to get to Ottawa,” Lindell said in a FrankSpeech video. “(The trucker) has been waiting on this permit that they made up out of the blue, this new permit thing,” Lindell added, which makes it seem awfully like he doesn’t understand what these people are fucking protesting in the first place and failed to do even the most basic of research.

Silly us for thinking he was competent enough to simply quietly hire a trucker and a video crew who were in fact vaccinated and not mention that part of it at all, while still reaping the propaganda benefits he had envisioned for himself. Sure, Lindell personally would not have been there, but the images of a trailer with his face on the side joining the clustertruck still would’ve owned the libs.

Windsor, Ontario Mayor Drew Dilkens told city residents in a press conference Wednesday the traffic control measures on the approaches to the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit, Michigan are still necessary as “a convoy suspected of” heading back to the bridge again was “intercepted” by police, the Detroit News reports. “To those small businesses and residents who are frustrated or upset about the current of concrete barriers along [nearby street that leads to the bridge] Huron Church Road…let me be clear: this remains a national security situation that prevents police from simply reopening Huron Church Road to regular traffic at this time,” said Dilkens.

In a recent Quinnipiac University poll, respondents were asked the question “As you know, former President Donald Trump said publicly that his former Vice President Mike Pence could have overturned the 2020 presidential election. Mike Pence responded by saying Donald Trump was wrong and that while he was vice president, he had no right to overturn the election. Which comes closer to your line of thinking: the view of Donald Trump or the view of Mike Pence?” to which 52% of Republicans said the sided with Pence while 36% said Trump.

That the remaining 12% said they don’t know is kind of high for a binary question that’s essentially a proxy for “Do you think the 2020 election was stolen?” It’s possible some of the die-hards are done with relitigating the election. Maybe even more likely is that they don’t understand how the electoral college works enough to answer the question one way or the other. A lot of stupid, not-particularly-well-educated people do vote Republican these days.

“The Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa (CASO) is urging parents at the demonstration in Ottawa to make the necessary alternate care arrangements should they become unable to care for their children following potential police action. CASO has a mandate to protect a child when their parent becomes unavailable to exercise their custodial rights over the child and the parent has not made adequate provision for the child’s care and custody. If parents and children are separated following police efforts in ending the demonstration in the downtown core, CASO will work to reunite families as soon as possible” – Message from the Children’s Aid Society of Ottawa, probably meant more to gently tell the anti-vaxxers to snap out of it and get the fuck out of town already than anything else.

National Zero will do you one better: What if John Durham dumping this made up nonsense in a court filing late on a Friday night was meant as diversion after a week of constant stories about Trump taking classified documents from the White House when he left office? Or if, more likely, John Durham was going to write that horseshit anyway but it came at a really good time for the right wing media who wanted to avoid addressing the credible allegations that the Donald handled classified information far more carelessly than he’d ever accused Hillary Clinton of?

“February is a time for caring and growing for our students. In honor of Black History Month and Valentine’s Day, I will be coming around and teaching lessons related to equity, caring, and understanding differences. These lessons will occur during the weeks of February 14th-25th. Studies show that students who have a greater understanding of diversity in the classroom and outside world will demonstrate improved learning outcomes such as improved grades, better peer relationships, and greater career success later on. These lessons can provide a great impact on students and help facilitate a better learning environment for all.”

“If you would like your child to receive these lessons in class, then you do not have to do anything. If you would like to opt your child out for receiving these lessons, then sign the form below and have your child return it to the school to give to the teacher” writes Counselor Benjamin White in a letter to parents of kids at Sprunica Elementary in Nineveh, Indiana, via Twitter user @LittleWhitty.

White does an admirable enough job selling this – and let’s be clear, he almost certainly would not be teaching these lessons at all if he did not want to, so don’t go spamming his social media with lib rage. It’s not totally clear if he could be fired or sued yet for not offering this opt-out under current state law, but either way he’s probably going to take a lot of shit from MAGA parents anyway for daring to mention there are proven benefits to educating kids about diversity.

Shady fugitive Chinese “billionaire” and Steve Bannon’s sugar daddy Guo Wengui filed for bankruptcy in Connecticut on Tuesday after a New York judge ordered Guo to pay up $134 million in a judgement from creditors, Rolling Stone’s Seth Hettena reports. Guo, a Mar-a-Lago member on whose yacht Bannon was arrested for fraud in the “We Build the Wall” scam in 2020, owes a Hong Kong private equity firm over a quarter billion dollars they loaned in 2008 – on top tens of millions more in liabilities to other creditors listed in the bankruptcy filing.

Last week the judge in the case ripped Guo as showing “utter contempt for this Court and the judicial process” by moving his yacht, the Lady May, to the Bahamas to escape the judgement in defiance of a 2020 court order. So we’re probably getting closer to the point where Guo is a fugitive from authorities in both the US and China (though the latter is murky, as it’s been alleged that Guo is actually a ChiCom double agent). To top it all off, Guo’s investment in redundant-from-day-one “free speech” social media platform GETTR is probably just money pissed away as well.

“The Russian Duma has stated that it plans to send to President Putin an appeal to recognize the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as ‘independent.’ To be clear: Kremlin approval of this appeal would amount to the Russian government’s wholesale rejection of its commitments under the Minsk agreements, which outline the process for the full political, social, and economic reintegration of those parts of Ukraine’s Donbas region controlled by Russia-led forces and political proxies since 2014. Enactment of this resolution would further undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, constitute a gross violation of international law, call into further question Russia’s stated commitment to continue to engage in diplomacy to achieve a peaceful resolution of this crisis, and necessitate a swift and firm response from the United States in full coordination with our Allies and partners” – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

“My fellow Canadians, I address you today as your queen, commander-in-chief, and head of government. This message is for President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I am rejecting Ukraine’s application to join NATO, and officially welcoming Russia to [the] NATO alliance. God bless, and peace and prosperity on Earth,” says Romana Didulo, the QAnon influencer and self-proclaimed Queen of Canada in a video address to the nation. Sort of interesting that Romana acknowledges NATO as legitimate, considering she’s involved in intergalactic and interplanetary politics. You’d think someone in contact with thousands of different advanced alien civilizations wouldn’t really be so concerned with such petty, Earthbound affairs, but then again she is a woman of the people.

British law enforcement have opened an investigation into Prince Charles’s charity over allegations they took a bribe from a Saudi billionaire in exchange for UK citizenship and a knighthood, The Sun reports. Sources claim Charles himself wasn’t involved in the scam and that it happened without his knowledge, but another shitshow is the last thing the royal family needs just a day after Charles’s brother Andrew effectively admitted he raped a teenage girl decades ago while hanging out with the notorious scumbag Jeffrey Epstein by settling a US federal lawsuit with the victim.

President Joe Biden is opposing yet another attempt by the Former Guy to withhold information from the House January 6th Select Committee, ordering the National Archives to turn the Trump White House visitor logs over to investigators seeking to learn more about the lead-up to the attack, the New York Times reports. Following Trump’s embarrassing January 19th loss at the Supreme Court in his effort to assert ex-executive privilege over presidential records, it is unlikely there will be any significant legal delay in the committee obtaining the records.

In a letter to the archives, White House counsel Dana Remus wrote “Congress has a compelling need… to view visitor logs showing appointment information for individuals who were processed to enter the White House complex, including on Jan. 6, 2021” and that “constitutional protections of executive privilege should not be used to shield, from Congress or the public, information that reflects a clear and apparent effort to subvert the Constitution itself.”

The House January 6th Select Committee have subpoenaed the phone records of Timothy Enlow, a security guard for batshit right wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, a Tuesday court filing in Jones’s suit against the committee revealed, Politico reports. Jones is asking District Court Judge Christopher Cooper to add Enlow as a plaintiff to the case. Jones sued the committee in December to block a subpoena for his testimony – even though he did interview voluntarily with the committee in January, pleading the fifth about a hundred times. Jones asserts the subpoena for his minion’s phone records are a backdoor way to get around Jones’s refusal to answer questions directly.

Russian leadership claimed to be removing more troops from the border with Ukraine on Wednesday, however NATO officials saw no actual signs of a drawdown on the day Ukrainian President Zelensky had “sarcastically” claimed would be the day of the attack, the Associated Press reports. Whatever is happening, Russian forces have not yet launched the expected invasion.

“And I, I think Trump knew about it back then,” really bad lawyer (and man who really wants Robert Duvall to play him in the made-for-TV movie) Rudy Giuliani declared as he’s framed between two bottle blondes.  “I can’t tell you exactly how but I knew how he knew about it back then.  There’s a lot more to come out, uh, uh, uh [clearly grasping for a name].  This is not, I mean, what we’re  you’re… They may feel that it’s gobbledygook, but it’s gobbledyduk gook supported by about a thousand pieces of evidence, none of which have been revealed yet.  I happen to have it in my bedroom [one of the blondes laughs uncomfortably], or ah my den, actually.  I’ve had it there for years, as well as a fraudulent election [indecipherable].”

Besides the crimes against grammar, Rudy is also admitting to withholding evidence in federal and local investigations.

Allison Gollust, the CNN executive in a relationship that triggered the resignation earlier this month of network president Jeff Zucker, has also resigned from the network, according to an email sent to staff. https://t.co/7SdWkWBDiM

— NBC News (@NBCNews) February 16, 2022

Seriously this photo is fucking creepy as hell. Not sure whether to feel bad for her or warn people she’s a Terminator from an era of the future where Skynet R&D didn’t quite figure out how to properly mimic human facial expressions yet. Or aliens whose cloning technology has similar issues. Worse, it’s making us think Jeff Zucker has a kink for that sort of thing, like he read lots of cheap erotic sci-fi novels and got bored with his wife for being so life-like. That’s our theory.

A middle-aged American woman of mixed race became the first female to be cured of AIDS, and the third known case of a person being cured of AIDS in the world, Reuters reports.

The patient, an acute myeloid leukemia patient, received a stem cell transplant from a donor who was naturally resistant to the virus that causes AIDS, researchers report.  She has been virus-free for 14 months and has not been using antiretroviral therapy over that time, showing that the virus is in remission.  She is also the first to receive umbilical cord blood, a process researcher say could make the treatment available to more patients.

Two other patients–a white male and a Latino male–have been clear of HIV and AIDS using adult stem cells.