“Pressure is building on the Biden administration to put up records that may ‘indicate collusion’ between the Justice Department and state prosecutors in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump in Manhattan, with several Republicans at various levels of government seeking documents, including through a new investigation launched by West Virginia on Monday.”

“West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, a Trump ally, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request on Monday to the DOJ asking it to produce documents concerning an ex-DOJ employee’s transition to employment by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting Trump in the 34-count hush money case,” the Washington Examiner reports. Lol.

National Zero no longer copies and pastes other outlets’ news articles paragraph by paragraph verbatim for content (emphasis on “news” because we still copypasta from press releases etc) like we did for much of the first year and a half of our existence, save for specific circumstances where we analyze and break down others’ coverage. This however is just to point and laugh at this stupid bullshit. It might as well be a Fox News or Newsmax clip or Breitbart tweet to mock. Literally any American can put in an FOIA request. Of course it helps to be a lawyer when navigating the Kafkaesque red tape of the system, but it’s not a requirement. There are undoubtedly hundreds of hours of YouTube videos and online courses out there on how to properly file them.

Writing that 73 year-old Indian dictator Narendra Modi was expected to frame his campaign leading the world’s largest “democracy” as a referendum on his ten years in power and “achievements like generous welfare programmes and spaceflights,” the BBC reports that the genocidal strongman’s reelection bid has instead “shifted gears” and is now running of the fundamentals of hardcore Hindu nationalism, as in portraying the country’s 172 million Muslims as “inflitrators” and “jihadists.”

“To be honest, I thought Mr Modi’s campaign would be much more about the rising India story, and about what they had done for the people,” said Delhi-based think tanker Rahul Verma, apparently surprised that a leader responsible for inciting a 2002 pogrom that killed as many as 2,000 Muslim Indians in Gujarat province would campaign on selecting the national cricket team’s lineup “on the basis of religion” and rage about Muslims being welfare freeloaders by having “many children.”

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party are widely expected to completely crush the opposition Indian National Congress and its coalition of regional parties in the ongoing weeks-long national elections.

Michael Cohen's testimony praised by the media: 'An excellent witness for the prosecution' https://t.co/SnaYlXrT5U

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 14, 2024

With bombs, drones and artillery battering the northeastern city of Kharkiv, American Secretary of State Tony Blinken arrived in Kyiv for two days of meetings with Ukrainian leadership to reinforce the Biden Administration’s dedication to supporting the Ukrainian defense, the Washington Post reports.

Blinken becomes the highest-level US government official to visit Kyiv since Congress finally passed a $61 billion aid package on April 21st, a move that triggered Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican and conspiracy theorist to call for Preacher Mike Johnson’s ouster, a move that failed embarrassingly.

Once the bill passed in April after seven months of Republican obstruction, the Biden Administration worked quickly to move $1.4 billion in military equipment by using the presidential authority to draw down current military stockpiles, with another $6 billion that will be distributed through the end of the year.

The fifth week brought the emergence of the key witness in the case, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who was convicted on a federal level of election interference crimes; he was also convicted of lying to a congressional investigation.  Cohen connected Trump making the payment to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, becoming the nexus of the characters in the plan.

• Republican Senators JD Vance (Ohio) and Tommy Tuberville (Alabama-ish), Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, and GOP Attorneys General Brenna Bird (Iowa) and Steve Marshall (Louisiana) decided to not do their jobs to join Eric Trump in the gallery at the trial.  (MSNBC reports the Trump camp put a call out to the GOP Senate Conference and the Republican Attorney Generals Association to have more people attend to support Trump.)
• Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s old lawyer who made the payment to Stormy Daniels on behalf of Trump, takes the stand.
• Cohen said that he was instructed by Trump to renegotiate accounts payable to 20¢ on the dollar, which runs contrary to Cohen overpaying himself and paying Daniels’ out of pocket.

“So I think there’s a good chance of a hung jury,” alleged “Friend of Jeffrey” Alan Dershowitz asserts. “Look, there, there’s some chance of an acquittal if these jurors take their obligation seriously, but this is New York and as a CNN commentator said, this jury is representative of New York.  That’s the problem.  It’s like a white jury in Mississippi being representative of white jurors in the South.”

… which is to say, exceptionally biased against people who are different than them.  Except in the “Mississippi” example, Dersh makes it specifically racial–he mentions “white jurors” who Desch assumes will go against non-whites because of the institutional racism Fox says doesn’t exist–versus in Trump’s case, they’re just from New York, which is where Trump committed the alleged crimes.  So there’s that difference.

Incidentally, note that the bored sock puppet with a muskrat cap Gregg Jarrett, barely moves during this entire clip.  Except for a slight move of his lips, Jarrett remains so motionless he could’ve been replaced by a headshot.

A moderate Republican Super PAC that typically supports campaign efforts of GOP nominees has turned its sights on the far-right members of the Party that have wrought chaos in the House, specifically looking to unseat two-term Virginia Republican Congressman Bob Good in the June 18th primary, the Associated Press reports.

Good was one of the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy from the Speakership last October, and the GOP Conference has been a bigger shitshow ever since, with Preacher of the House Mike Johnson relying on Democratic support to pass basic legislation.

The $450,000 ad buy by Defending Main Street PAC is just the second time the group has targeted a Republican incumbent since its founding in 2012; the first was Iowa’s stunning Steve King, who lost his 2020 primary.  Defending Main Street says it supports “conservative, governing Republicans,” a dying breed.

To prevent low-priced Chinese electric vehicles and other products built by underpaid Chinese laborers from flooding the US market, the Biden Administration is expected to announce a set of tariffs on select products, including a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, CBS News reports.

This isn’t a blanket tariff aimed at China like the previous administration disastrously implemented.  Instead, Biden is targeting specific categories of semiconductors, batteries, solar cells, steel and aluminum that US industries are starting to produce for the domestic market.  The tariffs are designed to push trade to US suppliers.

Regarding EVs, the issue isn’t a current threat but a long-term outlook.  Chinese electric car makers are ramping up production, but only account for less than two percent of the US EV market.  The Chinese manufacturer BYD, the world’s largest electric vehicle maker, wants to expand into the US market with its Seagull, which sells for $12,000 in China, but it does not have the necessary framework to expand.  The tariff, however, will also apply to any “grey market” cars that might be individually shipped by private buyers.

Engineers carried out a series of controlled explosions on Monday to break up the metal framework and concrete remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge that sat on the Dali container ship after the vessel struck a bridge support, causing the structure to collapse. Officials hope to lighten the loaded on the Dali to allow the ship to float out of the river, allowing salvagers to clean the bridge wrecks from the shipping channel.

A van bearing United Nations flags and insignia was attacked as it traveled outside Rafah to southern Gaza on Monday, killing a UN staff member and injuring another, the Washington Post reports.  It marks the first time a UN staff member has been killed in the region since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

The UN did not specify which side in the hostilities perpetrated the attack, but the car appeared to be riddled with bullets fired from ground forces according to video of the vehicle after it arrived at a hospital.  The van had the letters “UN” stamped on the doors and rear, and there was a UN flag attached to the side.

Funny enough, “Judge” Jeannine Pirro was pretty big on recording phone conversations herself. In fact in 1997 the then-Westchester County district attorney recorded a call of herself talking to then SDNY US Attorney Mark Pomerantz – whose name you might remember as a target of the MAGA attempts to derail Bragg – about a mob hitman named Anthony DiSimone, whose conviction had been overturned. Pirro retried the case and won – only to see DiSimone’s conviction overturned again because her office withheld exculpatory evidence… like the kind of shit she’d been talking to Pomerantz about. And that was just one example of Franzia Lady’s taping habit.

Anyway, it’s really hard to understand what the line is here on Fox. Like we get the case against Trump is a “joke,” but even within the span of a sentence Pirro and her pals keep switching back and forth between that Donald is going to walk and that Donald is going to be convicted because of a sham. Sort of lame how they have to be “right” about it one way or another.

Kentucky hillbilly James Comer’s Oversight Committee will hold a vote Thursday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt for refusing to hand over the audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with documents fuckup special counsel Robert Hur, John Solomon’s shitty site reports.

Solomon’s propaganda shop also reports that Comer is trying to derail Biden’s 2021 executive order pushing federal agencies to do everything they can to promote voter participation, writing in a concerned letter to the Office of Management of Budget, “have concerns about the lack of constitutional and statutory authority for federal agencies to engage in any activity outside the agency’s authorized mission, including federal voting access and registration activities.”

On Monday prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney’s office will call in their star witness against disgarced former President Trump, former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen, to testify to the 2016 election interference scheme to cover up the payments to pornstar Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal over their sexual encounters with the fat orange degenerate. Many people are saying this is a big deal and that, since much of what Cohen is about to say has already been pre-corroborated, the entire case hinges on whether he can keep his cool under cross-examination.

Our Friday headline “Rudy fired from radio job” was technically incorrect as, although both his shows were canceled and he’s suspended for spewing 2020 election bullshit, the alcoholic shitbrain former NYC mayor is still sort of employed by billionaire John Catsimatidis’s 770 WABC AM talk station.

Probably not for long though, as Catsimatidis on Sunday told the New York Post that “It’s pretty hard to bring” Rudy back. “His behavior makes it very hard to reverse course. He makes it hard not to terminate him,” Catsimatidis continued, saying Giuliani had burned all “three strikes” against him after repeated warnings not to invite defamation lawsuits such as the ones that cost Fox News $787 million from Dominion Voting Systems and Rudy himself $148 million from former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss… before Dominion and Smartmatic get to Rudy.

Lawrence Taylor on Donald Trump: "I grew up a Democrat, and I've always been a Democrat — until I met this man right here." https://t.co/wrGlr9Ldwn pic.twitter.com/vEMonNF5GH

— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) May 13, 2024

A new New York Times/Siena swing state survey finds 23 percent of voters age 18 to 29 in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin say President Joe Biden bears some (17 percent) or a lot (6 percent) of responsibility for the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to end the right to abortion nationwide. This compares to 55 percent overall (29 percent a lot, 26 percent some) assigned to Trump, even though that, not only is that the correct answer, Trump has actually repeatedly taken credit for ending the right to reproductive health.

Oh yeah and Trump leads in most of these states among both registered and likely voters, though the likely side puts the race within the margin of error in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, while Dems maintain leads in all the Senate races in each of the states. If you’re looking for a decent enough way to spin this shitshow of a poll it’s that in the column of the crosstabs showing intent vs respondent voter history where 16 percent of those who preferred Biden said they didn’t vote in 2020 versus 31 percent the same for Trump, making it clear once again much more of Donald’s support relies on the flakiest and least likely to actually show up for him when it counts voters.

A combined 20,000 acres have burned in British Columbia and Alberta’s northern regions over the last few days, sending smoke billowing into Minnesota and threatening a repeat of last year’s wood-scented fog that blanketed the American northeast for more than a week last year, CNN reports.

Already the Canadian government have been issuing air quality warnings for a wide swath of the country from British Columbia into Ontario. “Conditions should begin to improve Sunday night for much of the province. Over northwestern Alberta conditions are likely to remain poor through Monday or possibly Tuesday,” said an alert issued on Saturday. As for the fires themselves, thousands have been evacuated from the regions affected in the provinces’ northern reaches.

He’s lucky he didn’t confuse it with his handgun:  an NYPD senior officer appears to mace himself while attempting to wrangle pro-Palestinian protestors blocking the Brooklyn Bridge.  As reported by the Daily Beast, NYPD Asst. Chief James McCarthy was photographed getting his eyes flushed after the interchange recorded above, shown in the clip from the video from @MerruX.  Look for McCarthy, a tall, white, follically-challenged man, come into frame early on the left of the crowd, and then follow him to the money shot at the very end.

Indicted felon and repeat offender Donald Trump’s fans, desperate to stem the flood of defectors from his campaign as his multiple criminal cases and continued obstruction fester, have reverted to the habit of flat-out lying about crowd sizes again.

Fox News touted a figure of 80,000 to 100,000 people at a beachside rally in Wildwood, New Jersey on Saturday, citing a city official who had seen “dozens” of events at the same spot.  Media outlets are largely citing that range, which is impressive, but not impressive enough for Roger Stone who had to use a false photo to claim a bigger crowd, but Twitter caught up to him:

Without having them removed from his staff through his favored manner–through a window–Vladimir Putin instead decided to rid himself of the heads of his national security and defense operations in a more traditional way, a public announcement, Politico reports.

Putin announced Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was being replaced by Andrei Belousov, an economist who has no military experience.  Having led the Russian military since 2012, Shoigu will shift to a seat on Russia’s Security Council, Putin’s military and intelligence advisory board.  Nikolai Patrushev, believed to be one of Putin’s most loyal and hawkish confidentes, was ousted from his job as Russia’s equivalent to the National Security Advisor.

The move comes as three things shake the Russian military complex.  First, the long stalemate in Ukraine may lead new leaders to be more aggressive before American arms shipments arrive.  Second, national security concerns are apparent after the March attack at the Moscow concert hall killed more than 130.  And a corruption and bribery scandal is going through senior ranks of the military, leading to shake-ups.