Even after hearing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who’s also a convicted felon, joke with supervillain-in-training Elon Musk about arbitrarily firing workers, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien has not slammed the door shut on endorsing the adjudicated rapist.  But according to the Washington Post, likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will meet with O’Brien and other Teamsters executives to secure the group’s support.

DNC planners say the Teamsters will be represented in the program but the specifics were not disclosed.  Angering some Democrats, O’Brien became a coup for Republicans when he broke years of precedent to speak at the Republican convention.  O’Brien will not be the speaker at the DNC according to sources.

It’s unclear when Harris will participate in the Teamsters’ roundtable given the convention starts next week.  The Teamsters traditionally choose to announce their endorsement after the end of both Parties’ conventions, so the Vice President could meet with the group the following week.

Perrenial third-party candidate Jill Stein can remain on the ballot in Wisconsin, a state panel ruled in dismissing a complaint by a Democratic National Committee employee who claimed the Green Party does not have proper state representation to assign presidential electors, the Associated Press reports.

The basis of the complaint is really weak and technical–according to the state constitution, electors can only be nominated by someone in the state legislature, and since the Green Party has no one in the legislature, no Green Party elector could be nominated–but the action is prudent given the last time Stein was on the ballot in Wisconsin, she got 31,000 votes and Trump won the state by 23,000.

Lying piece of shit Republican former Long Island Congressman George Santos is in talks with federal prosecutors to plea guilty to defrauding campaign donors, according to one of those victims who told Talking Points Memo that prosecutors said to expect the plea to come next week.

“They told me that he is pleading guilty on Monday,” the source said, adding, “He should be held completely accountable and he is, as far as I can tell, guilty of quite a bit. I know for certain that he lied to my face.” The now seriously in-doubt trial is for the moment set to begin September 16th.

Not big if true. Seriously. Like of course it’s newsworthy and funny that this freaking dipshit is finally going to become a convicted felon freaking 15 months and seven days after he was first indicted on 13 counts and then hit with a superseding indictment. But this is not the first nor the second time over the last year that we’re picking up reporting that Santos was nearing a plea deal – that second one coming just 10 days after he was expelled from the House. It’s a tricky and unsettled question as to whether Santos could have bargained away his seat in exchange for a more lenient sentence, but the point is he didn’t even try when that option was potentially, possibly available to him.

A former Fulton County, Georgia election chair filed a formal ethics complaint with Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp against three GOP members of the state election commission who were lauded by adjudicated rapist and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump during a recent Atlanta rally.

Cathy Wo0lard, a former member of the state election commission herself, said current members Rick Jeffares, Janice Johnston, and Janelle King damaged the ability of the commission to objectively determine the outcome of the upcoming election after demonstrating their fealty to Trump during Trump’s Atlanta rally.  From the stage, Trump recognized the three individually noting that they would help tilt the election to him. Woolard also details how the three have ignored directives from state officials regarding changing election regulations and processes close to election dates and other deadlines.

“Their conduct raises concerns that the Board members are not fulfilling their duty to ensure the “fair, legal, and orderly conduct” of Georgia elections. On the contrary, they have created, at minimum, the appearance that their actions are intended to advance their own political preferences. The members have done nothing to dispel that appearance of impropriety, instead receiving a standing ovation at a Trump rally and openly discussing a position in the Trump administration. Taken together, these actions pose a serious risk of creating confusion about the rules governing the rapidly approaching election and undermining voter confidence in the integrity of Georgia’s elections,” Woolard wrote, noting the trio likely violated state codes by engaging in conduct that amounts to a breach of the public trust and failing to uphold the laws of the state.

Along with the hundreds of millions he’s collected from his political grift, convicted felon Donald Trump, the top of the GOP ticket, continues to profit from numerous licensing scams that circumvent detailed FEC reporting, but his latest financial disclosure shows the dupes keep duping.

Along with a whopping $7 million from NFT sales, Trump pocketed $300,000 for pitching a Lee Greenwood-produced leather-bound Bible that includes the founding documents of the United States, CBS News reports.  He also sucked up another $4.5 million from his other publishing ripoff, the coffee table book of letters people wrote to him.

It should also be noted that Trump has between one- and five million dollars in cryptocurrency according to the documents, something that will likely influence his campaign positions on regulation.

A Fergus Falls, Minnesota woman is facing four felony charges – two counts of domestic assault, one count of second-degree assault and one count of criminal vehicular operation – after running over her live-in boyfriend after an aborted attempt to attend couples therapy, KTSP reports.

Veronica Roleen Gast, 30, was on the way to the appointment Saturday with her unnamed live-in partner when the whole reason they had booked time with the therapist in the first place became so intense that the man asked Gast to turn around and bring him back home. Gast instead pulled over and ordered him to get out of the vehicle, which he did. The man said as he was stepping toward the sidewalk he made eye contact with Gast, who then floored it, sending him tumbling over the hood and shattering the windshield. He wasn’t seriously injured, suffering only a gash on the elbow, and he was able to follow Gast down the street to a parking lot where she had pulled over.

It’s not clear whether Gast and her partner are still together and trying to work things out.

Having asked no fewer than 12 public school districts in Minnesota whether or not they provide free tampons in boys restrooms as MAGA propagandists have claimed repeatedly about Governor Tim Walz’s policies – of course without any actual evidence – CNN’S fact-checker guy Daniel Dale reports that zero out of those 12 responded saying no, they don’t now and never have done so.

Eyeliner-wearing Mike Pence replacement JD Vance’s plan made an emergency landing in Milwaukee shortly after takeoff Friday, with staff telling CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that the pilot “advised there was a malfunction with the door seal. After declaring an emergency, Trump Force Two returned to Milwaukee. As soon as the issue was resolved, the plane returned to its originally planned flight path back to Cincinnati.” It doesn’t appear to be the old Epstein plane.

Scumbag Hindu cultist and former Dem Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is coaching convicted felon former President Trump prep for his debate against Vice President Kamala Harris, recruited simply because she landed a hit on Harris in 2019, the New York Times reports.

The problem is that, yes, Gabbard did shred Harris in that Dem primary debate way back when, but the attack came from the left and it was all about Harris’s record as a prosecutor.

Well hopefully Trump tries that exact same strategy. It’ll come across as very sincere and authentic coming from him while he’s also selling himself as tough on crime.

Mike Pence replacement and Ohio Senator JD Vance might feel a little more special than the rest of the Republicans in Congress being convicted felon former President Trump’s running mate, but on Friday he got a little reminder of what more or less every day has been like for him and most of the hundreds of other GOP current and former Senators and Representatives who served over the past nine-plus years: Having to deal with reporters asking about Trump’s demented behavior and either make excuses for it or pretend he hadn’t seen what the fat fuck said and/or posted.

Picasso-faced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing to shut down a Houston-based non-profit that provides aid to migrants over a series of posts ripping convicted felon former President Trump and Gov Low Energy Greg Abbott over their hatred of immigrants, the Houston Chronicle reports.

And no, that lede isn’t like us speculatively assigning a motivation to Paxton while he goes after them on some more technical pretext based on the group’s finances or operating practices, he’s literally suing them because FIEL Houston’s posts calling Trump “El Hijo Del Diablo,” (son of the Devil) and Abbott “a violent racist Fascist man,” as well as advocating against migrant deportation law SB4 are allegedly in violation of federal laws limiting how far nonprofits can go in seeking to influence legislation, and barring certain nonprofits from backing political candidates.

“Today, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky) is launching an investigation into Minnesota Governor Timothy Walz, Kamala Harris’s recently announced vice-presidential running mate, following reports detailing the Governor’s longstanding connections to Chinese Communist Party (CCP) entities and officials. In a letter to Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, Chairman Comer is requesting information, documents, and communications related to the CCP-connected entities and officials Governor Walz has engaged and partnered with, as well as any warnings or advice the FBI may have given to Governor Walz about US political figures being targeted by or recruited for CCP influence operations,” says the committee led by the target of a Russian influence operation in a statement.

FLASH! Former President Trump announced a team to help him transition! He’s transitioning! What will his new pronouns be?!? Is he going to go by DONNA Trump? Will he wear a different type of bra for his giant boobs? When’s the big operation? Who’s in charge of the surgery? Will his new cosmetics routine be significantly different than the one he’s already doing now? *Tee-hee-hee*

Dem Congressman Jared Huffman, leader of the “Stop Project 2025 Task Force” tells NOTUS that polling and focus groups are finding that voters aren’t buying convicted felon former President Trump’s bullshit attempts to disown the plot to systematically dismantle American democracy.

“There’s no believability gap here,” Huffman said. “People have seen enough of Donald Trump in his first presidency and of JD Vance and all of these extremists to know that they’re not kidding. This is not some hypothetical think tank document, this is actually their blueprint. It’s just not hard to convince people that’s the case. The heart of why Project 2025 is having such a profound impact is that it’s true. It’s just true.” Just as true is the fear from the GOP that Dem messaging is working.

“There came a point at which people realized, ‘Oh, you might have actually done something that jeopardizes Heritage’s influence in the next administration,'” said on DC conservative familiar with the fascist think tank that couldn’t keep it in their pants. “People are legitimately worried.”

In what’s either monumental, Republican-style hubris or confidence informed by hard data, Democrats in Congress tell Politico that Vice President Kamala Harris can wait until after November to lay out a policy agenda for her administration more detailed than the larger pitches to voters.

“She doesn’t need to negotiate against herself. We’ve got the biggest possible tent right now,” said New Hampshire Congresswoman Ann Kuster, chair of the centrist “New Democrats” caucus. “I don’t think there’s a real strong reason for her to try to weed out any points of view right now.”

In Politico’s telling, Dems “feel little urgency for the Harris campaign to put out detailed new policy documents that could easily become further campaign ad fodder for the right, especially as Trump has struggled to hit her effectively over the last month. They’ve seen polls, in the presidential race and down ballot, shift in their favor after Harris’ rise, and believe her lack of fidelity to certain policy positions will continue to be an asset to elections across the country.”

Mike Pence replacement JD Vance is seeking to dissolve the second of his two hillbilly charity organizations founded after his memoir Hillbilly Elegy was published in 2016, the Washington Examiner reports, the first of which, Our Ohio Renewal, already went under in 2021.

“One of their only notable achievements was paying to send an addiction specialist to southern Ohio for a year who had questioned the well-documented role of prescription painkillers in the national opioid crisis. He’s acknowledged that they fell short of his aspirations. One of the groups filed paperwork in April reinstating the corporate status it had allowed to expire in 2022,” the Examiner writes in their report, going on how to describe how the Our Ohio Renewal Foundation, (emphasis added because that’s the name of the second one) appears to have raised and spent only about $69,000 from 2017 to 2023 on doing nothing to address systemic poverty in Appalachia.

FOR THE RECORD: The Christian leader warns "liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris" and says his father would appreciate Trump's conservative values and policies: https://t.co/LFJjdhdeA8 pic.twitter.com/PQImo9fTfC

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 16, 2024

Right wing propaganda network Fox News on Friday reported just about what they needed to get their fans outraged by a perceived misappropriation of the visage of dead Evangelical leader Billy Graham, quoting from a tweet by his son Franklin, who wrote “The liberals are using anything and everything they can to promote candidate Harris. They even developed a political ad trying to use my father @BillyGraham’s image. They are trying to mislead people. Maybe they don’t know that my father appreciated the conservative values and policies of President @realDonaldTrump in 2016, and if he were alive today, my father’s views and opinions would not have changed,” on Wednesday.

Fox News mentions that “Graham is president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan’s Purse,” which appears to imply that Franklin is the sole custodian of his father’s image. They also tossed some race bait in for the fans, writing “On Wednesday, the group held a Zoom conference hosted by ‘reparations activist’ Ekemini Uwan, who has argued that ‘Whiteness is wicked’ and the police as an institution ‘needs to be destroyed and rebuilt. Policing was founded on the re-enslavement of Black people,'” unsubtly hinting that only whites can be Evangelicals.

So they covered their bases on one of Billy Graham’s spawn reacting to the Zoom call and one of the women who appeared on it, which makes one omission of both all the more fucking blatant: The Christian Post on Thursday reported that one of the speakers on the call was Jerushah Duford, whose mother, Virginia “Gigi” Graham Tchividjian, is Billy Graham’s oldest daughter. Just going to go ahead and hazard that it was Duford and not Uwan or former Republican Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger (Fox News didn’t mention him in their article either), who blessed the group to use her grandfather Billy Graham’s image in the promo for the Zoom call that drew 40,000 viewers.

Boise State University President Marlene Tromp, who probably has mixed feelings on being referred to as “President Tromp,” told the crowd gathered for her annual “State of the University Address” on Wednesday that she’s got a proven record of success in her five years at the helm of the Potato State’s largest public higher learning institution despite some headwinds such as those wrought by MAGA state legislators constantly pestering her over “DEI” bullshit, the Idaho Press reports.

Tromp called out right wing politicians “fixated on universities as the site of damage, when there’s so much good that universities do,” citing accomplishments such as the 39 percent increase in graduation rates at BSU, 20 percent boost in in-state enrollment, and a Latino student body almost on par with the state’s ethnic composition. Plus they have that really cool looking blue football field, which Tromp didn’t mention directly but touted $21 million raised for stadium upgrades.

We already picked up some bits from the Thursday House GOP virtual meeting in real time via Politico’s Olivia Beavers, but Axios separately got a good one by NRCC chair Richard Hudson’s apocalyptic warning over Republicans’ new reality: “Harris and Walz are the most left-wing ticket in history. If we aren’t disciplined in repeating that message – we could lose this country.”

“Lots of talk about Dem fundraising. And we need to kick it into high gear,” a member told Axios, sounding like a leak from a locker room by a team trailing by three touchdowns at halftime.