Former DC Metro cop Mike Fanone, who was severely injured fighting insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021 and has since become an outspoken pro-democracy activist, tells NBC News his mother’s home was swatted after Fanone spoke at a press conference with other Capitol cops and actor Robert De Niro outside fat former President Trump’s porn cover-up trial in Manhattan on Tuesday.

“How dangerous is it to send law enforcement to an address in which you essentially are describing an active shooter, in which the only person present is a 78-year-old fucking woman,” Fanone told NBC. “This is the reality of going up against or challenging Donald Trump… These swatting calls are incredibly fucking dangerous, especially when the target is somebody like my mom.”

At long last on Wednesday a jury gets a criminal case against our disgraced 45th president and will decide whether to either ding his support slightly in the 2024 election or absolutely supercharge it with a bullshit acquittal. We all know he did it and is guilty, but it’s on 12 New Yorkers to do the same and put the fat fuck at the mercy of Judge Juan Merchan for sentencing.

It is one hot samosa in Delhi, India on Wednesday as temps have already hit a record afternoon high of 126° F and it isn’t even June yet! Reach for a cold one, Delhiites, this city’s baking!

“Texans, we can no longer ignore the betrayal we witnessed in this election. Dade Phelan, in a desperate attempt to secure his political future, orchestrated a strategy that relied on Democrats voting for him in the Republican runoff. He knew he couldn’t win on his own merit, so he sought to bolster his chances by courting Democrat support in his district. The Covey campaign has identified at least 1,442 Democrats who voted early in Jefferson County, making up 20 percent of Jefferson County’s early vote numbers. Without Democrats, Dade never would have won.”

“Phelan has not only failed Texans across the state but has blatantly stolen an election from the hard-working people of his district. This treachery is a slap in the face to every true Republican who believes in fair and honest elections. We cannot stand idly by. We must close our primaries. Tonight, weak and liberal Republican incumbents lost across the State of Texas, but Democrats swooped in and saved Dade Phelan. This kind of underhanded manipulation cannot be tolerated.”

“The Republican Party of Texas must take immediate action to secure our Republican Primaries. My message to Austin is clear: to those considering supporting Dade Phelan as Speaker in 2025, ask your 15 colleagues who lost re-election how they feel about their decision now. You will not return if you vote for Dade Phelan again,” writes Picasso-faced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a memo to his fans after Tuesday’s defeat for the challenger he backed against Speaker Dade Phelan.

Can’t say it isn’t on-brand for Paxton to lose his shit over an election his guy lost – even when his guy actually conceded this time – and accuse Democrats of cheating and vowing merciless revenge and to change the rules and all other sorts of fascist bullshit. This twat needs to go down in flames.

A memo to donors obtained by the Wall Street Journal from the Dems’ “House Majority PAC” touts a planned $100 million abortion rights push to target districts in states that aren’t competitive in the Senate or Electoral College such as Virginia, New York, California, and Oregon to try to pick off potentially vulnerable Republicans – crucial to any path Ds have to retake the chamber.

Elections egghead Nathan Gonzales tells the Journal it’s a good idea. “Democrats can’t ignore voters’ concerns about the economy and safety and immigration, but I don’t think there’s been a race in the last three years where Democrats regretted highlighting the abortion issue,” said Gonzales.

A person who the Daily Beast describes only as a “celebrity athlete” who played at the now-infamous 2006 American Century Championship in Stateline, Nevada, tells the site that then-reality game show host boasted to him that he had just had sex with the “porn star” who was present and encouraged the other guys to try to eff her too. “It was clear to me and everyone who heard him that he was talking about Stormy,” the athlete said, adding Trump was “crass,” “gross,” and “stupid.”

“He’d say all these things like, ‘You’ve gotta bang a porn star, it’s incredible,’ and, ‘It added 20 yards to my drive today,’” said the athlete, who cited fear of harassment or retaliation as the reason in requiring anonymity. He also says he received anonymous phone calls asking about what if anything he remembers from that weekend in the run-up to the 2016 election, but was never approached by state or federal prosecutors. The athlete also says he never shared this story much privately.

Now if you’re thinking “celebrity athlete” might be easy to isolate just by taking a look at the tournament’s roster… well, take a look at the tournament’s roster. Charles Barkley, John Elway, Ray Allen, LaDainian Tomlinson, Joe Sakic, Ben Roethlisberger, Gene Upshaw, Bret Saberhagen, Drew Brees… That’s not even close to a comprehensive list of participants who could fit the bill.

That said, we’re just going to assume it was Aaron Rodgers. We like Aaron Rodgers for this role of secret anti-Trump informant. Kidding aside with that, who else do we know of who would actually fear any retaliation? QAaron’s fanbase and Trump’s have a lot of overlap and he almost certainly has an eye on a future in right wing media (and maybe politics too), because the mainstream sports media sure as shit isn’t going to hire him. It makes sense that he would rat on Trump anonymously.

So good! pic.twitter.com/PaI5hukqB8

— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) May 29, 2024

We’re still struggling to see what the actual game is here with the MAGA freakout over De Niro showing up as a Biden campaign surrogate – along with the January 6th cops – outside the courthouse in Manhattan on Tuesday. Of course the base level “out-of-touch Hollywood elitist” song and dance was always a given from both sides. Plenty of libs reacted accordingly with an “Ughhh, really?” but outside of the most neurotic pants-pissers nobody on the left cared enough to declare it to be some kind of a major strategic political blunder, if it was even a “blunder” at all.

In fact it’s this disproportionate freakout by Republicans and their media mind-slaves that makes it feel like De Niro actually did in fact rattle their cages and quite hard. If they were triggered enough to call an American film icon “washed-up” and put it on the cover of one of their cheapest, shittiest propaganda circulars the next day – amid everything else going on – then well maybe the press conference actually did have its intended effect. Anything that could break through to make the MAGA Reich seem as just downright fucking weird, irrational, and obsessive to lower-info voters as it we know it to be is actually a plus. Please by all means go to war with Robert De Niro, GOP. Tone those outrage muscles for the coming epic battle (God willing) against Taylor Swift.

Picasso-faced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s intra-party revenge tour for the failed 2023 impeachment effort against him itself failed to score its most highly-sought scalp on Tuesday. The Texas Tribune reports that MAGA primary challenger candidate Dave Covey conceded defeat to incumbent state House Speaker Dade Phelan, with Covey coming up short by just 366 votes in an extremely fucking heated HD 21 runoff. Per the Tribune, it’s extremely rare for a Texas legislative candidate to trail in a March primary and then prevail in a runoff, but Phelan did just that after an unheard of $3.8 million in spending by his campaign. That figure was more than double Covey’s $1.6 million, combining for what was likely the most expensive state legislative primary in Texas history.

Safe as his seat may be, Phelan’s gavel could be a different story and where he stands after Paxton’s challengers knocked off 15 out 85 state House Republicans – Pax had targeted 35 of them, so his record actually isn’t that great. The Tribune notes however that the likeliest reason no members have come out in support yet was that they weren’t sure Phelan would win the runoff.

Tuesday’s other nationally-watched Texas runoff also saw the “RINOs” prevail over MAGA as “moderate” asshole Congressman Tony Gonzales narrowly defeated fucking demented gun freak Brandon “the AK Guy” Herrera, by just 407 votes at 98 percent reporting. Herrera, a 28 year-old YouTuber who had attracted the support of large-foreheaded statutory rapist Matt Gaetz and several other House Freedom Caucasians, mounted the campaign after Gonzales had been censured in 2022 over his support for the mildest of gun control bills – the district, Texas’s 23rd, includes Uvalde, site of the 2022 Robb Elementary School massacre. Herrera might have fucked himself out of a Trump endorsement and thus the nomination for past comments such as doubting the Orange Allah could win in 2024 and joking about Barron. What the actual joke was is unclear.

“I never knew how small, both mentally and physically, Wacko Former Actor Robert De Niro was. Today, De Niro, who suffers from an incurable case of TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, commonly known in the medical community as TDS, was met, outside the Courthouse, with a force far greater than the Radical Left – MAGA. Robert, whose movies, artistry, and brand have gone WAY DOWN IN VALUE since he entered the political arena at the request of Crooked Joe Biden, looked so pathetic and sad out there. Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio!!!” posted fat former President Trump at 12:39 AM Wednesday, still upset and butthurt over De Niro’s appearance outside Trump’s trial Tuesday, something the MAGA media really struggled with, almost certainly disproportionately to any actual political impact it might have had. Also what the fuck is with the Joe DiMaggio line?

Still, based on the capitalization and spelling, Trump appeared less upset by De Niro than what happened inside the courtroom during the very long closing by the prosecution, writing “CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT I, AS A DEFENDANT, AM NOT ALLOWED TO REBUT OR CORRECT THE MANY LIES TOLD DURUNG THE 5 HOUR FILIBUSTER JUST PUT ON BY THE SOROS BACKED DA’s OFFICE IN THE MANHATTAN COURT. WHAT A DISGRACEFUL PERFORMANCE OF MISREPRESENTATION IT WAS,” again telegraphing his inability to understand the basics of criminal trial procedure.

Another freaking funny post was “THE GREATEST CASE I’VE EVER SEEN FOR RELIANCE ON COUNSEL, AND JUDGE MERCHAN WILL NOT, FOR WHATEVER REASON, LET ME USE THAT AS A DEFENSE IN THIS RIGGED TRIAL. ANOTHER TERM, ADVICE OF COUNSEL DEFENSE!” to which Politico legal reporter Josh Gerstein writes “Trump had the opportunity to raise this defense and passed it up, likely because of the disclosures and waivers that come along with it. His lawyers tried to raise it again last week in modified form after evidence was in and judge said no.”

Major League Baseball, the monopoly that runs professional baseball throughout the US, announced that as of Wednesday, it will include statistics from the segregationist Negro Leagues in its official records, NBC News reports.  Various professional leagues for only Black players, excluded from MLB teams, ran from the 1880s to 1951.

MLB previously classified six Negro Leagues that operated from 1920 to 1948 as “major league” and incorporated their statistics into the record books.  For the last three years, MLB statisticians have been compiling statistics that will officially be part of the league’s canon, which will cause some tears for Nick Fuentes and other white nationalists.  For example, Negro League great Josh Gibson now owns the record for the highest single-season batting average, and his career Negro Leagues batting average, slugging percentage and OPS will rank him above Babe Ruth and noted racist Ty Cobb.

Former senior FBI agent Peter Strzok and Bureau lawyer Lisa Page have reportedly reached an agreement with the Justice Department over their lawsuit regarding the Department leaking personal text messages between the two during the Trump administration, the Washington Post reports. Details of the settlement were not released.

The lawsuits, originally filed in 2019, alleges the Trump Administration ordered the release of the text messages which showed the pair were having an affair, in an attempt to undermine the FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.  The messages also show they both disliked Trump, a fact that furthered Trump desire to appear as a target of the Deep State.

After icon Robert DeNiro made an impassioned plea for democracy outside the courthouse in Manhattan–because that’s where the media were–Newsmax flipped through its Rolodex and found Robert Schneider, the one-time “Saturday Night Live” cast member who would earn the Most Fucked Up Living Alum title but for Victoria Jackson.

Best known for Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and The Hot Chick, Schneider pulled out the current right wingnut talking point that “thankfully, we are not a democracy; we are a democratic republic,” which somehow gives them permission to ignore the outcome of elections.

To appease states that have lengthy lead times for Parties to submit their Presidential nominee, the Democratic National Committee will hold a virtual roll call of state delegates before the August convention to formally nominate Joe Biden for a second term, Politico reports.

Alabama and Ohio have state deadlines for submissions before the Democratic convention, slated for August 19th through 22nd in Chicago.  While Alabama’s Republican legislature was able to pass an extension, Ohio’s MAGA legislators aren’t as helpful, with GOP Governor Mike DeWine lamenting the childishness.

“Joe Biden will be on the ballot in Ohio and all 50 states, and Ohio Republicans agree. But when the time has come for action, they have failed to act every time, so Democrats will land this plane on our own,” DNC chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement. “Through a virtual roll call, we will ensure that Republicans can’t chip away at our democracy through incompetence or partisan tricks and that Ohioans can exercise their right to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice.”

The Colorado Supreme Court suspended the law license of former Trump attorney and Rudy Giuliani’s hair dye towel girl Jenna Ellis for at least three years as part of a deal for her role in 2020 election interference efforts, including lying to state legislatures, the Denver Post reports.  She faced permanent disbarment, but the panel took her limited participation and ongoing cooperation as factors for a lesser punishment.

Here, while disbarment is the presumptive sanction for Respondent’s misconduct, it is significant that her criminal culpability was due to her conduct as an accessory, not as a principal,” the submitted agreement reads.  “The evidence surrounding her plea reflects that she aided and abetted the false statements at issue through her presence at the Georgia Senate Subcommittee meeting, but did not otherwise contribute to drafting or preparing the false statements, She has also expressed remorse and has recognized the harm caused by her misconduct, see Exhibit 4, and has taken significant, concrete steps to mitigate the harm her misconduct has caused. Considering all of the factors described above, as applied to this case, a fully-served three-year suspension is an appropriate sanction

Israeli dictator Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime on Tuesday issued a new ceasefire proposal to Hamas to pause the ongoing annihilation of Gaza, ABC News reports. It’s the first time the Israelis have made the first move since the horrific massacres of October 7th and it’s unclear what if any new pressure may have been exterted to stop the fighting and negotiate for hostages to be released.

Chiding Jack Smith’s team’s efforts to have a “meaningful conferral” with the defense team “to be wholly lacking in substance and professional courtesy,” Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon rejected without prejudice the Special Counsel’s motion to limit Corpulent Cantaloupe Donald Trump’s ability to target and threaten FBI agents.

As USA Today notes, Smith’s team and Trump’s team are supposed to confer before submitting non-emergency motions to the Court so opposing counsel can concur or voice opposition which is supposed to be summarized in the motion.  (See footnote on Page 1 on an earlier filing here for an example:  “The Special Counsel’s Office has indicated, without explanation, that they ‘cannot agree’ to this application.”) Cannon says Smith’s team did not do so, therefore the rejected the motion until the communication is sufficient, and the motion was rejected but with the ability to re-file still intact.

That wasn’t enough for Trump’s team, though: “That Smith is, once again, attacking President Trump’s protected campaign speech is conclusively established by the fact that the Special Counsel’s Office attached a campaign email to the Motion,” Team Trump wrote in a motion to reject the Special Counsel’s request and sanction Jack Smith’s office before concluding, “For the reasons stated herein, the Court should strike the Motion, make civil contempt findings as to all government attorneys who participated in the decision to file the Motion without meaningful conferral, and impose sanctions after holding an evidentiary hearing regarding the purpose and intent behind the Office’s decision to willfully disregard required procedures.”  Cannon rejected the sanction request.

Lots of people are saying what happens on Tuesday is a big deal for whether or not disgraced former President Trump is guilty of fucking around with his business records before and after the 2016 election to conceal that he had been fucking around with a pornstar and a Playboy model a decade earlier, interfering in the election and defeating Hillary and you know the rest.

Reich-y Dutch nationalist coalition leader Geert Wilders on Tuesday congratulated former intel chief Dick Schoof as the pick for Tulipland’s premiership, tweeting “Dick Schoof has a great track record, is non-partisan and therefore above the parties, has integrity and is also very sympathetic!” Wilders himself could’ve been the guy but the wanting to deport all Muslims and demolish mosques was what one might call “political baggage.” Schoof will likely have a subtler touch.

Comedian Bill Maher told CNN "the left has changed" while discussing criticism he's received from Democrats over his recent statements on pro-Palestinian protests and other issues. https://t.co/FvGxtTqxcD

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) May 28, 2024

Responding to disgraced former President Trump once again defaming her client again in a deranged Truth Social post, rape victim EJ Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan on Monday told the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman they’ve “said several times since the last jury verdict in January that all options were on the table. And that remains true today – all options are on the table.”

“Happy Memorial Day to All, including the Human Scum that is working so hard to destroy our Once Great Country, and to the Radical Left, Trump Hating Federal Judge in New York that presided over, get this, TWO separate trials, that awarded a woman, who I never met before (a quick handshake at a celebrity event, 25 years ago, doesn’t count!), 91 MILLION DOLLARS for ‘DEFAMATION.’ She didn’t know when the so-called event took place – sometime in the 1990’s – never filed a police report, didn’t have to produce the “dress” that she threatened me with (it showed negative!), & sung my praises in the first half of her CNN Interview with Alison Cooper, but changed her tune in the second half – Gee, I wonder why (UNDER APPEAL!)? The Rape charge was dropped by a jury!” Trump had written in the post before then complaining about Judge Arthur Engoron. No real mystery as to the kind of shit Kaplan is keeping track of in working on another federal defamation complaint.