Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are suddenly skyrocketing in popularity in Texas, PC World reports on a development no one could have foreseen unless they read our article on what happened the last time PornHub blocked itself in a state that imposed an age verification requirement.

More from @alexmarlow and @mboyle1's exclusive interview with @realdonaldtrump: Trump talks about his meeting with Laken Riley's family–and how Biden has demonstrated he just doesn't care about her murder.

On Riley's family: “Her parents are great people. They lost an angel…… pic.twitter.com/bQ3wSrJfDL

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) March 15, 2024

There’s plenty to be said about the questionable moral horizon Laken Riley’s family are entering here by weaponizing their daughter’s death in service of a demented dictator, especially one who would think that autographing a photo of their murdered child is normal. But more on that later.

“Today, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released its third Center for Countering Human Trafficking (CCHT) Annual Report, highlighting the Department’s successful efforts to train more than 275,000 individuals, including aviation and transportation personnel, law enforcement partners, and nonprofit organizations, to recognize the indicators of human trafficking and take action to stop this heinous crime. The Annual Report outlines the Department’s role as a global leader in the fight against human trafficking through a wide range of efforts including victim identification and assistance, criminal investigations, civil enforcement actions, intelligence and analysis, training and public education, and external outreach.”

“In Fiscal Year (FY) 2023, the Department of Homeland Security expanded efforts to educate the public on human trafficking. CCHT led 135 training and outreach events for the DHS workforce and law enforcement partners with more than 14,000 participants. The Blue Campaign hosted 194 public awareness trainings with 19,626 participants from the federal government, non-governmental organizations, law enforcement, and general public – more than double the number conducted in the previous fiscal year. The Blue Campaign launched 63 new partnerships – a 46 percent increase over FY22 – including with higher education associations like Florida International University and Phoenix Dream Center, the nation’s largest human trafficking recovery program for young adults.”

“By further expanding our trainings and partnerships and educating more of the public than the previous year, CCHT has better positioned DHS to improve its counter human trafficking efforts, including investigating and prosecuting perpetrators. DHS agencies arrested 2,610 individuals for human trafficking-related offenses and assisted 731 human trafficking victims. DHS personnel supported 1,044 human trafficking-related indictments and their work led to 519 convictions,” says a press release from DHS. Yeah but Sound of Freedom‘s box office numbers, right fanboys?

Disgraced former President Trump’s lawyers on Friday sent Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan a letter telling him District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s offer of a 30 day delay for the Stormy Daniels hush money payoff trial start after the federal Southern District of New York dragged their asses on producing discovery evidence is “not sufficient” and are asking for a hearing on the matter to be scheduled for the week of March 25, when the trial is supposed to start, Politico’s Erica Orden reports.

There’s no indication yet from Merchan on how to handle this but, let’s just try to be optimistic here because everyone else is like “OMG TRUMP’S NOT GOING ON TRIAL,” there’s always a decent chance that Donald’s asshole lawyers are going to find some way to piss off the judge and he’ll only give them an extra week or two to review the documents. Judges really don’t like Trump’s lawyers.

Now for the bad news: Any delay in Trump’s trial pushes back Steve Bannon’s trial for the “We Build The Wall” scam since Merchan is overseeing that one too. It’s supposed to start in May, although it’s hard to see that one taking particularly long given that his three accomplices were all convicted at the federal level after Bannon was pardoned by Trump at the last minute in 2021.

Just a week on the job and RNC chair Mike Whatley is already fucking it up by correctly saying twice in less than five seconds that Americans are in fact better off than they were four years ago.

They really have to stop trying to use that line. Even under normal circumstances you need to think it through and not accidentally misapply the binary operators like Whatley did here. And obviously these are not normal circumstances because literally every day of the next 235 days there will be another “This was what it was like four years ago” opportunity for the Dems to show the bottomless miseries of that horrid year. They also can’t just change it to “Are you better off than you were five years ago?” because well… Actually they should try that, lol. Make it even more suicidally stupid.

The US Supreme Court on Friday issued a unanimous ruling allowing public officials to block people on social media under “certain circumstances,” NBC News reports.

Judge Scott McAfee determined that there was no conflict of interest or serious misstatements to the court regarding a relationship Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had with a special prosecutor handing the case, CNN reports, and she may stay on the case to prosecute Donald Trump and others on the RICO case to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.

McAfee rejected the motion from a Trump co-defendant Michael Roman in which Roman alleged that a suspected romantic relationship between Willis and Wade prompted Willis to unethically pursue the prosecution against Donald Trump’s cabal so that Wade would earn money which he would spend on Willis, meaning Willis was unethically prosecuting Trump et al for personal gain.  McAfee found no basis for that claim, but he did order either Willis or Wade to step away from the case to avoid any appearance of unethical behavior.

“The prosecution of this case cannot proceed until the State selects one of two options. The District Attorney may choose to step aside, along with the whole of her office, and refer the prosecution to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council for reassignment,” McAfee wrote in his ruling.  “Alternatively, SADA Wade can withdraw, allowing the District Attorney, the Defendants, and the public to move forward without his presence or remuneration distracting from and potentially compromising the merits of this case.”

Biden is going to let the Haitian migrants invade Florida! Todd Bensman: "I have a source in Customs and Border Protection, very well-placed, who is telling me that the orders are to have the Coast Guard follow the boats to Florida and let them land." pic.twitter.com/qZ2Qea8g5W

— MAGA War Room (@MAGAIncWarRoom) March 15, 2024

“Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our Country from Haiti. They are headed to Florida. But don’t worry, Crooked Joe Biden has everything totally under control. MAGA!” wrote fat former President Trump on Truth Social on Thursday. He was a little late to the game as his worshippers have over the last few days put the pedal to the metal in their “panic” over a likely influx of refugees from the dysfunctional Caribbean nation’s accelerating collapse into anarchy as criminal gangs have effectively seized control of the capital Port-au-Prince. “Panic” in quotations because they are not actually panicking, at all. They’re thrilled beyond imagination that desperate, impoverished Black migrants will invade our shores and they can blame it on Biden.

Someone change our minds here. Tell us why this is actually more of a legitimate problem than a political opportunity for Trump and the Republicans. We’re open to attempts at persuasion that Trump threatening to bomb refugee boats and then not doing it is more effective policy than whatever the Biden Administration ends up doing to try to manage it. Step on up.

Ever the helpful ones, Democrats are working to push Trump-endorsed bi-curious car dealer Bernie Moreno over the finish line in next week’s Ohio Republican Senate primary to determine the nominee to face incumbent Dem Senator Sherrod Brown in November, NBC News reports.

“Moreno would lead the charge to enact Trump’s MAGA agenda to repeal Obamacare and institute a national ban on abortion… Donald Trump needs Bernie Moreno,” says the ad produced by a PAC linked to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Bernie Moreno does not.”

NBC had actually reported this on Thursday before the AP had picked up the AdultFriendFinder profile story that had been floating around quietly the last few weeks. Considering that the PAC is spending $2.7 million on the ad campaign we would hope that Dems have more than just the profile to indicate that Moreno likes cruising the internet for gay hookups that they can drop after the primary should he win. This week an Emerson Poll found Moreno trailing state Senator Matt Dolan in the race 26 to 23 percent with dipshit Secretary of State Frank LaRose in third at 16 percent, but with 32 percent still undecided and Emerson being not that reliable, who the hell knows.

Far right North Carolina state Superintendent of Public Instruction candidate Michelle Morrow, a batshit Moms for Liberty-type homeschooling activist, is 100 percent feature-not-bug when it comes to her social media history, as CNN’s KFile have found she posted shit like “I prefer a Pay Per View of [Obama] in front of the firing squad. I do not want to waste another dime on supporting his life. We could make some money back from televising his death,” in 2020 in response to another Twitter user saying the 44th president should end up in Guantanamo for “spying” on Trump.

Morrow, who upset the incumbent Republican Superintendent Catherine Truitt in last week’s primary also in December 2020 responded to then President-elect Biden’s call for Americans to wear masks to protect themselves from COVID-19 with “Never. We need to follow the Constitution’s advice and KILL all TRAITORS!!! #JusticeforAmerica,” and earlier that year had accused Hollywood actor Jim Carrey of consuming adrenochrome from children, among a bunch of other QAnon shit.

We’re thinking the Dem winning by like 3 percent at most is the likeliest outcome in November.

PornHub has now disabled its website in Texas. Sites like PornHub are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children. We recently secured a major victory against PornHub and other sites that sought to block this law…

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) March 14, 2024

In a federal court hearing to determine whether a Florida man charged in the Republican-led January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress should be released pre-trial–he was–prosecutors disclosed they believe insurrectionists have formed a network of allies and safe houses where comrades sought by the FBI can hide and get supplies.

According to the Associated Press, recently arrested fugitive siblings Jonathan Pollock and Olivia Pollock were each caught in suspected “safehouse” ranch in Groveland, Florida:  Jonathan had been on the run for two years before being caught while Olivia was caught after 10 months.

Thomas Paul Osborne, the defendant in Thursday’s hearing, had been employed by a third sibling of the Pollocks, and he traveled to Washington with them for the January 6th rally/attack.  Osborne himself is suspected to have harbored a different insurrectionist wanted by the FBI, Proud Boy Christopher Worrell, for six weeks.  Prosecutors suspect Osborne and others are part of a network maintained by members of the Pollock family throughout Florida.  Osborne, however, will be under house arrest at his sister’s home in southcentral Pennsylvania.

“We should be up in arms, on our feet talking about the issues that every single kitchen table is talking about tonight,” South Carolina Republican auditioner Senator Tim Scott emotes earnestly into a ring light.

With tens of people heading to bleak places as polls open in Russia for 2024’s most useless election, National Zero predicts President Vladimir Putin will safely win his fifth term as President for Life of Russia, mainly because he has no serious opposition with a pulse.  Per the Associated Press, even though he’s got a faltering war in Ukraine, had his private mercenary army mutiny, and murdered a popular opposition leader in February, Putin will likely record that he took 65-75% of the vote over the three-day voting period. (Putin has allowed similar vote outcomes to be released in previous “elections.”)

Besides murdering Alexei Navalny, Putin banned two emerging opponents who were running on anti-war policies from appearing on the ballot, and they’re likely planning their exits from the country at this time.  Overall the Putin government has taken such a low-key approach to the election, one observer said it was “doing everything so that the people don’t notice the very fact of the election happening.”

“Of course, Democrats will call Republicans racists, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamaphobic, transphobic that want dirty air and water,” Fox host and Fred-Barney hybrid Sean Hannity lists.  “In other words, Democrats are using fear and division to mask what has been a terrible four years under Biden.  I repeat, they cannot run on ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’  This is all they have left.”

We ask this in all sincerity-ish:  Huh?  Four years ago this week, the United States passed the 100 death threshold in the coronavirus pandemic.  It was just the beginning of an era where Trump literally said he took no responsibility for the government’s poor response; a time when the next two monthly jobs reports would reflect 25 million out of work; where hospitals were fighting over portable morgues because of the overwhelming tragedy.  So fuck yes, Sean, we are better off than we were four years ago.

Trump-endorsed Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno is facing questions about an account found in a hacked data dump from an adult hook-up website that appears to show him seeking sex with other men, the Associated Press reports.

An account found in the data from Adult Friend Finder using a private email address long associated with Moreno for an account named “nardo19672” who was “looking for young guys to have fun with while traveling,” according to a profile in the “Men for 1-on-1 sex.”

Of course, Moreno–who is also endorsed by disgraced New York Republican former Congressman and Carnival dancer George Santos–is free to have sexual relations with any consenting adult he cares to, but of course he’s running as a staunch anti-LBGTQ zealot seeking to roll back more rights.

Fit My Feet does amazing work to make custom insoles. Just wait… I’m gonna be so fast! 👟 pic.twitter.com/RujfkjWPrc

— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) March 14, 2024

South Dakota Governor (by Opalescence) Kristi Noem is trying to saddle up to her aspirational ticket partner by apparently turning Boardwalk pitchman, selling out what little dignity the South Dakota’s governorship had.   After her teeth whitening fiasco, Noem now pitches a company that makes insoles for shoes, but unlike her dental benefactors, this company is actually from the state that pays her.

Preacher of the House Mike Johnson said on Thursday that he would bring a Ukraine assistance bill to the floor for a vote, which he expects will pass with Democratic support, a line in the sand for some far-right zealots that led to the ouster of his predecessor, Politico reports.

Johnson has said the Ukraine aid bill will be brought to a vote after the federal government funding bills get passed, but negotiations for funding the Department of Homeland Security have reportedly disintegrated, pushing Congressional leaders to consider a year-long stopgap funding measure that would effectively fund operations at the same level for the next twelve months, through the end of the fiscal year.

Two days after Republican South Dakota Governor and woman jealous of the attention Katie Britt is getting Kristi Noem faces legal issues over a fawning five-minute infomercial she filmed for a Texas cosmetic dentistry firm and questions about the legality of the appearance, CNN reports.

Noem’s social media post for Smile Texas raises questions about whether she was compensated for it or if she received treatment from the clinic in exchange for the endorsement.  A consumer advocacy group named Travelers United sued Noem claiming she made an “undisclosed advertisement,” something against state ethics laws.

“I love that my bite is better, that my teeth are a better shape, that they feel better in my mouth.  I can be confident when I smile at people and know that they can actually appreciate and see the kindness in my face and the love that I have for them,” Noem said in the spot.

MAGA Judge Aileen Cannon on Thursday apparently decided that completely dismissing 32 charges against fat former President Trump for stealing classified documents from the White House probably wasn’t going to fly with the public or the rest of the judicial system so she denied the motion and settled for more subtle ways to sabotage the government’s case against fat Donald.