“US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will travel to Geneva, Switzerland later this week. Ambassador Greer will meet with USTR staff at the USTR Mission to the World Trade Organization.”

“He will also meet with President Karin Keller-Sutter of Switzerland to discuss negotiations about reciprocal trade. ‘At President Trump’s direction, I am negotiating with countries to rebalance our trade relations to achieve reciprocity, open new markets, and protect America’s economic and national security,’ said Ambassador Greer. ‘I look forward to having productive meetings with some of my counterparts as well as visiting with my team in Geneva who all work diligently to advance US interests on a range of multilateral issues.’ While in Switzerland, Ambassador Greer will also meet with his counterpart from the People’s Republic of China to discuss trade matters” says the Office of the US Trade Representative with the mention of the ChiCom guy seemingly an afterthought.

Meanwhile CNN reports the first cargo ships with Chinese products subject to the 145 percent tariff on exports are arriving on the West Coast half-full, so “expect shortages soon” says the network.

Uhhhhh, fuck. Pakistani state media claims military officials say at least two Indian fighter jets have been shot down in the early hours of what just might be a full-blown war, the AP reports.

“Pakistan has every right to give a robust response to this act of war imposed by India, and a strong response is indeed being given,” said Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif in a public statement early morning local time. “The Pakistani nation and the Pakistan Armed Forces know very well how to deal with the enemy,” he said. “We will never let the enemy succeed in its nefarious objectives.”

Yeah this is bad. What makes it extra bad is that Pakistan was reportedly going to mostly hold back if the Indian strikes had been limited to within Pakistan-controlled areas of disputed Kashmir. That didn’t happen and among the sites hit by Indian missiles was a target in Bahwalpur, a city deep inside Pakistan proper. Islamabad has suspended all commercial flights for the next 48 hours.

As flagged by Talking Points Memo, one of the “Truth+” streaming service’s most-watched offerings of no-budget fictional movies and “documentaries” this week is “Lizard People: Rulers of Time and Space,” which raises important questions like “Did ancient serpent or Lizard-like aliens come to Earth thousands of years ago to play a role in creating humanity and are they still among us today?”

There’s also “Illuminati,” obviously in a similar vein and a “drama” from 2007 titled “Heaven’s Messenger,” about a “A doctor tries to solve the mystery of a man with no name, multiple personalities, and burns on his hands. Who is he and what happened to him?” It probably sucks.

Convicted felon President Trump wrapped up his stupid news conference on the 2026 World Cup by claiming that Russia invaded Ukraine because they had been kicked out of the G8, warned “Pam will come after” pro-Palestinian protestors outside the matches, and then refused to have any comment whatsoever on Israel’s plans to completely bulldoze the Gaza Strip. Pretty typical shit from fatass.

“A little while ago, the Indian Armed Forces launched ‘OPERATION SINDOOR’, hitting terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed. Altogether, nine (9) sites have been targeted. Our actions have been focused, measured and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in selection of targets and method of execution. These steps come in the wake of the barbaric Pahalgam terrorist attack in which 25 Indians and one Nepali citizen were murdered. We are living up to the commitment that those responsible for this attack will be held accountable. There will be detailed briefing on ‘OPERATION SINDOOR’, later today,” says India’s Ministry of Defense in a statement.

Remember that old “the world is less safe under the leadership of Biden-Harris” song-and-dance we used to get before you-know-who lied and bullshitted his way back to power? That was funny.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris will on Tuesday headline a closed-door fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, ABC News reports, adding that it’s part of her “reemergence into the spotlight” for her still unclear next move following her loss to convicted felon President Trump in a campaign marked with lies, propaganda, and malice that she would’ve won in a just world.

“Vice President Harris continues to be a powerful and galvanizing voice for Democrats, and we are grateful for her commitment to strengthening the party, firing up grassroots supporters, and holding Republicans accountable for their attacks on working families,” a DNC spokesperson.

Saying cryptically only that “Earlier, water belonging to India was also going outside. Now India’s water will flow in its share… and be utilized for India itself” to the crowd at an event in New Delhi on Tuesday, Indian dictator Narendra Modi sure sounded like he was going to deprive Pakistan of the water that supplies as much as 80 percent of their agriculture, Reuters reports.

Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost needed an “off-ramp” so he wouldn’t be embarrassed in next year’s gubernatorial race and, according to NOTUS, he successfully lobbied the Trump Regime for an ambassadorship. They gave him Cyprus and Yost decided the eastern Mediterranean island nation was too small to matter, so Yost turned it down, much to the White House’s chagrin.

“For the White House to come through with an offer like this both shows their respect for him, and how much they value him, and then to turn that down is unbelievable,” a source said. Yost’s minions tell NOTUS the AG will continue his campaign to succeed term-limited Gov Mike DeWine, despite internal polling showing Yost trailing absolute douche tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy pretty badly.

What’s funny about this is that, yeah, Cyprus is small, but it’s also divided with a breakaway state, largely unrecognized internationally, populated by Muslim ethnic Turks while the main, established majority government is ethnically Greek. There’s actually a friggin DMZ between the two. Thus it’d actually be a hell of an opportunity for someone ambitious and diplomacy-minded to make a name for themselves in that world. If Yost had taken 10 fucking minutes to skim the Wikipedia article about Cyprus he might’ve recognized this and realized that being part of even the smallest incremental progress toward reunifying the island would be a big deal in diplomacy circles, opening all sorts of new doors for his career than a dead-end campaign for Ohio governor. What a dipshit.

MET GALA: America voted against this… pic.twitter.com/viSMP9CDCh

— @amuse (@amuse) May 6, 2025

Some readers aren’t exactly fans of “articles” like this that would propagate D-list or worse MAGA Twitter influencers such as “amuse” here but I feel like this specific tweet does more than so much else of the shit they post to truly elucidate the cuntish sense of entitlement they’ve held onto for so long and will continue to do so until there’s a vast change in our political culture.

The statement attached to the clip of some androgynous dork who’s never hit a punching bag or cut his hand trying to fix a bicycle in his life dressed up like a clown on the red carpet outside the Met Gala in a way is more of an admission of failure of the MAGA attempt to subdue America or even an indictment of the limitations of the Orange God Emperor’s power than it is an expression of contempt for said androgynous clown. Sorry that weirdo didn’t get the memo that he’s to no longer conduct himself in such a manner now that your Holy Messiah is back in power, amuse. Sorry his appearance – which I would not have glimpsed if not for your tweet – so offends you to your very core. Sorry most of all that I really don’t give a fuck about the Met Gala but I also never though stupid NASCAR should’ve been shut down after Trump lost four years ago. Fuck off, amuse.

A new Economist/YouGov survey finds that more Trump 2024 voters said yes on “Should businesses display how much of a purchase price goes toward paying tariffs?” than no, but not by much: 40 percent said “Yes,” 37 percent said “No,” and the remaining 23 percent said they don’t know, showing that plenty of Trump fans are very much on board with deeming retailers being honest with consumers about how much this stupid bullshit is costing them “a hostile political act” as psychotic Nazi White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt did last week when asked about Amazon’s aborted plan to display by how much an item’s price has been raised by tariffs.

Funny side note about that: Amazon had publicly denied that Trump had anything to do with them backing down on the policy – which was only meant to apply to a commercial shipping service they run called Amazon Haul, not the entire site – and then fatass later told reporters that he had in fact angrily called Jeff Bezos and demanded that the megacorporation cease and desist. Pretty fucking incredible either way, that it was a “hostile political act” for a company to do that.

Anyway, other groups of respondents were predictably far more uniform in whether retailers should lay out the costs of tariffed products: 61 percent of both overall respondents and indie voters said yes to 17 and 14 percent no, respectively while among Harris 2024 voters it was 82 yes to 6 no.

In other ridiculous findings from the poll, on the question of “Agreement with Trump Statements about the Economy – This is Biden’s stock market, not Trump’s” 41 percent of Trump voters agreed to 36 percent disagree, among indie voters that was 10 percent yes to 80 percent no. On “The businessmen who criticize tariffs are bad at business” it was also 41 percent of Trump voters agreeing while 34 percent disagreed, while among indies that was 16 to 53 percent agree/disagree.

“The Court grants Petitioners’ motion for a preliminary injunction against removal. This Opinion gives the reasons. It discusses the whole of the AEA, and shows that the Presidential Proclamation, in mandating removal without due process, contradicts the AEA. The Opinion goes on to discuss the requirements of notice and hearing under both the AEA and the Constitution. And it concludes that since Respondents have not demonstrated the existence of a ‘war,’ ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion,’ the AEA was not validly invoked by the Presidential Proclamation,” writes New York Circuit Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein in a ruling issued Tuesday blocking the removal of two anonymous Venezuelan plaintiffs to the CECOT gulag in El Salvador. Hellerstein follows Texas federal Judge Fernando Rodriguez in finding that there’s no state of war with Venezuela, thus migrants from there definitionally cannot be “alien enemies” sent by the Maduro regime in the MAGA version of the story.

A new PAC called “Ban the Trade” launched Tuesday with an ad buy urging members of Congress to vote to lose money by not being able to trade in stocks anymore, Axios reports while noting, pretty hilariously, that “The PAC plans to follow the investment patterns of lawmakers to help raise money for its advertising campaign,” of pressure for the political no-brainer legislation.

Just a few minutes ago convicted felon President Trump posted “I look forward to meeting the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney. I very much want to work with him, but cannot understand one simple TRUTH — Why is America subsidizing Canada by $200 Billion Dollars a year, in addition to giving them FREE Military Protection, and many other things? We don’t need their Cars, we don’t need their Energy, we don’t need their Lumber, we don’t need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain. They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us! The Prime Minister will be arriving shortly and that will be, most likely, my only question of consequence,” so you know this chore for Carney is going to go just spectacularly.

Canada supplied 25 percent of the US’s lumber and 19.3 percent of its oil in 2023. It’s beyond fucking suicidal to say we don’t need either of them and to cut off the imports.

Thanks to the legwork by National Zero reader Macbeth on Monday the worst fears over the absence of a prominent regular member of the community on this site have been confirmed with an extremely high degree of confidence: TexasVulcan passed away April 25 from a heart attack at the age of unknown, but by my estimate he was over 65. I know not his name, his appearance, or anything else about him other than that he was a Jewish Star Trek fan from the Houston area.

Such is the nature of a community where the vast majority of us are anonymous digital avatars rather than the more typically true representations of ourselves more common to Facebook, Twitter, and other circles. It’s that often zealously-guarded anonymity that gives Disqus users the license to voice their opinions more boldly and acerbically than folks whose real name and photo are attached to their posts, to argue harder and meaner against a hateful culture that encourages violent reprisal.

And yeah, that’s how I’ll assuage the nagging guilt about not being able to say more about TexasVulcan and his life, which was no doubt so much more than the funny shit he would post on this site. His presence and thoughtful, intelligent contributions to this community will be missed dearly. He cared deeply about the future of democracy in this once (and hopefully again in the future) great nation and may his soul rest warmly and confidently in the knowledge that he has friends continuing to speak up and heckle the absolute shit out of a fascist reich all day every day.

Valhalla is yours, Tex 🖖🏻.

Acting US Attorney for DC Ed Martin, the MAGA extremist piece of shit whose nomination is in serious trouble, on Tuesday submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee another list of previously-undisclosed far right media appearances, including on Infowars, CBS’s Scott MacFarlane reports.

Breitbart warns that “Sen Thom Tillis (R-NC) is withholding support for President Donald Trump’s nominee for US Attorney for DC, a move that could result in MAGA villain Judge James Boasberg choosing who would fill the role – potentially even former Special Counsel Jack Smith,” lol.

The naturalized US citizen parents of a 31 year-old Argentinian green card holder now currently rotting in a private prison company facility contracted by ICE in Georgia tell the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that “of course” they would not have voted for convicted felon President Trump if they knew what was going to happen to their son, who was locked up over a 2020 misdemeanor rap on a count of “infliction of injury” for which he’s already served a three year probation sentence.

North Carolinians Martin Verdi and Debora Rey told the AJC they bought into the Orange God Emperor’s rhetoric about Venezuelans, specifically the piece of shit who murdered Laken Riley.

“During the campaign he gave the example of many criminals from Venezuela who had come in, because many criminals from Venezuela had even killed people,” said Verdi, adding that “has nothing to with cases like” those of his his son, Agustin Gentile, who was detained in February after landing in California from a trip abroad. CBP confiscated his green card and Argentine passport.

The couple said “of course” they wouldn’t have voted for Trump had they understood that his hateful campaign was going to affect their family. “This was a massive deception what he did. Because the other side had shown us how indulgent they were (with immigration),” Rey said as her son survives on cup o’ noodles and is forced to sleep on a floor in a facility where the lights are kept on 24 hours a day, while their 6 and 8 year-old grandchildren have no idea when he’s coming home.

“They ask, ‘Where is my daddy?’ And we can’t tell them, ‘Daddy is in jail,'” Verdi said. “We had to lie to them because we don’t want to hurt them,” Rey, who voted to Make America Great Again, added.

Elon Musk says Mars could be 'life insurance' for humanity! 🚀 pic.twitter.com/BwFPIl3idr

— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) May 6, 2025

Look up “Martian regolith” to understand what’s in store for the “colonists” who would volunteer for Ketamine Brain’s project of establishing a foothold on the Red Planet. It won’t be pretty.

Germany’s center-right leader Friedrich Merz suffered a brutal setback in his bid to become chancellor of Europe’s largest economy on Tuesday, winning 310 of the needed 316 votes in the 630-seat Bundestag and creating massive uncertainty as to what’s next, the BBC reports.

The Bundestag will have another 14 days to choose either Merz or another candidate as chancellor with more than half its members. Further turbulence could be a boon for the extremist Fourth Reich AfD, who responded to Merz’s shitshow by calling for a fresh round of elections.

“The company is operating in an uncertain macro-economic environment with significant volatility, including changes in global trade policy and US tariffs. Although tariffs did not affect Mattel’s first quarter financial results, the company is taking mitigating actions designed to fully offset the potential incremental cost impact of tariffs on future performance. These include: Accelerating diversification of its supply chain and further reducing reliance on China-sourced product, optimizing product sourcing and product mix, and, where necessary, taking pricing action in its US business. The company also intends to rebalance promotional activity to drive cost efficiencies while maintaining sufficient support and is accelerating cost savings actions and increasing the 2025 savings target under the Optimizing for Profitable Growth program from $60 million to $80 million.”

“Given the volatile macro-economic environment and evolving US tariff landscape, it is difficult to predict consumer spending and Mattel’s US sales in the remainder of the year and holiday season.”

“The company is therefore pausing full-year 2025 guidance until Mattel has sufficient visibility. The company is maintaining its $600 million share repurchase target for 2025, in line with the company’s capital allocation priorities. Our plans and performance, including the success of our mitigating actions, are subject to market volatility, additional tariffs and regulatory actions impacting our business, unexpected disruptions to our supply chain, and other macro-economic uncertainties and business risks,” says toy manufacturer Mattel, owner of the Barbie, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, and a shit ton of other popular brands, in their Monday Q1 2025 earnings statement to investors.