“If the presidential election were held today, President Biden would outperform former President Trump among both registered (50 percent Biden, 37 percent Trump) and likely young voters under 30 (56 percent Biden, 37 percent Trump). When there is no voter screen (ie, all young adults 18-29), the race narrows to single digits, 45 percent for President Biden, 37 percent for former President Trump, with 16 percent undecided,” says a Harvard Kennedy survey of young voters.

Harvard pollster John Della Volpe tells Politico that “For a Democrat to comfortably win the Electoral College, he or she needs to win 60 percent of the youth vote. Biden and Obama, 2012 and 2020, won 60 percent. Obama got 66 percent in 2008. John Kerry and Hillary Clinton got 55 percent. Biden is in the mid-50s. Can you improve that to get to 60 percent? It’s within reach”

A new report from the Nevada Secretary of State’s office states that, out of hundreds of reports of possible voter fraud received since the 2020 election, just 14 were referred for criminal investigation, representing 0.0001 percent of the 1,023,617 votes cast in the 2022 election.

Which means, sur-fucking-prise, that the entire rationale for claiming voter fraud and creating fake electoral college votes and all that other bullshit is not supported by actual reality.

“RINO” soon-to-be-former-Wisconsin 8th District Congressman Mike Gallagher told media this week that death threats and a swatting incident were the last straws for his time in the House, prompting him to announce his retirement and then resign late enough to leave the seat empty, Fox 11 reports.

“This is more just me wanting to prioritize being with my family,” Gallagher said ” I signed up for the death threats and the late night swatting, but they did not. And for a young family, I would say this job is really hard,” he continued, without elaborating on the swatting call. Fox 11 did was able to confirm with the Brown County Sheriff’s Office that a case was opened last year about a swatting call at Gallagher’s home in the county and later handed to the FBI for investigation.

This was well before Gallagher started really catching a lot of shit from the MAGA assholes for voting against impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, so it’s not clear what he had done to piss them off. Maybe it was some crazy libtard calling in the threats. Who knows.

Newly released documents from Donald Trump’s election interference hush money case in Manhattan show the periodic napper and criminal defendant attempted to serve a subpoena to mycophile Stormy Daniels by throwing the document at the porn star’s feet as she walked into a Brooklyn nightclub last month, the Associated Press reports.  Daniels and her lawyers claim she never got the notice.

The Groping Grapefruit’s legal team claims the toss constitutes the process “being served,” and they’re asking Judge Juan Merchan to force Daniels to turn over documents related to her documentary “Stormy,” which was being debuted at the club.  Trump’s lawyers likely intend to use the information to try to undermine the testimony of the woman who laughed when she was asked to describe Trump’s penis, an embarrassment he had previously paid $130,000 to avoid.

Under Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Britain’s House of Commons passed a new law that will ultimately lead to banning cigarette sales–and possible tobacco smoking–throughout the country, Politico reports.

While the liberal Labour Party members supported the move, enough members of Sunak’s conservative coalition jumped ship to pass the legislation.  “What’s his legacy going to be? Banning smoking?” a disgruntled Tory grumbled. “Is that really how he wants to be remembered?”

Not an outright ban, the new law would make it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born after January 1st, 2009–a date that will not change each year, but would bar anyone currently under the age of 15 from ever buying cigarettes.  Roughly one in eight people in the UK smoke, a slightly higher rate than in the United States.

This isn’t a joke.  She may be, but this is an actual amendment brought by Georgia Republican Congresswoman and wannabe reality television personality Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s just gone into total troll mode.  If you’re ever asked why you think Republicans aren’t serious people or they can’t govern, just refer to this.

Israel has some of the best unmanned defense systems in the world.

I’ve previously voted to fund space lasers for Israel’s defense.

America needs to take our national security seriously and deserves the same type of defense for our border that Israel has and proudly uses. pic.twitter.com/oDeDqTXvQQ

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) April 18, 2024

Having put her budding Autotune-driven pop star dreams of being the conservative Taylor Swift on hold to help run the family business, Lara Trump is really upset that her father-in-law has to spend his days in court as he faces criminal charges for an accounting error!  … ‘cept it’s not an accounting error when Donald used company money to reimburse outside parties to ensure a woman he had an affair with kept quiet.  Twice.  He did that twice, Lara.  That’s not an error; that’s a pattern.

Never one to present serious solutions, Republicans and their hired media morons will celebrate the massive own Georgia Republican Congresswoman and Lucy’s close relative Marjorie Taylor Greene added amendments to Ukraine aid bills that would require every member of Congress who voted for the aid to serve in the Ukrainian military.

“Any Member of Congress who votes in favor of this Act shall be required to conscript in the Ukrainian military,” the one-sentence addendum from the temperamental toddler will be defeated before it ever comes close to inclusion.

If nothing else, this fucked-up story demonstrates how fucked-up our society has become.  An 81-year-old Ohio man is charged with murder after shooting an Uber courier driver who arrived at his home to pick up a package for delivery–which is fucked-up enough, but the man had apparently been primed to become paranoid that someone was coming to kill him, and someone sent the Uber driver to his home as he was at peak paranoid.

The story from the Associated Press is a good summary, but there are other details from various sources that paint a really dark picture.  William Brock, a white man, had received anonymous ominous phone calls; some sources report that the caller told Brock he needed to turn over $25,000 or a gang would kill him and/or his family because of some fictional drug deal gone bad that a family member was involved in.  Then the Uber driver, Loletha Hall, a Black woman showed up unexpected at his door.

Dashboard cam from Hall’s call shows Brock pointing a handgun at her.  Having called 9-1-1 after shooting her, Brock said Hall attempted to rob him and told police he repeatedly questioned Hall about who sent her and what they wanted, but she didn’t know what he was talking about. 

“What he’s doing is, is he’s– We’re seeing in real-time a living martyr,” George Murdoch, a former Snoop Dog bodyguard who is now a political pundit by the name of Tyrus, prophetizes adding a little resurrection imagery, “because he’s dead in the courtroom, but his trial’s in the public and he’s winning in public.”

Murdoch went on to lament that “it’s designed for him to lose because no one is being charged with that,” which technically is true:  no other person is being charged with using their private corporation’s money to influence a presidential election they’re running in by paying a porn star hush money to keep quiet about a sexual liaison the candidate had weeks after the birth of his youngest son.  He got us:  nobody else is getting charged for that.  (There have been, however, more than a dozen convictions by Alvin Bragg’s office for the financial fraud crimes comparable to what Trump is charged with.)

“Though the Orange Leviathan threaten to slay me, yet will I hope in Him. I will defend my ways before His wrath,” professed true believer Michael to the Jew scribe-herald who hath queried if he quakes before the capriciousness of the foul, bloated one whose visage is smeared with vile ochre.

“As we all know, dollars raised online will play a pivotal role in helping Republicans win this cycle. With the RNC now joining President Trump’s campaign in a joint fundraising committee, we’re issuing new guidelines for candidates and committees who choose to use President Trump’s name, image, and likeness in fundraising solicitations. Beginning tomorrow, we ask that all candidates and committees who choose to use President Trump’s name, image, and likeness split a minimum of 5 percent of all fundraising solicitations to Trump National Committee JFC,” write disgraced former President Trump’s minions in a shakedown letter to vendors for downballot 2024 GOP candidates.

It gets better. “This includes but is not limited to sending to the house file, prospecting vendors, and advertising. Any split that is higher than 5 percent will be seen favorably by the RNC and President Trump’s campaign and is routinely reported to the highest levels of leadership within both organizations,” lol, emphasis ours on “favorably,” an implicit yet specific threat as you’ll see.

🚨 BREAKING 🚨 SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS HAS BEEN COMPLETELY AND TOTALLY EXONERATED ON WHITE NATIONALIST CONGRESSWOMAN MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE‘S HOAX IMPEACHMENT ARTICLES! The Senate just rejected the sham impeachment! ACQUITTED, EXONERATED, STILL YOUR DHS SECRETARY MAGATARDS! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

FOUR MORE YEARS! FOUR MORE YEARS! MAYORKAS HAS DEFEATED YOUR BORDER, BORDER, BORDER HOAX! And yes we’re repeating the same joke from when Greene’s articles first failed back in November. Too good not to dredge up the shitposting from the MAGA kids after Trump got acquitted the first time back in February 2020. What actually happened Wednesday is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer offered up a point of order to find the first article of impeachment unconstitutional and it passed 51 to 48 on party lines (“RINO” Lisa Murkowski voted “present”).

Schumer is working on the same motion on the second article, meaning it’s all over but the crying, and damn Mike Lee sure is crying right now. Fuck him. Alejandro Mayorkas has been “exonerated.”

Trump operative Charlie Kirk: We are struggling right now, we can’t compete with Biden’s field offices. Biden has 450 people on staff in key states, we do not believe Trump has a single field office in any of those states. Biden is a formidable opponent pic.twitter.com/BKEi6aRrtq

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) April 17, 2024

Defying the Orange Jesus’s commands again, Arizona state House Republicans on Wednesday blocked two Dem attempts to repeal the state’s 1864 abortion ban, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Republican Washington state House member Jacquelyn Maycumber on Tuesday released a statement denying she had ever tweeted “Enough is enough. Please vote blue this November. With our President’s ignorance when it comes to lockdowns, racial justice and women’s issues, we cannot allow Donald Trump to have a second term #RepublicansforBiden” in 2020 and ripped into the state’s losing GOP gubernatorial nominee from that year (and Trump-endorsed 2022 WA-04 primary loser) Loren Culp for retweeting a screenshot of the “deepfake,” the Spokesman-Review reports.

“Loren Culp has obsessed over my candidacy for Congress. He knowingly promoted false deepfake tweets. He pretends to defend election integrity but knowingly promotes material designed to influence the election for another candidate. He needs to issue a retraction on the electronic impersonation ‘deepfake’ tweets. If he fails to do so we will take legal action,” wrote Maycumber.

We were to understand that something needed to be AI-generated and not just photoshopped to qualify as a “deepfake,” but here we are with Republican-on-Republican rhetorical violence and defamation lawsuit threats. Contacted by the Spokesman-Review, Culp said simply “I don’t even remember doing that. So I retweeted it and she hired lawyers? It’s America, right – she can get a lawyer to do anything.” Washington’s 4th is particularly important for MAGA as Republican Congressman Dan Newhouse is one of just two remaining incumbents or the 10 “RINOs” who voted to impeach disgraced former President Trump following the January 6th insurrection that he incited.

Maycumber might already be screwed anyway because she endorsed Nikki Haley a few months ago, which makes her just as much of a “RINO” as the guy who tried to help remove Trump from office.

Jamie Raskin has had enough of Jamie Comer’s idiocy.  Raskin pointed out that saying the “Biden family” is doing something to earn money is like saying the “Comer family” does the same, noting that Comer has family members who don’t do what Jamie does.  (“I’m a farmer,” the five-term Congressman asserts.) After Raskin notes Joe Biden made money after publishing his books,  Comer continues on a rant about how “That’s why Ukraine, Kazakstan, Romania, China, Russia, that’s why they paid the Biden family money?”–interrupted only by New York’s Dan Goldman correctly interjecting, “None of those governments paid anyone any money.”–  Raskin looks on in amazement:  “Somebody needs therapy here, but it’s nobody from our side of the aisle.”

Opinion – Fox News is leftist propaganda

— Tristan Flynn (@TristanCPDT) April 17, 2024

This is the “best” reply we have to Fox News’s tweet at this point. Kind of disappointing considering that freaking nutcase and all her pals are online all day, every day. The Flynn we have here isn’t even disgraced former General Mike Flynn. He’s just some right wing Canadian douchebag who looks like he’s purposely grew out his hair and beard so he can appear as differently as possible from his mug shot on the sex offender registry. What the fuck, MAGA? Step it up for Christ’s sake.

“Crooked Joe Biden wants PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY to be protected perhaps more than any other living (barely!) individual because if it isn’t, and having absolutely nothing to do with me, he will surely be Indicted and Tried for many of his Dishonest, illegal, or Incompetent Actions (Afghanistan disaster, Southern Border catastrophe!). A President should not be placed in that position – MUST BE FREE TO MAKE DECISIONS, HOPEFULLY CORRECT ONES!” posted fat former President Trump on Wednesday, his panic over next week’s Supreme Court arguments suddenly surging.

If this is supposed to be some kind of reverse psychology play then it sure sucks. The whole point of the Supreme Court’s bullshit intervention is to determine where the line is between the regular functions of the presidency and prosecutable crimes. If anything, under the worst case scenario where they decide against Trump but indefinitely delay his DC trial by forcing Judge Chutkan to go through a laborious process to determine which acts were not “official” and thus prosecutable – and then Trump wins the election, then that actually protects Biden personally from legal jeopardy from whatever kind of frivolous bullshit the new MAGA DOJ could try to bring, by like a lot. So no matter where in the fairly narrow band of (realistic) outcomes in US v Trump the decision lands, it is absolutely in Biden’s interest to let Smith continue pushing the case to Los Supremos.

Two top officials in the DC National Guard last month told House Administration Committee staffers that former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley could have stopped the January 6th, 2021 MAGA insurrection sooner if she had just picked up the phone and called, Politico reports, citing closed-door testimony to Georgia MAGA Congressman Barry Loudermilk’s investigation of the investigation.

Oh wait, shit. We got Nikki Haley mixed up with Nancy Pelosi. Anyway the… Heyyy… The Politico article says it was actually Donald Trump who should have called the DC National Guard to stop his fanboys from rampaging in the United States Capitol. They have this exchange from the transcript:

“Could the president have picked up the phone, called the secretary of defense, and said, you know, ‘What’s going on here?’ Our law enforcement is getting overrun, make this happen!'” a committee staffer asked DCNG senior enlisted man Michael Brooks, who answered with “I assume he could expedite an approval through the Secretary of Defense, through the Secretary of the Army.”

The word “Pelosi” doesn’t even show up in the article and… Ahem, in all seriousness the rest of the report paints a larger picture of inaction by Pentagon leadership and that they could have responded independently of Trump, which in turn tracks with a theory printed in detail by JustSecurity in December 2021: That it was a tactical decision to avoid putting troops there that Trump could have immediately taken command of and then used to subjugate Congress to prevent the transfer of power from taking place at all. And even though holding back allowed cops to have the shit beaten out of them by crazed Trump fans and created space for Trump to continue lying about who’s call it was not to have the National Guard at the Capitol, not deploying them was the least bad option.

Mark Milley and the other brass are never going to say this publicly that they purposely committed such an act of purposeful dereliction. They’ll probably take it to the grave. Still the right call.