A 2.9 magnitude tremor struck northern New Jersey at 3:50 AM on Friday near the epicenter of the early April 4.7 magnitude temblor that shook the entire region, 1010 WINS reports on the relatively large gerological terror that continues to lurk under the New York City metropolitan area.

CNN’s Abby Phillip confronts Florida Republican Congressman and ex-convict Byron Donalds, a Trump VP hopeful, on his and Trump’s claims that the FBI search warrant for Mar-a-Lago in the classified documents case included an assassination order targeting Trump–and that, of course, is a lie, as Phillip points out. Donalds, however, won’t admit the lie and sloppily tries to deflect.

First, the Internet helped virgins advertise their virginity so rich people could bid to take it, and now reality television lets voyeuristic Americans watch the process.  Well, sort of.  Hulu’s new series Virgin Island promises the contestant won’t qualify for a sequel by the end, provided of course, that the contestant picks their first sex partner in front of a national-ish audience.

And per the Daily Beast, you could be the lucky virgin… or “born-again virgin” as Question #24 of the applicant questionnaire asks.  (The preceding question is, “Are you a virgin?” which seems a little late in the sequence for the show’s premise, to be honest.) Invite the incels pestering you to apply.  We’re sure they’ll make great heels for the reality show crowd.

No one can be disloyal to The Party.  The leaders of the Texas Republican Party spent the first day of their state convention insulting and undermining the GOP Speaker of the state house, Dade Phelan, the Texas Tribune reports.

What did Phelan do that would prompt Party Chair Matt Rinaldi, Lt. Guv Dan Patrick, and corrupt Attorney General Ken Paxton all call for new House leadership immediately during their Day One addresses?  Phelan had the temerity to support Paxton’s impeachment on 20 counts of various abuse of office and corruption charges.  The impeachment articles passed the state house but were killed in the senate when the GOP stood behind Paxton.  (Those were different than the federal securities fraud charges Paxton settled in March without accepting any guilt; as part of the settlement, Texas’s sitting Attorney General will have to do 100 hours of community service, which unfortunately won’t likely require him to wear a vest on the side of a highway.)

“Last year, House Speaker Dade Phelan handed political power in the Texas House to Democrats,” Rinaldi said during his speech. “He went to war with the Texas GOP, lieutenant governor, and Texas Senate and without process or evidence, impeached the best Republican attorney general in the nation.”

A proposal from the NCAA and the so-call “Power Five” college athletic conferences representing their member schools reached a landmark settlement that will create a $2.8 billion damages pool for previous college athletes and change the way colleges can compensate students athletes, USA Today reports.

Among the largest schools known as Division I, athletics generated nearly $16 billion in revenue in 2019, not including broadcast rights fees that go through the conferences.  The athletes traditionally got barely more than tuition and living expenses.  The NCAA allowed athletes to sign name, image and licensing (NIL) agreements with companies, allowing them to run business independent of their college athletics.  Now, though, a rush will be on to create “salary caps” and alumni trusts to fund payroll.

In a bit of Democrat-engineered political theatre, the Senate again failed for the second time to get over the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the bipartisan-negotiated immigration reform bill that was first failed in a February floor vote, CBS News reports.

By a 43 to 50 vote, the bill was again stopped despite having been negotiated by conservative James Lankford of Oklahoma, but Lankford could not stand up to Donald Trump’s demand to prevent any legislation from passing to give Joe Biden a win, so even if it had gotten out of the Senate, the House would kill it to maintain their culture war talking points. (Wow.  Sounds just like 2014.)

“The contrast between Democrats and Republicans is clear today and will be even clearer in November. Democrats want to fix the border and get something done. Republicans want to give speeches, let the border fester and do absolutely nothing to fix the problem,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the expected outcome Thursday afternoon, giving Democrats another instance to show the GOP’s unwillingness to govern.

Calling the situation “absurd” and “ridiculous,” Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine announced he would call an emergency session of the legislature to take action to ensure President Joe Biden appears on the state’s ballot in November, the Washington Post reports, fixing a problem caused by the late date of the Democratic National Convention.

Ohio’s deadline for Parties to submit their nominees is August 7th; the DNC is scheduled for August 18th through 20th, with Biden’s official nomination to happen on August 19th and Biden’s acceptance speech slated to close out the convention.  It’s not the first time Ohio has had similar schedule clashes–nor is Ohio the only state impacted by this; Alabama’s legislation quickly passed a bill, signed by GOP Governor Kay Ivey earlier this month, to fix its conflict.  Typically, Ohio’s legislature would simply vote on allowing an extension, but bipartisanship doesn’t work in Ohio’s Republican majority.

“This is simply unacceptable,” DeWine said when asked about the problem during a press briefing.   “Ohio is running out of time to get Joe Biden, the sitting president of the United States, on the ballot this fall. Failing to do so is simply not acceptable. This is a ridiculous — this is an absurd — situation.”

It’s hot, humid, and there’s a more than small chance of severe thunderstorms rolling in again in New York City this Thursday evening, and for some reason we still can’t fathom, fat former President Trump is holding a MAGA rally in the South Bronx and not, say, Wisconsin, Arizona, or Nevada where the 2024 election will be won or lost. Given the non-zero probability that something will go wrong at what looks to be a not-especially well-attended event that Fox News bro Jesse Watters insisted nobody is being bussed to from out of town, we’re going to carry it live instead of clipping from after the fact. Then there’s also that this afternoon Trump’s campaign sent a fundraising email promising some sort of “huge announcement” that may or may not just a third series of his $99 NFTs.

A caucus of far right nationalist lawmakers in the European Parliament on Thursday officially excommunicated members from Germany’s AfD (Alternative for Deutcheland) Party after dipshit AfD MEP Maximillian Krah was a little too unsubtle in his admiration for the Third Reich, AFP reports.

The French National Rally and Italy’s League – the other delegations in the Euro Parliament’s Identity and Democracy bloc – sought to distance themselves from Krah and his fellow goose-steppers for comments minimizing the atrocities of Hitler’s SS and the AfD’s suspected links to Russian and ChiCom fifth columnists. Well the ChiCom thing is actually a little more than just suspected considering that Krah’s top aide was arrested last month on suspicion of espionage. As for the SS comments, the other Euro-white nationalists obviously prefer a little more subtlety in expressing admiration for the Nazis. You have to hint that Hitler was cool and wink at the fanbase.

A new Marquette University Law School survey finds disgraced former President Trump leading President Biden 44 to 41 percent among likely voters with a full field including Russian assets Robert F Kennedy Jr in third at 11 percent, with Jill Stein, and Cornel West at 2 percent each, a Trump lead that flips to Biden 43 to Trump 39 percent if the fat fuck is convicted in NYC next week.

British Brexiter and American conservative media gadfly Nigel Farage announced that he will forgo a re-election campaign in the upcoming British Parliamentary elections to assist cult leader Donald Trump to win the 2024 US presidential election, Politico reports.

“Important though the general election is, the contest in the United States of America on November 5 has huge global implications,” Farage posted on social media.  “A strong America as a close ally is vital for our peace and security.  I intend to help with the grassroots campaign in any way I can.”

After accepting Russian help in 2016 and attempting to extort Ukrainian assistance in the 2020 campaign, Team Traitorous Tangerine won’t have any compunction about accepting help from Farage, a Reform Party leader who currently hosts a television program in Britain.

“Despite the Republican National Committee’s good faith efforts over the last four weeks to work with your United States Secret Service (‘USSS’) subordinates to resolve the critical flaw with the Security Perimeter in the USSS’s Operational Security Plan, which was the subject of my April 26 letter, the RNC’s grave concerns about the unacceptable risk to public safety remain unaddressed.”

“Rather than dissipating, the overall security climate has worsened significantly over the past month of the USSS’s inaction, as evidenced by the public statements of the anticipated demonstrators, as detailed below. Your failure to act now to prevent these unnecessary and certain risks will imperil tens of thousands of Convention attendees, inexcusably forcing them into close proximity to the currently planned First Amendment Zone. Inevitably, this Plan will heighten – rather than obviate or diffuse – tensions and confrontation, creating an increased and untenable risk of violence.”

“This rapidly deteriorating security environment and the severe consequences to the public underscore the exigency of your personal leadership and action to solve this problem, as the RNC requested in my April 26 letter” and blah blah blah writes RNC General Counsel Todd Steggerda to US Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle, complaining like a total Karen about their big cult fest’s attendees potentially being exposed to too much free speech from the liberal protestors and locals who would rather the GOP hold their venereal disease superspreader event somewhere else.

MAGA Anchorage, Alaska Mayor Dave Bronson, famous for his antisemitic anti-vaccine dipshittery and failed attempt to secretly shut off the fluoridation of the city’s water supply, conceded to challenger and now Mayor-elect Suzanna LaFrance Thursday after it became clear that LaFrance’s lead eclipsed the few thousand remaining uncounted votes in Tuesday’s runoff, KTUU reports.

At least Bronson can say he will have made it to the end of his term. Things looked a bit dicey in 2022 when the city council created an entirely new grounds for and procedural steps to remove a mayor from office after all the dumb shit he did. Just not being reelected was kind of a victory itself.

Republicans on the Lousiana state legislature on Thursday gave final approval to a bill reclassifying abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled substances, the AP reports.

Senate Dems on Thursday started sending out letters to oil execs who reportedly attended a dinner at Mar-a-Lago where fat former President Trump demanded $1 billion in campaign contributions in exchange for doing whatever they wanted him to do if elected again, the New York Times reports.

Texas MAGA Congressman Lance Gooden on Thursday was happy to share his insights into the soon-to-be concluded Manhattan pornstar-fucking trial, telling Fox News idiot Maria Bartiromo he doesn’t “think a hung jury is out of the question and boy would it be spectacular.” Intrigued, Bartiromo then asked Gooden to share his thoughts on what, if any, effect being given fully a week off from court from Tuesday until closing arguments next week could have on the jury before they begin deliberating. Gooden then said he “couldn’t begin to speculate on that” before rambling on with the typical rhetorical sucking of his Orange Allah’s balls. Meaning when he said he thinks there’s going to be a hung jury he was actually saying he wants there to be a hung jury.

“The FBI followed standard protocol in this search as we do for all search warrants, which includes a standard policy statement limiting the use of deadly force. No one ordered additional steps to be taken and there was no departure from the norm in this matter. The standard deadly force policy statement included in the operations order for the search of the former president’s residence was also included in the operations order for the search of the sitting president’s residence in Delaware, as is standard practice for all FBI operations orders,” the FBI confirms in a statement to Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, following up on her Wednesday reporting that the “use of deadly force” was also in place for their searches of Biden’s residences as it is for every action.

Tucker Carlson wanted Heinrich fired for fact-checking Trump’s Dominion conspiracy bullshit in the aftermath of the 2020 election, just in case you were curious about her journalistic principles.

Lieutenant-General Vadim Shamarin, deputy head of the Russian army’s General Staff, was for some reason arrested for bribery Thursday rather than thrown out a window or force-fed polonium borscht or on a helicopter that suddenly suffered mechanical problems, Reuters reports.

The crimes alleged against Shamarin are a pretty standard pay-for-play scheme with a radio equipment vendor that was worth about 36 million roubles ($400,000 American). Sham’s the fourth high-level Russian military brass to be cuffed over the last month following the arrests for Lieutenant-General Yuri Kuznetsov, head of personnel at the defence ministry, and Major-General Ivan Popov, former commander of the 58th army, and Deputy Defence Minister Timur Ivanov – all of them having found out the hard way that bribery is illegal if Vladimir Putin doesn’t like you.

The asshole who now claims his deepfaked Biden robocall sent out to as many as 25,000 New Hampshire voters in the days before the February primary was just to warn about the dangers of artificial intelligence in political disinformation (lol), has been indicted WMUR reports.

Consultant Steve Kramer, who worked for Dem primary challenge dead-ender Dean Phillips’s campaign but disavows that the soon-to-be-ex-Minnesota Congressman had anything to do with the call mimicking Biden’s voice saying “Voting this Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump again,” faces ten counts including bribing, intimidation and suppression and impersonation of candidates in Rockingham County, New Hampshire. Not sure if that’s just one statute or several, but Kramer was also charged in at least two other counties.