The 4-3 liberal majority Wisconsin state Supreme Court on Monday will hear arguments over a petition to overturn the former 4-3 conservative majority court’s 2022 decision outlawing ballot drop boxes in the state, NBC News reports on elections having very real consequences.

⚠️TDS WARNING🤬🤯 pic.twitter.com/KxTIruXQI0

— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) May 12, 2024

What a dumbass, lol. That’s clearly “Impact,” not “Arial” used at the bottom of that meme, which is also really stupid. There’s no such thing as a plane roughly the size of the state of Kentucky.

With a mix of government PR gibberish written to obfuscate responsibility, Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections announced that two prisoners are dead after a mistake at a privately-owned prison allowed members of rival prison gangs to mix, CNN reports.  Along with the two killed, two others were critically injured.

Kay Thompson, the Department’s director of public relations whose name is so bland she may actually be AI, emailed CNN saying that an “operational error” allowed “the disturbance to happen” after two “security threat groups” interacted at the Lawton Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility operated by the GEO group on Friday.

“It is still under investigation as to the cause. We will release that information once the investigation is closed,” the AI told CNN.  “Although LCRF is a privately-run prison, our Operations team is working closely with the GEO Group to understand how this occurred and what corrective actions need to be taken,”

One-time 2016 Trump campaign chairman and convicted felon Paul Manafort will no longer have a part in planning the 2024 Republican National Convention, the Washington Post reports, removing from the show’s management one of the Kremlin’s highest-paid campaign consultants.

Saying he would work for free as he did for the Trump campaign in 2016, when he handed private campaign polling data over to his Russian handlers, Manafort was again embraced by Team Trump.  Again:  Team Trump invited Manafort to rejoin their political arm after fraud convictions and getting caught working with the Russian government.  Manafort left the 2016 campaign after it was revealed he received more than $12 million from a Russian-backed Ukrainian political party in the years before.

This time, Manafort was found by the Liberal Media (actually the WaPo, available through the gift link) to be working to launch a start-up Netflix-style media company in China which has been endorsed by the Chinese government.  So while in 2016, Manafort was making his money from Russia, this year, he’s being subsidized by China.  You’d think the Trump camp would have vetted him more closely after his side gigs in 2016, huh?

Disgraced former President Trump will take the stage in southern New Jersey, which he definitely isn’t flipping red, in about an hour or so. On his way to Wildwood, the fat bastard posted “This crazy Biden-inspired gag order is just what the radical left Democrats wanted. It is their ‘dream’ because a crooked and totally conflicted New York judge illegally took away my freedom of speech and, essentially, my right to freely and openly campaign (not to mention the money I am forced to spend defending against this political witch hunt!). But we will win and, once again, justice will prevail!” on Truth Social. It was all caps but we had ChatGPT recompose it to normal people writing.

After South Carolina Republican Congresswoman and third runner up in the homecoming queen election Nancy Mace told the Daily Mail that her staff was sabotaging and undermining her work in Congress, former aides are speaking out characterizing Mace as a train wreck with little grasp on the operations and authority of Congress, the Daily Beast reports.

Mace claimed her staff was snooping into her medical records, changing her schedule, forging her name on documents, and destroying equipment and documents to harm her reputation and work.  Mace also claimed she fired members of her staff months ago after they accessed her calendar and the calendars of her family, a routine practice for aides trying to schedule meetings, political appearances, and other events for members of Congress.

“I’m not at all surprised she’s blaming others for her troubles,” another former staffer told The Daily Beast. “She has always found it impossible to take responsibility for her own mistakes or accept the consequences of her toxic behavior.”

As many as 100 graduates and their families walked out of Vest Guy Governor Glenn Youngkin’s address to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Saturday morning commencement, WFXR reports.

“Two people familiar with the dynamic” tell Axios that former South Carolina Gov Nikki Haley is in the running to be fat former President Trump’s 2024 running mate, in what’s likely a pretty obvious case of the often GOP-friendly outlet being dog-walked into helping with someone’s agenda, a major donor nervous about the numbers Haley’s still putting up in primaries long after dropping out if we had to guess. Probably the same ones that dog-walked them into that “Youngkin 2024” fan fiction.

“Republicans close to both campaigns believe it’s in Haley and Trump’s mutual interests to reconcile, despite their bitter fight in the GOP primary and their divergent views on some big issues,” Axios writes with one of their “Zoom in” bullet points in the article. And yeah, we would be fairly shocked if it was not whichever MAGA-weary Republican plutocrat(s) who fed Axios the Youngkin circlejerk, then undoubtedly went all in on Haley hype for a few months, and then finally resigned himself to Trump 2024 who fed them this story to express the same wishful thinking for a “unity ticket.”

As if to underscore how stupid it was for Axios to print this shit, the Orange God Emperor himself just minutes ago took to Truth Social to post “Nikki Haley is not under consideration for the VP slot, but I wish her well! DJT.” Uncharacteristically magnanimous-ish for the fat bastard, so maybe it’s some measure of a win for the Axios “sources” seeking unity in the GOP voter base and to nudge “Birdbrain” to at least endorse Donald and get as many of her voters as she can on board with him.

Well look at that: A joint New York Times/ProPublica investigation found that fat former President Trump’s taxes really are under audit and he could face $100 million in penalties for double-dipping on some kind of write-off scam with the Trump Tower Chicago, something which sounds awfully familiar given that potential criminal tax fraud CREW found and reported to the FBI.

Like everything with Trump and his corrupt business empire, the minutiae are arcane and complicated as fuck and we’re not even going to pretend to understand it. “The tax experts gave the weakest chance of surviving a challenge for a worthlessness deduction based on borrowed money for which the outcome was not clear. It reflects a doubly irrational claim – that the taxpayer deserves a tax benefit for losing someone else’s money even before the money has been lost, and that those anticipated future losses can be used to offset real income from other sources. Most of the debt included in Trump’s worthlessness deduction was based on that risky position,” they write in one of the many paragraphs in the very lengthy article. It doesn’t sound good for Donald though.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Friday told a judicial conference that he wishes he was still just an appeals court judge because “my wife and I the last two or three years it’s been – just the nastiness and the lies, it’s just incredible” and that DC is a “hideous place,” the AP reports.

• One is the defendant in a criminal trial about hush money payments to a porn star to benefit his political campaign, just one of four of his criminal cases.  The other said worms ate his brain and this time, it wasn’t a paranoid, anti-science assertion.  But Joe Biden’s age is the key issue in this election.  
• Trump’s gag order isn’t literal enough for me.
• Rick Scott was the head of HCA while it was undertaking the largest Medicaid fraud scheme in history.  He’s the type of person Donald Trump uses as a character witness.
• RFK Jr. is what you become when you don’t take vaccines, kids.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLXXII”

Filings in an ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit filed against Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign organization alleges that the campaign settled multiple sexual harassment complaints which may not have been properly reported financially, a new complaint filed with the FEC alleges, per the Daily Beast.

Watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said in its complaint that filings in AJ Delgado’s sexual harassment lawsuit against the 2016 Trump campaign claim that Delgado explained how the campaign would use middlemen to hide payments, saying she has “information and reason to believe” that there were multiple payments hidden.

“In other words, the payment would be routed through a middleman, to hide the fact that the Campaign had settled, from the public and the FEC,” Delgado stated. “I thus have direct, personal experience with the Defendant-Campaign hiding settlement payments to women, routing them through a ‘middleman law firm,’ which to the public would only appear as payments ‘for legal services.’”

The fourth week of Donald Trump’s Manhattan election interference hush money trial wrapped up with a string of mundane witnesses addressing the origination and authenticity of records–boredom mandated by Trump’s lawyers who refused to stipulate to the legitimacy of phone records.

• Judge Juan Merchan denied Trump’s effort to subpoena Mark Pomerantz, a former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney who resigned in February 2022 in protest for Alvin Bragg not pursuing changes against Trump.  Pomerantz later wrote a book about the investigation.
• Merchan asked why Allan Weisselberg couldn’t testify instead of having prosecutors submit various documents.  Prosecutors said they didn’t want him to testify because he is still owed more than $500k from the Trump Org to stay silent and his testimony is unreliable; he may also take the Fifth.  When told no one approached Weisselberg about testifying, Merchan said he may want to hear from Weisselberg himself on the issue to determine if his testimony would be beneficial, efficient and honest.
• Madeleine Westerhout starts back on the stand with the defense team questioning her.
  Read More ▶ “Manhattan trial wraps week with records testimony”

Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman sided with banks and credit card companies and blocked a Biden Administration regulation slated to go into effect next week that would limit most consumer credit card late charges to $8.00 per month, the Washington Post reports.

Continuing its quest to eliminate consumer costs Biden calls “junk fees,” the administration looked to relieve $14 billion in late fees alone collected by credit card companies and other lenders in 2022.  Pittman issued an injunction preventing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from enforcing the rule, which was supposed to go into effect May 14th.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued its first severe geomagnetic storm watch, but there’s nothing you can do but shelter in place.  The reason:  the storm is hurtling towards Earth from the Sun in the form of five massive coronal ejections and a slew of sunspots will result in disruptions in the Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field.

According to CNN, the solar activity has shot out a cloud of radiation that will hit the planet over the next few days, resulting in possible sightings of the Northern Lights as far south as Alabama.  Though there’s no immediate risk to life, electronics in orbit and on the surface could be disrupted by the energetic blast.

Federal prosecutors recommended a 30-year prison sentence for Paul Wayne DePape, the QAnon conspiracy theorist who broke into then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home in October 2022 and assaulted Paul Pelosi with a hammer.  The sentence would encompass a 30-year sentence for assault with a 20-year term for kidnapping being structured to come to 40 years in prison.

“The defendant planned a violent hostage-taking of the Speaker Emerita, and then nearly killed her husband,” prosecutors wrote.  “The defendant planned and unleashed violence and has stayed true to his belief that his actions were necessary. The sentencing factors compel the statutory maximums recommended here, and demonstrate that the 30 years maximum on the count with the most significant statutory maximum is not sufficient to meet the sentencing goals; […].”

“A man who thought an endless stream of made-up, folksy anecdotes were enough to hide the fact he believed in nothing, nothing at all except building his own brand and helping his family get rich,” Fox host and woman who recently visited Kari Lake’s spray tanner Laura Ingraham blathers from Bizzaro World.

Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss filed a complaint with the federal court in the Southern District of New York asking it to enjoin disgraced former mayor and landscaper marketing director Rudy Giuliani from slandering them any further.  Giuliani already owes them nearly $150 million from an earlier judgment.

“Mr. Giuliani’s persistence in making these statements after all that has transpired, coupled with his refusal to agree to refrain from continuing to make such statements, make clear that he intends to continue in his campaign of targeted defamation and harassment,” the filing states.  “Accordingly, there is an overwhelming, ongoing, and imminent risk that Mr. Giuliani will inflict substantial reputational and emotional harm on Plaintiffs. This has to stop.”

Just days after the Trump cabal announced the youngest spawn was joining the latest grift, Melania Trump countermanded the directive and said Barron would not be a delegate to the Republican National Convention, the Daily Mail reports. “While Barron is honored to have been chosen as a delegate by the Florida Republican Party, he regretfully declines to participate due to prior commitments,” the Office of Melania Trump said in a statement with no other details.

The news may be a blow to Trump, who told a Philadelphia radio show that he frequently gets political advice from his 18-year-old son with his third wife.  “He’s really been a great student. And he does like politics. It’s sort of funny,” Trump said on Kayal and Company, a conservative talk show.  He’ll tell me sometimes, ‘Dad, this is what you have to do.'”

Trying to stay buzzworthy in the lunacy of the state’s GOP circles, Florida Republican Congressman Cory Mills filed articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden on Friday saying Biden’s statement that he would withhold offensive weapons from Israel if it invaded Rafah is the same as Donald Trump threatening to withhold weapons from Ukraine if it didn’t assist his reelection bid, per Fox News.

“In violation of his oath to faithfully execute the office of President and to uphold the Constitution, President Biden abused the powers of his office by soliciting a ‘quid pro quo’ with Israel while leveraging vital military aid for policy changes. This egregious action not only compromised the credibility of the United States but also undermined the interests of our longstanding ally, Israel. Therefore, President Biden’s conduct warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification from holding any future office under the United States,” Mills said in a statement.

The differences between the Biden/Israel and Trump/Ukraine cases are obvious to anyone but Mills, who is as much a fan of impeaching people as the cloven Georgian:  Mills drafted articles of impeachment against Biden for something, something the border last June.  This impeachment effort is so important and so sincere that there’s no mention of it on Mills’ website; the last press release shown, from mid-April, touts his efforts to rename a post office in Casselbury, Florida.