“At least two people are thought to be dead and some 20 people are missing after a mudslide swept across a seaside city around 60 miles southwest of Tokyo, sweeping away homes amid Japan’s rainy season. Footage posted on social media showed the powerful black mudslide shoot down a mountainside, engulfing homes and infrastructure as locals watched in horror. The giant mudslide in Atami, Shizuoka prefecture, which occurred around 10:30 a.m. local time, came after parts of the region was hit by torrential rain. Police and firefighters have been searching for the missing and prefectural officials have requested help from Japan’s Self-Defense Force” – CNN.

Daily Beast: “If you’ve been on Fox News’ digital news site or bouncing around the right-wing media ecosphere in recent weeks, you’ve no doubt come across an article or three about the recent collapse in viewership at CNN and MSNBC. And the tanking ratings have largely been tied to the ‘credibility’ issues the two networks supposedly have in covering President Joe Biden’s administration following Donald Trump’s exit from the White House. Lost in all this coverage, however, is one stubborn fact: Fox News has also suffered a precipitous drop in its viewership.”

“Following a record-setting year in cable news viewership that was spurred by a once-a-century pandemic and a dramatic presidential election – which then climaxed with a one-two punch of Trump inciting an insurrection and Biden’s inauguration – ratings have tumbled across the board as interest in politics has waned. During the month of January, for instance, CNN enjoyed its most-watched month yet, drawing a daily average of 1.907 million total viewers and a total primetime audience of 2.737 million. At the same time, during that same month, Fox News finished third in cable-news ratings for the first time in 20 years, averaging 1.374 million viewers in total day and 2.621 million in primetime. MSNBC, for its part, was second across the board that month, drawing 1.662 million viewers per day and 2.658 million in primetime. One noticeable thing, however, about the large audiences that CNN and MSNBC pulled in during that month is the massive growth it experienced from the same time the previous year. Fox News, on the other hand, actually suffered a year-to-year drop in viewership, despite the historic news cycle. Compared to January 2020, CNN nearly tripled its viewership in the key 25-54 demographic, and more than doubled its total daily viewership and its primetime audience both overall and in the key demographic. MSNBC also saw double-digit year-to-year growth across the board in both total day and primetime viewership.”

• I’d wager good (post-tax) money that Junior, Ewic and Ivanka have recently asked their legal and financial advisors (1) how long the statute of limitations lasts and (2) how far back can they revise their tax returns.  
• It’s easy to tell Tucker Carlson’s NSA claims are false:  if there was a modicum of evidence to support them, every single Fox News program would be featuring the story in the “A” block.  
• Joe Biden isn’t flashy.  His “No Malarky” tweet is about as close as you’ll get to him talkin’ trash.
• The Trump boys made a very poor argument with their “Everybody does it!” argument to defend the family company’s criminal indictment.  They’re essentially saying rich people shouldn’t be prosecuted because everybody breaks the law… which leads to the question: how many other people in the Trump Org also did the same things for which Weisselberg was indicted?

Officials managing the Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside, Florida have revised the number of people unaccounted for down to 126, from 145, after they were able to determine that some of the people listed were duplicate names, the Associated Press reports.

After initially having 190 people listed as missing in the days after  the disaster, authorities were able to lower the number by locating people at other locations and determining some were not in their condos when the building collapsed.

Still, with a death toll currently at 22 and a pile of rubble to sift through, the number of fatalities is expected to increase significantly in coming days as workers uncover bodies.  The effort will likely need to slow as Hurricane Elsa approaches the East Coast, making the site unstable and dangerous for rescue workers.

“Our top priority is search and rescue. We will take no action that will jeopardize our search-and-rescue efforts,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said. “The building poses a threat to public health and safety.”

A 156-unit North Miami Beach condo complex was ordered evacuated by authorities Friday evening due to structural and electrical concerns that create a safety issue for the residents of the building, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Built in 1972, the Crestview Tower was to undergo a new inspection ordered by city officials following the sudden collapse of the Champlain Towers South complex in Surfside.  Twenty people are confirmed dead in the Surfside collapse, which happened 11 days ago, with more than 140 still unaccounted for.

The Crestview Towers was built a decade before the Champlain Towers South.  The building manager put in a recertification report, but the inspecting engineer determined that structural and electrical issues made the building unsafe.  City officials then ordered the building to be evacuated.

One of the largest criminal ransomware attacks in history has hit more than 200 organizations at the start of the Independence Day according to cybersecurity firm Huntress Labs, NBC News reports.

The attack, believed to have been perpetrated by the prolific ransomware gang REvil, was spread through an international software management company called Kaseya, which services companies that manage internet services for businesses.

At least four of Kaseya’s immediate customers were hacked, said John Hammond, a senior security researcher at Huntress, which is helping with Kaseya’s response.  Kaseya’s software works with an unknown number of business, but Huntress has identified 200 businesses infected by the ransomware so far.

Federal Judge Trevor McFadden of the US District Court, appointed to the court by Donald Trump, turned aside a motion from one of the people who attacked the Capitol during the January 6th domestic terror assault who claimed he was being prosecuted solely because he was a Trump supporter, CNN reports.

The defendant, Couy Griffin, is a county commissioner from New Mexico who founded the “Cowboys for Trump” group.  He also lost out on an argument that the Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol, assaulting police officers and trespassing in the Capitol complex, were treated differently than protestors arrested on Capitol grounds during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Griffin also said he was being unfairly prosecuted because others around him weren’t charged by federal authorities yet.

Reuters: “A fire at an underwater pipeline connecting a platform operated by Mexican state oil firm Pemex at the Ku Maloob Zaap oil development has been brought under control, four sources said, after video footage showed flames shooting from the waters of the southern Gulf of Mexico. No injuries or major impact on production were reported following the early-morning fire at the offshore complex, said the sources, from shipping companies in the area and Pemex.”

Arizona Republic: “Then-President Donald Trump tried to speak directly with the chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in the weeks after the November 2020 election as his allies sought to change the election results in a state he narrowly lost to Democrat Joe Biden. New records obtained by The Arizona Republic reveal the behind-the scenes efforts by Trump, his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, and state GOP Chair Kelli Ward to pressure the county supervisors, who make up the elected body that oversees elections in the state’s most populous county.”

“Text messages and voicemails make clear that Trump’s allies were fixated on how the supervisors were going to address what the Trump team deemed as voting irregularities. Those concerns included the software used in voting machines, and how to reconcile Trump’s underperformance around the county compared with other GOP candidates. The Republic obtained the material through a public information request to Maricopa County seeking all records documenting calls made to county supervisors from Trump, Giuliani, Sidney Powell and any other individuals representing the White House or the Trump campaign from Nov. 1, 2020, through late May. In 2020, Biden flipped precincts that had voted for Trump by small margins in 2016, helping to deliver Biden the White House. It contributed to a loss Trump still has not accepted. He still hopes the Republican-commissioned ballot review in Arizona will vindicate his unfounded position.”

No malarkey here. pic.twitter.com/pH3zO86yKY

— President Biden (@POTUS) July 2, 2021

The former Surfside, Florida building inspector who reassured Champlain Towers South residents that their condo complex was structurally sound despite an independent engineer’s report of multiple serious issues was previously employed in Miami Shores, Florida, where he was responsible for inspecting the demolition project of a local dog track that collapsed, killing two workers.

The New York Times reports that Ross Prieto, the building inspector for Surfside who makes a $110,000 annual salary, told condo residents in 2018 that the complex was “in very good shape” despite an independent report that listed significant damage to concrete and steel reinforcing bars.  Prieto was sent the report by the consulting engineer, and made a visit to the condo complex that November to reassure residents.

About a year later, when residents wrote to him expressing concern that the blasting from a nearby construction project was shaking their condos, Prieto responded that “there is nothing for me to check.”  He advised, “The best course of action is to have someone monitor the fence, pool and adjacent areas for damage or hire a consultant to monitor these areas as they are the closest to the construction.”

Texas Tribune: “A promotional event for a book that examines the role slavery played leading up to the Battle of the Alamo that was scheduled at the Bullock Texas State History Museum on Thursday evening was abruptly canceled three and a half hours before it was scheduled to begin. Authors of the book titled ‘Forget the Alamo,’ and the publisher Penguin Random House say the cancellation of the event, which had 300 RSVPs, amounts to censorship from Republican elected leaders, and an overreaction to the book’s examination of racism in Texas history.”

“‘The Bullock was receiving increased pressure on social media about hosting the event, as well as to the museum’s board of directors (Gov Abbott being one of them) and decided to pull out as a co-host all together,’ Penguin Random House said in a statement. Abbott and the museum have not responded to the Tribune’s requests for comment. But Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick confirmed he called for the event to be canceled. Abbott, Patrick and other GOP leaders are board members of the State Preservation Board, which oversees the Bullock museum. ‘As a member of the Preservation Board, I told staff to cancel this event as soon as I found out about it,’ he wrote on Twitter. ‘This fact-free rewriting of TX history has no place @BullockMuseum.’ Chris Tomlinson, one of the book’s three authors, shot back on Twitter. ‘Gov, Dan Patrick takes credit for oppressing free speech and policing thought in Texas,’ he wrote. ‘@BullockMuseum proves it is a propaganda outlet. As for his fact-free comment, well, a dozen people professional historians disagree.'”

Non-Correction: The current version of this article intentionally referred to Texas Lt Gov Dan Patrick as ‘Dannie Goeb’ in the headline. This is not an error because it is his actual birth name.

Someone fired at least 23 shots into the Mobile, Alabama home of State Senator Vivian Davis Figure in a crime police say “does not appear to be a random act,” according to the Alabama News Network.  No one was injured in the attack, that happened at around 5 a.m. Thursday morning.

Police will not say if Senator Figure, a 64-year-old Black woman who has served in the state Senate since 1997, was the target of the attack.  No one was home at the time of the shooting.  Neighbors heard the gunfire, but did not identify the senator’s house as the target until Thursday afternoon, when it was reported to police.

Anthony Aguero, a right-wing YouTube provocateur who was part of the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, joined the entourage of Republican House members who took a photo op tour of the southern border Tuesday night, CNN reports.

Aguero livestreamed his interactions with GOP House members as they toured the border in search of migrants crossing illegally.  The tour was arranged by the conservative Republican Study Committee, who invited members of the conservative press like The Hill and The Daily Caller, as well as more mainstream reporters like Politico and CNN.

Claiming to be an independent journalist with the non-existent “Border News Network,” Aguero interviewed and chatted with House members Lauren Boebert (CO), Madison Cawthorn (NC), Michael Cloud (TX), Ronny Jackson (TX), Chris Jacobs (NY), Mary Miller (IL),  John Rose (TN) and Tom Tiffany (WI).  During one video, Aguero boasted of having “Representative Hawthorn” behind him, apparently misidentifying Cawthorn.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris welcomed the Los Angeles Dodgers, the winners of the 2020 World Series, to the White House Friday for the traditional champions’ visit.  Harris is from California and represented the state in the Senate.

San Jose Mercury-Sun: “Republican donors were in for a unique show when Kimberly Guilfoyle took the mic at private fundraisers, a new book reveals. The senior adviser for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign enjoyed giving donors “an unwanted glimpse” into her personal life with Donald Trump Jr., saying that the president’s oldest son liked her to dress up as a sexy cheerleader, according to a new book, ‘Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost,’ by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael C. Bender. The former Fox News host and one-time first lady of San Francisco also shared how she called her boyfriend a ‘naughty boy’ when she ‘let him out of his cage,’ according to an excerpt of the book published by the Daily Mail. She described him as ‘Braveheart meets honey badger,’ Bender’s book also reveals.”

“In some campaign settings, the pro-Trump crowds loved it when Guilfoyle, 52, appeared on stage with Trump Jr., 43, and they engaged in teasing banter about their relationship, the book said. After the two started dating in the spring of 2018, they became known as an in-demand duo at Trump campaign events – ‘the prom king and queen of MAGA land,’ a senior Trump advisor told Business Insider for a report in October. Bender’s 432-page book, to be published July 13, also offers the latest account of reports that Guilfoyle talked or acted in sexually suggestive ways at political events or in workplace settings. Sometimes her behavior made people uncomfortable, reports have said. Bender’s book also is the latest to describe her talking about apparent Trump Jr.’s delight in her dressing up as a cheerleader.”

Wisconsin state prosecutors filed a motion Friday asking a judge to allow them to inform the jury of a violent incident that occured the month before Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people, killing two, in Kenosha, the Chicago Tribune reports.  Prosecutors also want to include information about Rittenhouse’s affiliation with the right-wing extremist group Proud Boys.

On July 1, 2020, Rittenhouse was caught on video striking a girl in the back while he was at the Kenosha waterfront.  That incident happened the month before his shooting spree in Kenosha, where he went during the protests after police shot Jacob Blake in the back, paralyzing him.

Rittenhouse left his home in Antioch, Illinois August 25, 2020 and had his mother drive him to Kenosha, where he planned to help armed citizens claiming they were protecting local business.  When here, he illegally obtained an assault rifle he had a friend buy for him in Wisconsin through a strawman purchase.  Rittenhouse was only 17 years old at the time, and in Wisconsin, a gun buyer must be at least 18.

Medina Spirit did harder drugs than Sha’Carri Richardson and is still racing.

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) July 2, 2021

Here Gaetz is referring to US Olympic team sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson, who was suspended from the team for a month after she tested positive for marijuana on Thursday and may not be able to race in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Medina Spirit is the horse whose win at the 2021 Kentucky Derby was marred when he tested positive for an anti-inflammatory steroid called betamethasone after the race. Medina Spirit was permitted to run in the Preakness Stakes (where he finished third), but not the Belmont, since the three Triple Crown races are governed independently by the state racing authorities of Kentucky, Maryland, and New York, respectively.

So Gatez’s tweet works if you ignore the circumstances where one competitor did get to race in half of the events they were berthed in instead of (probably) none of them. And if you ignore the fact that one substance is a depressant that does nothing to boost that runner’s speed – in fact it is more likely to harm it with habitual usage – while the other is definitely considered a performance enhancing drug and is banned as such. And finally, and perhaps most importantly, one of these competitors is a human being in possession of personal agency and an ability to perceive the consequences of violating the rules of one’s sport, while the other is horse who does not.

None of this is to say that Sha’Carri Richardson should be prevented from competing in the Olympics because who the hell cares if she smoked a joint recently, it has no bearing on her performance. Let us know if she tests positive for betamethasone. Matt Gaetz, for everything else wrong with him – and there’s a lot – is a reliable advocate for drug policy reform when they are very few and far between in the GOP. He could just be less fucking stupid about it than acting like the situations where a horse who has no idea what kind of shit he’s being injected with and a human sprinter getting high have anything beyond the most gratingly basic similarities.

“Lukashenko instructs border guards to completely close the border with Ukraine ‘A huge amount of weapons comes from Ukraine to Belarus. Therefore, I instructed the border troops to completely close the border with Ukraine,’ the President of Belarus said” reports, um, Дождь.

Separately, TASS reports Lukashenko claimed to have “exposed” terrorist cells sent by Germany, Ukraine, USA, Poland and Lithuania. “The purpose of these cells is a violent change of power on X-day. They themselves do not yet know what kind of X-day it is: our people must be brought to it,” said Lukashenko in what was probably not a very accurate translation from Russian by Google, but it sounds kind of interesting, so we’re going to go with it.