Law enforcement descends on Al Capone’s South Florida mansion, 1938: pic.twitter.com/oO3YFZS8OV

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) May 25, 2021

The online discussion of key QAnon phrases has largely faded from mainstream social media platforms, and the traffic on fringe sites like Parler and Gab is still a fraction of what it once was, an analysis of web traffic shows, Medium reports.

Analytics company DFRLab reviewed common phrases and memes related to various QAnon talking points distributed through social media outlets.  The phrases included QAnon-centric phrases such as “WWG1WGA” (Where we go one we go all), “the storm,” “great awakening,” “trust the plan,” “dark to light,” and “future proves past.”  Measuring the frequency of the appearance of those terms on platforms, DFRLab found that the QAnon reach peaked in August 2020 and saw a resurgence around the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol.

Since then, however, the QAnon chatter has dropped precipitously, to just around 7% of previous traffic, with the phrase “Save the Children”–tangentially connected to QAnon but also integral to a legitimate non-profit organization–comprising most of the data.

In a landmark case, a Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell, the parent company of Shell Oil, to dramatically cut its greenhouse gas emissions in its decision of a case brought by international environmental groups, Reuters reports.

The ruling requires Shell to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 45% by 2030, five years earlier than Shell’s announced plans Judge Larisa Alwin stated from a courtroom in The Hague.  The ruling also shifts Shell’s benchmark from 2016 emissions levels to 2019 levels, further lowering the amount of planned emissions.

“The court orders Royal Dutch Shell, by means of its corporate policy, to reduce its C02 emissions by 45% by 2030 with respect to the level of 2019 for the Shell group and the suppliers and customers of the group,” Alwin said.

“Picture this: It’s 9 p.m. on January 13, 2026 – a Tuesday – and you tune in to your favorite cable-news network to watch the president’s annual State of the Union address. But this year, the president doesn’t take a bulletproof limo from the White House to the US Capitol. Gone are the hundreds of members of Congress traditionally in attendance. Instead, the commander in chief is wearing an orange jumpsuit, his message streamed to lawmakers and into your living room via Zoom from his prison cell. Yes, this scenario is equally far-fetched and outlandish – in the extreme. But it’s also possible, law experts told Insider, particularly given former President Donald Trump’s mounting legal woes and his expressed desire to win back the White House in 2024.”

“If Trump landed in prison, nothing in the Constitution would block him from another White House run, according to nine legal experts interviewed by Insider. The Constitution requires only that presidential candidates are natural born US citizens who are at least 35 years old and have been US residents for at least 14 years. And practically anyone – even fictional characters – can take the first step toward the White House by filing organizational paperwork with the Federal Election Commission. ‘If he happens to be in prison at the time of the next presidential election, the fact that he’s in prison will not prevent him from running,’ said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill. Whether Trump could run for president from prison – he has not been charged with a crime despite being the subject of local- and state-level inquiries – is therefore the easy question to answer, according to legal scholars. From there, matters get more complicated” – Business Insider.

Pennsylvania Republican state senator Doug Mastriano, a staunch Trump supporter, election conspiracy theorist and potential GOP gubernatorial candidate, seems to have lied about the extent of his participation in the January 6th domestic terrorist attack at the Capitol, WHYY Philadelphia reports.

Mastriano spent campaign money to charter two buses to travel to the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the insurrectionist attack.  He had previously claimed that he and his wife quickly left the mob when it approached the Capitol.  “When it was apparent that this was no longer a peaceful protest, my wife and I left the area and made our way out of the area,” Mastriano said. “At no point did we enter the Capitol building, walk on the Capitol steps, or go beyond police lines.”

C-list celebrity's tweet inciting violence against Rand Paul was taken down by @Twitter for violating its rules. @playbookdc https://t.co/iis0u9YElO pic.twitter.com/2OvsGe0uOB

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 26, 2021

“Democratic lawmakers will introduce a bill late Wednesday to make permanent a temporary children’s summer food program created because of the pandemic. The proposed law would cement and slightly expand a program first created in the American Rescue Plan that provides cash for an estimated 33 million kids in low-income families. Earlier this year, the Biden administration called it ‘the largest summer food program in U.S. history.’ The effort would also secure one piece of the expanded social safety net the country has developed during the national emergency created by Covid-19 – just as some Republican states are beginning to cut such benefits. ‘We’ve seen lines that stretch for miles at food banks across the country this past year – this pandemic has to be a wakeup call for America,’ said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who will introduce the bill Wednesday. ‘Hunger doesn’t take time off when school buildings are closed, so neither can we.'”

“The Child Nutrition Act, which encompasses many of the food programs that feed low-income families, is up for reauthorization this year. While it has received bipartisan support in the past, in recent years it has not been fully reauthorized because of bipartisan divisions. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans do not appear close to hammering out a deal on the infrastructure package, though President Joe Biden has included a form of Murray’s bill in the most recent plan. The staffer admitted they are hanging their hopes on the Democrats’ slim margins in Congress, as ‘it’s tough in general to get Republicans on a nutrition bill'” – NBC News.

In a blockbuster deal, Amazon is purchasing MGM Studios and its entire catalog of movies and television shows for $8.45 billion, its largest acquisition since buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017 and giving Amazon ownership of premier brands like James Bond, CNBC reports.

The purchase will provide Amazon a slew of new titles for its Amazon Prime streaming service as well as access to the MGM studios worldwide, adding a new component to Amazon Original series.

In a lesser known aspect, the deal puts the entire catalog of “The Apprentice,” the reality show that pushed Donald Trump’s popularity into a realm where he ran for president, into the hands of one of the people on his “enemies list,” Jeff Bezos.  Bezos can now determine if he wants to release the rumored footage of Trump swearing, demeaning people and allegedly using drugs that were recorded while the series was being filmed.

Reuters: “Italy’s carabinieri police arrested three men on Wednesday over a cable car crash that killed 14 people, saying the emergency brake system had been deactivated to overcome a fault. On Sunday the gondola on a cable way connecting the northern town of Stresa, on the shores of Lake Maggiore, to the nearby Mottarone mountain plunged to the ground, killing all aboard apart from a five-year-old Israeli boy who remains in hospital. The bodies of five other victims from Israel – a young couple, their child and their grandparents – were being sent home on Wednesday.”

“Italian prosecutors have opened an investigation into suspected involuntary manslaughter and negligence. Carabinieri Lieutenant colonel Alberto Cicognani told broadcaster RAI the suspects, who he did not name, admitted that a fork-shaped clamp had been placed on the safety brake system, preventing it from operating as it should. The cable car had not been working properly, with the brakes constantly kicking in. The clamp would stop them from activating, allowing the cable car to keep functioning. ‘It is certainly very serious and very disturbing,’ Olimpia Bossi, the chief prosecutor of the city of Verbania, told reporters after the arrests. ‘With the conviction that the cable car would never break, (the men) took the risk which determined the deadly outcome,’ Bossi said. A Carabinieri official in Verbania told Reuters those arrested were the manager of Ferrovie Mottarone, the company that manages the cable way, its director, and the manager of the cable way. A lawyer for one of the men was not immediately available and it was not immediately possible to reach representatives for the other two.”

“Dominic Cummings, the former chief strategist to U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, delivered bombshell testimony Wednesday on the British government’s early response to the coronavirus, apologizing for falling ‘disastrously short’ in a way that cost thousands of lives. Cummings, a controversial figure known as the architect behind the Brexit campaign, has become one of Johnson’s most troublesome critics since resigning from government after a bitter power struggle last year. Cummings has poor public approval and trust ratings – especially after he was accused of breaking the U.K.’s strict COVID lockdown rules last year – but his role as the most powerful aide in Downing Street gave him unique insight into the government’s early pandemic response.”

“The U.K. was one of the worst-hit countries in Europe, both in terms of coronavirus death toll and economic damage, but a world-leading vaccine rollout has brought the country back to the brink of normality. Cummings testified that in February 2020, Johnson viewed COVID-19 as a ‘scare story’ and suggested that he could have England’s chief medical officer inject him with the virus on live television to reassure the public. Herd immunity – either in September 2020 after a single peak or January 2021 after a second peak – was viewed by the U.K. government as an ‘inevitability’ up until mid-March, Cummings testified. He claimed that the U.K.’s top civil servant even advocated for ‘chicken pox parties’ to get people infected. Downing Street has denied that purposely aiming for herd immunity, which would have resulted in mass death, was ever government policy.” – Axios.

The woke media is attacking me for being outspoken against vax discrimination & smearing me as antisemitic to cover the truth that the #JihadSquad openly supports Hamas terrorists.
I wonder if GOP leadership would cosponsor my bill to defund terrorists?https://t.co/TfZ15s4tks

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) May 26, 2021

Pillow magnate and man who became less erratic when he was using meth Mike Lindell was barred from attending the Republican Governors Association meeting being held in Nashville, even though he flew there to mingle with the state leaders, Politico reports.

A staunch supporter of Donald Trump and leading purveyor of numerous debunked election conspiracy theories, Lindell arrived Tuesday at the JW Marriott Hotel to collect his credentials. He was told by a staffer that he would not be allowed to attend any of the functions during the three-day confab. Tuesday evening, Lindell tried boarding a bus transporting participants to a dinner at the Tennessee governor’s mansion, but he was informed he couldn’t get on the bus. “These events are for RGA members, and Mike Lindell is not currently an RGA member,” an RGA official said.

https://youtu.be/mxQqgMVu-yQ

After Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul accused 80s pop singer Richard Marx of stoking violence, Marx took to the keyboard to get in the last word…. um, er… note.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer filed a cloture motion for the bill to form an independent commission to investigate the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol, meaning that the Senate must vote on forming the commission by Friday, MSNBC reports.

Sixty Senators must vote for cloture to proceed to a floor vote to establish the January 6th commission.  To date, all fifty Democrats in the Senate have voiced support for the commission, while only Republican Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has voiced support for an independent commission.

Six days ago, the House voted in a bipartisan way to establish the commission, with 35 Republicans joining all Democrats to pass the bill.  The format of the commission–with equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans–was agreed to by Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson and New York Republican John Katko, their respective party’s ranking members of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Marjorie Taylor Greene deletes social media posts like Donald Trump deletes financial records.  Or contractor bills.  Or wives.

In a since deleted Facebook Live post from the summer of 2019, Greene (Q-Georgia) berates New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for comparing the internment camps the Trump Administration kept children in for months at a time to concentration camps, CNN reports.

“She should be shamed by everyone.  That she’s actually using those terms and making that comparison.  And I think it’s an embarrassment to our country, that we actually have a congresswoman that would do such a thing.  And I’m calling her out big time,” Greene ranted.  “I think everyone should call her out.  She should never ever make that comparison.  It’s insulting, extremely insulting to the families who have family members that were murdered or survived concentration camps.  And that just shows you a lot about who she is as a person.  And then also anyone that agrees with her and the Democrat party.”

Greene is being criticized for repeatedly comparing public health requirements by local governments and by businesses to how Nazis treated Jews before and during World War II, when more than six million Jews were killed in German extermination camps.  But to Greene, in her highly hypocritical, non-self-aware way, AOC was wrong to compare concentration camps to concentration camps, but she’s perfectly on point to compare wearing a mask or getting a vaccine to death.

A Canadian mountain climber is in critical condition after he fell more than 1,000 while descending the 20,000-foot Denali mountain in Alaska, Reuters reports.

Adam Rawski, 31, of Barnaby, British Columbia was airlifted off the mountain after being recovered at the 17,200 foot level by a staging camp.  He was found unresponsive with several traumatic injuries by guides and other mountaineers who witnessed the fall.

After the lifting of coronavirus restrictions, climbers have flocked to Alaska’s Denali park.  Currently, more than 350 climbers are attempting the ascent, with six having reached the peak of the mountain.  Already this year, three people have died on the range, with one killed falling into a crevasse, and two other killed when a block of ice fell off the glacier they were climbing and struck them.

“This is a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history. It began the day I came down the escalator in Trump Tower, and it’s never stopped. They wasted two years and $48 million in taxpayer dollars on Mueller and Russia Russia Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and it continues to this day, with illegally leaked confidential information. No other President in history has had to put up with what I have had to, and on top of all that, I have done a great job for our Country, whether it’s taxes, regulations, our Military, Veterans, Space Force, our Borders, speedy creation of a great vaccine (said to be a miracle!), and protecting the Second Amendment.”

“This is purely political, and an affront to the almost 75 million voters who supported me in the Presidential Election, and it’s being driven by highly partisan Democrat prosecutors. New York City and State are suffering the highest crime rates in their history, and instead of going after murderers, drug dealers, human traffickers, and others, they come after Donald Trump. Interesting that today a poll came out indicating I’m far in the lead for the Republican Presidential Primary and the General Election in 2024. Our Country is broken, our elections are rigged, corrupt, and stolen, our prosecutors are politicized, and I will just have to keep on fighting like I have been for the last five years!” – Statement from Former Guy.

Fox News: “An arrest warrant for Marilyn Manson was issued on Tueday by police in New Hampshire after the musician allegedly failed to answer to pending charges for a 2019 incident involving a videographer. The Gilford Police Department issued a statement on its Facebook page explaining that the arrest warrant for Manson, whose real name is Brian Hugh Warner, was issued for two counts of Class A misdemeanor simple assault at the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion. ‘Warner, his agent and legal counsel have been aware of the warrant for some time and no effort has been made by him to return to New Hampshire to answer the pending charges,’ police said. It is unclear when exactly the arrest warrant was issued.”

In a major boost to the pro-labor policies of President Joe Biden, General Motors has announced that it will support union membership for the workers at the two new battery factories it’s building in the United States, the Associated Press reports.

The plants, being built in partnership with South Korean manufacturer LG Energy Solution, will be called Ultium LLC and have locations in Lordstown, Ohio, and Spring Hill, Tennessee, and they’re expected to employ 2,300 workers.

The United Auto Workers have been pushing for GM–and its crosstown rival, Ford–to include union membership in its new battery factories to ensure workers maintain union scale, which tops out at $31 per hour.  The union is working to secure positions for its members who will lose jobs at factories making traditional internal combustion engines.