Coming off his State of The Union speech on Tuesday, President Joe Biden will make campaign stops in Philadelphia on Friday and Atlanta on Saturday to capitalize on whatever momentum he might have from the extremely important primetime address, Politico Playbook reports.

Thousands of Russians and foreign dignitaries have gathered Friday in and around an Orthodox in Moscow’s southeastern Maryino district, US Ambassador Lynne Tracy for a funeral service honoring murdered dissident Alexei Navalny, two weeks after his death at an Arctic gulag, Sky News reports.

Sky correspondent Diana Magnay says this is not at all what the Putin Regime wanted. “They didn’t want to see tens of thousands of people come out to pay their respects for Alexei Navalny, a man who they didn’t even show on their television screens, who they would like to suggest was simply a Western stooge,” said Magnay, adding the scene proves “thousands of people in this country – as we saw with all the demonstrations that [Navalny] held over the years – who do support him.”

This Donner Party is on! The AP reports that parts of the Sierra Nevada range of Northern California are looking at as much as 10 feet in accumulations of snow this weekend and that, per the National Weather Service in Reno the “safe travel window is over in the Sierra,” and “Best to hunker down where you are.” At least one Lake Tahoe-area ski resort is closed down because of too many flakes.

“This will be a legitimate blizzard,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain said Thursday. “Really true blizzard conditions with multiple feet of snow and very strong winds, the potential for power outages and the fact that roads probably aren’t going to be cleared as quickly or as effectively as they normally would be even during a significant winter storm.”

Trump advisor Sean Hannity gave his boss an hour-long ad on February 29th without any challenging questions or live fact checking–although it should be noted the video was filmed early in the day and edited by Fox “News” so they may have cut the most damning comments.  And we know you don’t want to watch the full hour, so here are the… highlights (?)… boiled down to 71 seconds.

Rambling on in fact-free bliss, Trump casually acknowledges that his trip to the border was a pre-planned stunt with Hannity’s team, arranged a month and a half ago, more evidence that Trump sabotaged a border deal to pump up his campaign while he battles civil and criminal charges.

During closed-door testimony Thursday, prolific tweeter but ineffective legislator Ohio Republican Congressman Jim Jordan tried to corner Hunter Biden with a Columbo-like “I’ve got one final question” at the end of a round.  Jordan demanded to know what the reference to “the Big Guy” was in a memo written by Joe Biden’s uncle about a proposed business deal, but Hunter brought the receipts.

I think that it was pie in the sky. Like Joe Biden’s out of the office. Maybe we’ll be able to get him involved. Remember, again, is that Joe Biden, for first time in 48 years, is not an elected official and is not seeking office.

And so James is probably, like, wow, wouldn’t be great if a former Vice President could be in our business together? And I say you’re out of your mind. My dad knows less about doing cross-border blah, blah, blah, than he does about — I mean, it’s just ridiculous. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

And so I shut it down, and the evidence of me shutting it down is the actual things you have as evidence. Remember that. The agreement, the executed agreement, the executed agreement to create a company that was never operated, that’s what happened. That’s the evidence you have. You have the evidence of the executed agreement between Hudson West Three, me, and Mr. Ye. You have that. Nothing to do with my dad, zero.

But perhaps the best interchange happened when Florida Man Matt Gaetz, who himself has been implicated in drug-fueled sex parties, but with underage prostitutes he allegedly paid using Venmo, questioned Hunter about drug use:

Disgraced former President Trump in Thursday told Sean Hannity that President Joe Biden had visited an area of the border “where the governor and myself have done a good job on, and essentially nobody is coming through. So you are not seeing it,” which would mean that the area that Trump and his Low Energy pal had done a bad job securing the border in Eagle Pass, right?

The fat bastard also bragged about acing a “very tough” cognitive tests that asked him to choose between pictures of a lion, a giraffe, a whale, and a shark to identify which one’s a lion. Then he called for a national abortion ban, even though he kind of isn’t supposed to be saying that.

Special Counsel Jack Smith proposed a July 8th start for Donald Trump’s Florida federal trial for allegedly illegally possessing classified documents, while Trump’s team submitted a schedule that would start the trial on August 12th, less than two months before the November presidential election.

The schedule will give the Supreme Court time to hear the April 22nd performance art piece where it will either reject the idea of absolute presidential immunity or it will destroy the Constitution.  Of course, the Department of Justice has an unofficial policy of not starting any public investigations that could impact politics within two months of an election, which could be considered depending on the length of trial; however, this is out of DOJ’s hands and completely controlled by the Court.

Congress speedily passed a short-term continuing resolution that won’t do much but pull the nation back from the financial cliff for another week, sending the measure to President Biden’s desk for signature, the Washington Post reports.

The CR passed the House by a 320-99 margin, with a bipartisan coalition overcoming far-right GOP objections, while the bill passed the Senate by a 77-13 margin a few hours later.  Under the CR, the March 1st funding deadline for several agencies (including the departments of Veterans Affairs, Transportation, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, and Housing and Urban Development as well as the Environmental Protection Agency) gets extended a week to March 8th.  A separate deadline for funding the rest of the government goes fro March 8th to March 22nd.

These continuing resolutions and Republicans’ inability to govern are two reasons the US credit rating was downgraded by agencies like Fitch and Moody’s.  As Moody’s put it last November:  “Continued political polarization within US Congress raises the risk that successive governments will not be able to reach consensus on a fiscal plan to slow the decline in debt affordability.”  In other words, Republicans, your performance art and incompetence are costing us money.

Republican Missouri gubernatorial candidate Darrell Leon McClanahan III’s lawsuit against the ADL and its head, Jonathan Greenblatt, says he’s a “pro-White man, horseman, politician, political prisoner-activist who is dedicated to traditional Christian values,” and saying he was anything more than an “honorary” member of the Ku Klux Klan is defamatory, the Riverfront Times reports.

The Maryland State House in Annapolis was put on lockdown Thursday evening and staff and guests were told to shelter in place after state capitol police received a call from someone saying they were armed and approaching the building, the Baltimore Banner reports.  A Banner reporter in the building during the lockdown was told there were reports of gunmen in the state house.  As of 6:15 p.m. ET, no intruder or gun had been found at the scene.  Staff were being evacuated by law enforcement officers as they search the building.  Should no intruder be found, this would be the latest in a series of swatting incidents hitting public officials and buildings.

UPDATE 7:08 p.m. ET:  The Maryland state house has been opened after it was cleared by local law enforcement.

Faced with unaffordable insurance rates, bigoted education policy, a science-denying state surgeon general, statewide homophobia, and Ron DeSantis, Floridians are anxious to ditch their property and move out of state, data from the real estate website Zillow shows.

According to Newsweek, nearly 5,000 listings of homes for sale in Florida show that the sellers are “motivated” to unload their houses, meaning they were willing to entertain offers lower than their stated asking price.  By comparison, in California (which has twice as many residents), just 1,069 characterized themselves as “motivated” as of Wednesday; in New York, that number dropped to 424.  Florida also had three times as many homes for sale according to data than California.

House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer and pals on Thursday released the transcript of the Wednesday interview with Hunter Biden, in which he told investigators that floating cutting Joe Biden in on one of the deals was actually the idea of former partner Tony Bobulinski.

The Alabama state house and senate pushed through legislation that protects medical professionals and patients seeking in vitro fertilization in response to the state’s supreme court criminalizing the disposal of unused embryos, Politico reports.

Responding to the outrage brought by the far-right court justices’ ruling two weeks ago that fertilized embryos are constitutionally protected citizens, the elected representatives sought to ensconce in law protections for individuals and clinics who provide IVF treatments, where eggs are fertilized outside the womb and frequently unused embryos are aborted if implanted or destroyed if stored.

The Alabama court ruling forced at least three of the state’s fertility clinics to suspend IVF treatment, and scores of women reportedly attempted to ship their frozen embryos out of state to continue treatment without the risk of being charged with manslaughter after they got pregnant.

Jack Teixeira, the Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of posting more than 100 pages of classified and confidential documents on a Discord server channel for gamers in 2022 and 2023, will reportedly plead guilty before a federal judge next week, CNN reports.  Prosecutors filed a change of plea notice with the court on Thursday, but did not specify what charged Teixeria will plead guilty to.  He had been charged with illegally possessing classified documents and one count of violating the Espionage Act.

Manuel Rocha, a former US ambassador to Bolivia for Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told a judge he will plead guilty on Thursday to working as an unregistered agent for the Cuban government for four decades, the Washington Post reports.  A State Department employee since 1981, Rocha was charged in December with working for the Cuban government.

The Justice Department asserts Rocha was a Cuban agent when he was hired by the State Department during the Reagan Administration and slowly rose though the ranks until he was named ambassador to Colombia, his native country.  Prosecutors says over that 40 year period, Rocha provided intelligence to his Cuban handlers, including visiting Havana on at least one occasion, in 2017.

Rocha was arrested after repeatedly meeting with an undercover FBI agent in 2022 and 2023, who told Rocha he was Rocha’s new contact for Cuba.  In numerous conversations with the agent, Rocha referred to former Cuban leader Fidel Castro as “Comandante” and called Cuban intelligence agents “Compañeros,” or comrades.

Fat former President Trump has been commanding his loyalists in the Senate GOP to support NRSC Chair Steve Daines as successor to Moscow Mitch McConnell next Congress, sources tell Axios.

First up sometime after 2 PM EST on Thursday is fat former President Trump, whose campaign wrote in a statement “Today, President Trump will visit the crime scene at Biden’s open border, where Joe Biden’s failure has resulted in more than 9 million illegal immigrants, 27 tons of deadly fentanyl, and dangerous criminals crossing the border since he took office. President Trump will meet with brave US Border Patrol agents and state and local law enforcement officials working on the frontlines of Biden’s crisis, and he will outline his plan to put America first and secure the border immediately upon taking office,” heralding this lame campaign stunt.

“Almost one month after the jury returned its verdict in this case, Defendant Donald J Trump filed yet another motion for a stay – this time, to stay enforcement of the judgment without a bond or any other security that would ensure that Plaintiff E Jean Carroll’s will be able to collect the $83.3 million that Trump now owes her. The reasoning Trump offers in seeking this extraordinary relief boils down to nothing more than ‘trust me.’ He doesn’t offer any information about his finances or the nature and location of his assets. He doesn’t specify what percentage of his assets are liquid or explain how Carroll might go about collecting. He doesn’t even acknowledge the risks that now accompany his financial situation, from a half billion-dollar judgment obtained by the New York Attorney General to the 91 felony charges that might end his career as a businessman permanently. He simply asks the Court to ‘trust me’ and offers, in a case with an $83.3 million judgment against him, the court filing equivalent of a paper napkin; signed by the least trustworthy of borrowers,” writes EJ Carroll’s lawyer Robbie Kaplan in her motion opposing fat Donald’s bid for a stay of the judgment.

A 50 year-old San Antonio man was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon Wednesday after shooting a landscaper multiple times for blowing leaves too close the man’s truck at an apartment complex on the city’s west side, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

Suspect Charles Martin had gotten into an argument with the landscaping crew over the direction of the leaf blowing and then went to complained at the complex’s front office. Per KENS5 this “was not handled to the suspect’s satisfaction,” leading to the shooting and the 35 year-old victim ending up hospitalized in critical condition. Martin was taken in without further incident.

Not having the victim’s name we can’t say this was racially motivated but it sure as fuck sounds like a disgruntled Texan with a gun blasting a migrant worker for simply doing his job.

High school dropout Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s 18 year-old son Tyler is one bad hombre according to a report by Westword.com on the charges he’s facing. A very bad hombre.

Documents allege Tyler’s crime spree included making a sex tape with a female minor and at least one other male who is/was also a minor, robbing a woman who suffers from a brain tumor of $75 cash, the only money she had “left to her name,” stealing credit and debit cards from cars parked at the Kum and Go (lol) in Rifle, Colorado – while wearing a “Shooters Grill” hoodie, and racking up hundreds of dollars in charges at the store as well as at Shein.com and other online retailers.

“I love my son Tyler, who has been through some very difficult, public challenges for a young man and the subject of attention that he didn’t ask for. It breaks my heart to see my child struggling and in this situation, especially when he has been provided multiple opportunities to get his life on track. I will never give up on him and I will continue to be there for him. As an adult and father, Tyler will take responsibility for his actions and should be held accountable for poor decisions just like any other citizen,” said Tyler’s QAnon fan mom in a statement. Her tweet declaring that “The Biden Crime Family will go down as the most corrupt political family in American history,” posted the same day as Tyler’s arrest, still hasn’t been taken down yet. Might as well just leave it up.