Although Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin recently claimed he didn’t think the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol was an “armed insurrection,” police confiscated scores of weapons from the attackers, CNN reports.

Police confiscated a baseball bat, a fire extinguisher, a wooden club, a spear, crutches, a flagpole, bear spray, mace, chemical irritants, stolen police shields, a wooden beam, a hockey stick, a stun gun, and knives.

Police arrested Christopher Alberts of Maryland as he left the Capitol building for having a handgun on him.  He tried to flee, but was caught by police.  He also had 25 rounds of ammunition on him.

“No reason to even air out these tweets, we know how the left feels when a conservative dies.”

– The current top comment on The Gateway Pundit article “Evil Leftists Do Not Hold Back Celebrating the Death of Conservative Legend Rush Limbaugh“, posted Wednesday afternoon.

New York Times: “Despite a hard-won experience with natural disasters like hurricanes, this was a whole new kind of misery in Texas, all the more distressing because it was so unfamiliar. Calls were coming into 911 and other law enforcement lines at three times the normal rate, said Jason Spencer, a spokesman for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, from people desperately seeking advice about burst pipes, asking what the symptoms of hypothermia might be or just looking for some deliverance from the bitter cold.”

“Emergency workers, many leaving behind their own families in frozen and powerless homes, have had to respond to calls for assistance by navigating dangerously icy roads. Some of the direst situations will only be learned about in the days to come. ‘We’re fully expecting that when things start to thaw out and people start checking on each other that we’re going to find some people who didn’t make it through the storm,’ Mr. Spencer said. ‘We’ve responded to death calls, we’ve had suicides, we’ve had at least one homeless person who we believe died from hypothermia.’ But, he said, that is likely ‘just the tip of the iceberg.'”

The FBI and the US Attorney’s office in Brooklyn are investigating Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s coronavirus task force for its management of nursing homes and long-term care facilities during the pandemic, the Albany Times Union reports.

The US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, along with the FBI, are looking into senior members of the task force after the governor’s office admitted that data about nursing home deaths from COVID did not accurately reflect the spread of the disease at the facilities.

“As we publicly said, DOJ has been looking into this for months,” Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for the governor, told the Times Union. “We have been cooperating with them and we will continue to.”

I just sent a request to the governor to lower the state and U.S. flags in honor of Rush Limbaugh. He will be missed. No doubt he has made a lasting impact on American politics and conservatism. pic.twitter.com/xAfGHYnV7V

— Speaker Robin Vos (@SpeakerVos) February 17, 2021

From Matt Fuller of Huffington Post:  “So Capitol Police called me today to come in for an interview. They were pretty cryptic on what it was about, but it turns out they have two ongoing investigations that I was witness to: one, the potential assault of an officer by a Member of Congress, the other, Andy Harris. … The first investigation is about Rep. Russ Fulcher manhandling an officer who was at the metal detectors outside the House floor. I saw him very aggressively brush a female officer aside after he set the magnetometer off the night of 1/12. … The interaction has definitely stuck with me, because he was very aggressive, yes, but also because that officer was pretty disturbed too. I tried to ask her about it after, and while she wouldn’t say anything, she nearly had tears in her eyes.

“THREAD: There are 9,000 people caged in the downtown Houston jail, most of them solely because they can’t pay cash. The situation is getting dire: ‘We don’t have any running water anymore.’ … People are sleeping on floors, toilets are clogged and covered in plastic bags because of the smell. People report not being given drinking water. When asked about water, guards have said: ‘you shouldn’t have f**ing gotten locked up.’ … There are still over 50 children trapped inside the adult jail, many of them because their families can’t get the $$$. … Despite desperate pleas from the Sheriff, the DA and District Court judges have declined to hold individual hearings to even consider releasing people on the lowest cash bail. People are trapped there because our society lets prosecutors and judges do this.” —Alec Karakatsanis of The Civil Rights Corps

In a move disconnected from his complaints about windmills and the Green New Deal, Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has banned Texas fossil fuel companies from selling natural gas to any out-of-state entity, Bloomberg reports.

Claiming he has the authority because of an emergency declaration he signed February 12th, Abbott’s order cuts off the freedoms of Texas companies to enjoy the profits of a free market, even as more than three million people in Texas struggle because they don’t have power or electricity.

“I hereby mandate that all sourced natural gas be made available for sale to local power generation opportunities before leaving the state of Texas, effective through Feb 21, 2021,” Abbott said to the Texas Railroad Commission, which for some reason is the state’s energy regulator “I ask that you immediately take all reasonable and necessary steps to ensure that this mandate is carried out.”

“‘Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.’ That’s according to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who served as energy secretary for the first 2½ years of Donald Trump’s presidency. While a severe winter storm system has left tens of millions of Americans without power and killed at least 20 people across the country, Texas and its deregulated power grid have suffered perhaps most of all.”

“Since about 60% of Texas homes use electric heat, the spike in demand has put more stress on the electric grid than it has been able to cope with. And that means that many of those without power also can’t heat their homes as the Lone Star State suffers through a record-breaking cold snap. Google reported Wednesday that search interest in ‘heat’ hit a record high in Texas over the past 24 hours. What’s more, the top Google search in Texas on Wednesday was ‘When will the power be back on?’ And the top ‘is it safe’ questions from Texans include ‘Is it safe to use a propane heater indoors?’ and ‘Is it safe to burn charcoal in a fireplace?’ as people apparently look for ways to get warm while the power is out” – MarketWatch.

Texas Tribune: “More than 100 low-income older and disabled residents of an Austin high-rise apartment building were stranded without power and with dwindling food supplies for more than two days after the electricity went out and the property’s emergency generator shut down on Monday. ‘Please help us, please,’ Farah Rivera, 58, a resident of the Rebekah Baines Johnson Center in East Austin, said early Wednesday. ‘We need whatever help we can get.’ Help arrived a few hours later, as Austin firefighters evacuated residents who wanted to leave, carrying them down long flights of stairs in some cases, to CapMetro buses waiting to transporting them to a church shelter a few miles away, said Sergio Amaya, vice president of DMA Properties.”

“Shortly after the evacuation began, the emergency generator was restored and one elevator began working, speeding up their efforts to get people out of the freezing tower. Residents bundled up in blankets and head scarves and layers of clothing, some using walkers and carrying red-and-white H-E-B grocery bags filled with belongings as they boarded buses or left with family. ‘We are, right now, going floor to floor with the Austin FD determining who wants to go to the warming center and helping us bring them down from their floors,’ he said. Millions of Texans were still without power on Wednesday, some of them for the third straight day, as the partial collapse of the state’s power system plunged them into darkness during a storm that saw inches of snow and ice and wind chills below zero. Particularly hard hit are vulnerable residents, those that can’t leave their homes, or can’t afford hotels, or have otherwise limited resources and mounting medical needs.”

As we’ve reported here on National Zero, March 4th, 2021 is the QAnon mythos’s next date of “The Storm” – the prophesied day of tribulation when Trump and JFK Jr seize power and destroy the Satanic-Jewish-Hollywood-Democrat cabal that controls all media and finance. The Trump Organization is so sure that fans will show up in DC, it’s taken the time to rip them off for a few bucks by nearly tripling the lowest room rates at the Trump DC International Hotel on March 3rd and 4th. The reason why they believe March 4th is the day of The Storm is unclear exactly, but it has something to do with the fact that the 4th was Inauguration Day until 1937 – after the ratification of the 20th Amendment to the Constitution in 1933.

Anyway, as National Zero reader King Con Trump pointed out, that’ll soon change to “We meant JULY 4th….where Trump will be riding into D.C. on a red, white, and blue tank to roll over that librul traitor!” like it always does. And it makes perfect sense if you’re a QAnon fan – this year in particular.

We’re calling it now: Because July 4th, 2021 will be the 245th birthday of the United States, the numerological freakery of QAnon will go into overdrive with “2 + 45 = TRUMP’S SECOND TERM”. This will obviously not make sense mathematically (though it does work as a string concatenation as “2” + “45” returns “245”) but that’s never stopped the jackasses before. They’ll probably even go ahead and start calling it “Re-Independence Day”. If any QAnon freaks are reading this, you might as well get a head start now on planning for your “Re-Independence Day” celebrations.

Law and Crime: “A federal judge the District of Maryland on Wednesday threw out a lawsuit that Rep. Devin Nunes‘s senior aide Derek Harvey filed against CNN, former Rudy Giuliani business associate Lev Parnas, and Parnas’s lawyer Joseph Bondy. Judge Richard Bennett, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the defamation action failed to state a claim against CNN. As to Parnas and Bondy, the judge said the court lacked personal jurisdiction given Maryland state law.”

“The lawsuit, filed in Maryland’s U.S. District Court, stemmed from a November CNN report that Parnas was prepared to provide Congress with testimony as part of Donald Trump’s first impeachment. Parnas, CNN said, would testify, in effect, that Nunes met with former Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin ‘to discuss digging up dirt of Joe Biden.’ In his original complaint, Harvey alleged that the defendants falsely accused him of participating in an effort to aid and abet the commission of criminal, unethical, and dishonest conduct. He sought punitive damages and an order prohibiting the defendants from continuing to repeat false claims on the basis that they constituted defamation and false light invasion of privacy. CNN, Bondy, and Parnas all promptly moved to have the suit dismissed.”

Time: “For Biden, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The package is not only the first big legislative item on his presidential agenda, but aims to launch a recovery from the pandemic and economic crisis that will inevitably define his first term. The trips also reveal a longer-term strategy, advisers and strategists say. Presidential travel during the pandemic takes on greater meaning when large parts of the country have effectively been in lockdown for a year and public safety guidelines must be strictly adhered to. In selecting two of the most critical battleground states, he’s using his political capital to tell the voters that helped send him to the White House how he’s delivering on his campaign pledges – and why they should stick with Democrats in elections to come.”

“‘It’s no accident that Wisconsin and Michigan are the first two trips for Biden,’ says Jim Margolis, a Democratic strategist. ‘They were must-win states in 2020, have big elections in 2022 and will undoubtedly be in the electoral bullseye again in 2024.’ The White House has publicly downplayed the political significance of these destinations, aside from noting that, as politically divided states, constituents have a wide range of views that will prove fodder for debate. Wisconsin ‘was a state where people have been impacted by the pandemic, they’ve been impacted by the economic downturn and the President felt he could have a good conversation with people about the path forward, even people who disagree with him,’ Psaki said Tuesday. ‘It’s not more complicated than that.’ While it’s true that both Michigan and Wisconsin have been hit hard by the pandemic and economic crisis, it’s equally true that Biden’s path to the White House ran through them. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, a close Trump ally, is up for re-election next year, and Democrats are determined to oust him. And now that Biden has narrowly shifted both back to the Democratic column – he won Wisconsin by a mere 20,000 votes – he and his administration are determined to show these voters they don’t just matter every four years, and that he is providing them with the economic and pandemic relief he promised.”

ראש הממשלה בנימין נתניהו שוחח הערב עם נשיא ארה"ב ג'ו ביידן.

השיחה הייתה ידידותית וחמה ביותר ונמשכה כשעה. שני המנהיגים ציינו את הקשר האישי רב השנים ביניהם ואמרו שיפעלו יחד להמשך חיזוק הברית האיתנה בין ישראל לארה"ב pic.twitter.com/8LolsBhi0r

— Benjamin Netanyahu – בנימין נתניהו (@netanyahu) February 17, 2021

Translation: “Tonight, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US President Joe Biden. The conversation was very friendly and warm and lasted about an hour. The two leaders noted their long-standing personal connection and said they would work together to further strengthen the strong alliance between Israel and the United States.”

“Election integrity is one of the most critical issues we face as a Party and as a country. What we saw this past election – states undoing important safeguards, bypassing the proper legislative processes, and changing election laws in the eleventh hour – was deeply troubling and brought chaos and uncertainty to our sacred democratic processes. As RNC Chair, I will not sit idly by and the Party will respond. The RNC will play a crucial role in restoring confidence in our elections, promoting election integrity, and recommending best practices to ensure that future elections are free, fair, and transparent” said RNC Chair Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel in the GOP’s press release.

Absent from this press release is anything about Dominion, Hugo Chavez, Jews, Smartmatic, late night ballot dumps, Trump actually winning, whatever nonsense that drunk lady from Michigan was talking about, the Deep State, CIA Psy-Ops, and that broken pipe story. It’s almost as if by keeping it vague and only alluding to “eleventh hour” election law changes – changes that almost universally were upheld by courts prior to Election Day – that Ronna is just trying to pretend none of that stuff ever happened because validating it would bring billion dollar lawsuits and debunking it would further inflame the already insanely angry MAGA voter base. Good job Ronna!

Democrats are more focused on unsecuring the border than reopening American schools.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 17, 2021

Two Florida men who threatened the staff of a Florida hotel with fines and arrests for asking the pair to wear facemasks in public areas were arrested for posing as federal law enforcement agents, a claim the men made to bolster their claim that they were exempted from wearing masks.

According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Walter Wayne Brown Jr., 53, and Gary Brummett, 81, told the staff of the Wyndham Deerfield Beach Resort in Deerfield Beach that they were allowed to not wear masks because they were federal marshals, and they threatened hotel workers with arrests and a “hefty fine” for insisting they wear masks.  They showed the staff fake cards, portraying them as official documents that allow them to forgo masks during the pandemic.

“Do you know what this means,” Brummett said to the hotel manager as he pointed to a badge clipped to his belt, according to the complaint. “I’m a U.S. marshal and can have you arrested if you force me to wear a mask.”

AP: “The South Carolina House on Wednesday overwhelmingly passed a bill banning nearly all abortions, following the lead of other states with similar measures that would go into effect if the U.S. Supreme Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade. The proposal passed the Senate on Jan. 28. It faces a final procedural vote in the House on Thursday that likely won’t change the outcome and will then be sent to the governor for his signature. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster has promised to sign the measure as soon as possible.”