BREAKING: Hunter Biden's phone contained multiple photos of cocaine, crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia, DOJ sayshttps://t.co/DvprWaXTAE

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 13, 2024

A school in the Miami-Dade County School District has come under fire when its attempt to comply with Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s snowflake-y law demanding explicit parental permission for their child to participate in a controversial lesson.  The lesson in this case?  According to NBC News, a “read aloud” of a book by an African-American author.

“Students will participate and listen to a book written by an African American,” the permission slip from a teacher at Coral Ray Elementary in Miami stated as the description of the activity.  The slip does not name the author, the book, or the subject of the event.

“My daughter didn’t even mention it to me. She didn’t want me to sign it because she thought it would be boring,” Charles Walter, a parent whose child received the slip, said, adding, “The idea that kids can have a say in what activities they participate in is really strange. And then the idea that some kids would be taken out of class, that just seems bizarre.”

Angela Chao, CEO of international shipping company Foremost Group and sister of former Trump Administration Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, was killed in a car accident last weekend under otherwise unclear circumstances, MarineLog.com reports citing a statement from Foremost.

You already know how this would go if we were like a right wing site: Angela Chao probably knew too much about something something with the ChiComs and she’s “RINO” Mitch McConnell’s sister-in-law and either he or Trump had her knocked off and blah blah blah. But since we’re not assholes and as far as we know Angela was simply a businesswoman, we’ll just express our condolences.

Upstate New York MAGA Congressman Brandon Williams was a dick, as usual with CNN’s Jim Sciutto, reminding the newsman that he is “a member of Congress” and has the right to make shit up.

Small dollar donors to President Trump’s political operations, many of them lower-middle class people hammered by inflation and gas prices over the last few years while they toil in depressing menial jobs or struggle to keep small businesses like auto garages and landscaping outfits afloat, have spent more than $40 million on shiny new luxury cars for the adult children of Donald’s many criminal and civil defense lawyers, according to FEC filings reviewed by Business Insider.

And not just new Maseratis, BMWs, Mercedes, or Bentleys, but also vacation packages to places that most Trump small-dollar donors have never even heard of, like they Seychelles, Maldives, French Polynesia, and Majorca, shoes from Balenciaga that cost like $2,300 but look like they were stolen off the feet of a homeless guy, spa treatments that use special mud that comes only from this one volcano in Indonesia so they have to ship it all the way here. All sorts of fancy stuff like that enjoyed by the families of Trump’s lawyers got paid for by the regular Joes out there in MAGAmerica who donated because they were shocked and horrified when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.

Anyway the Business Insider report does actually solve a mini-mystery for us we had pondered when the New York Times reported late last month that Trump’s PACs had spent more than $50 million in legal fees: The total was actually $52 million, with $12 million going to regular operations (still seems high, but whatever) and the rest thrown at his many self-inflicted legal problems.

In an overt public relations effort, the FBI released information to Politico about three terrorist attacks on US soil the Bureau says it eliminated thanks to information gleaned from a controversial section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the House is considering restricting.  One of the attacks was said to be “potentially imminent” prior to FBI action.

The House wants to require the FBI to get a warrant to obtain a warrant before it searches the electronic communications–including recordings, text messages and emails–of any foreign national for information on US citizens.  While a bipartisan group in Congress wants to change this part of the law, known as Section 702, the FBI says that being able to find information from foreign sources about Americans who may be working with terrorist groups should not be hampered by getting a warrant or court order for a foreigner’s records.

According to the information shown to Politico, FBI investigators identified a US resident by monitoring the communications of an overseas terrorist group.  The individual who made contact with the group was arrested within a month, after he collected the needed material to make an unspecified weapon and he created a “short list” of potential targets in the US.

The House GOP’s “Congressional Leadership Fund” PAC have hired multiple snow plowing companies to clear the roads around polling precincts in New York’s 3rd Congressional District during Tuesday’s special election, Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman reports on about a clear a sign as you can get of how badly Trump’s jihad against mail-in voting has fucked Republicans.

Dem elections geek Tom Bonier reports that turnout in Nassau County at 12:40 PM EDT was as low as 10 percent of 2022 election day, while early/mail-in voting numbers were just shy of 2022’s total early vote. This could be an absolute massacre and even dickhead MAGA influencer Joey Mannarino is already calling it for Dem Tom Suozzi, writing “This is a problem. We should ban early voting.”

Winter Storm Kitara’s steady downpour of slushy snow on the Northeast is increasingly being seen as sure to bring a significant impact on two votes key to the House GOP both inside in outside DC.

On Long Island, freelance local investigative journo Jacqueline Sweet reports that turnout in Tuesday’s New York 3rd special election between Dem former Congressman Tom Suozzi and MAGA Mazi Pilip is, per sources, “nothing”: An estimated quarter of the 2022 turnout in the Queens portion of the district, even lower in Nassau County. Accuweather forecasts the snow will abate by 3pm EDT after accumulating a total 2 to 4 inches, but warns “slushy areas and standing water will freeze” as the temperature drops after Kitara passes. Prooooobably not ideal for the candidate running with the party whose base are by and and large unremittingly hostile to early and mail-in voting.

In DC, CNN’s Manu Raju reports that Kitara is also throwing plans for a second shot at impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas into disarray, with Raju writing that it all “hinges on the potential absences in the chamber, per sources. Due to snow impacting regions of the US, and the fact that it’s a fly-in day, members in both parties could miss the vote – impacting the outcome.” Raju adds that leadership will hold a vote on another matter first to gauge absences, but if they can’t seal the deal on Tuesday then they may never, as a Suozzi victory will put them one vote shy of the circa 215 votes needed to impeach Mayorkas (if Suozzi can be sworn back in quickly).

Like The Weather Channel does of its own initiative for no discernible purpose whatsoever, National Zero’s editors refer to winter storms that hit the NYC area by non-canonical names of our own choosing – such as “Kitara.” Those Weather Channel assclowns are calling this one “Lorraine,” lol.

An annoying nesting doll of quote tweets on Tuesday requires us to copy and paste their text rather than embedding them, but it’s worth the mess as it turns into a shitposting fight between Picasso-faced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his state’s senior US Senator John Cornhole Cornyn.

“The senate just pulled an all nighter and officially passed their $95B foreign aid bill for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan with nothing for the southern border. The final vote was 70-29 with 22 Republicans voting yes,” tweeted assclown MAGA influencer Greg Price, listing Cornyn among the yes voters, adding “It’s the most US government thing ever that the senate worked all night long… to pass a bill funding war all over the world and passed it while most people are asleep.”

Minutes later, a different chode named Michael Quinn Sullivan quote-tweeted Price and wrote “While Texans slept, John Cornyn sent $95 billion to help other countries with their border problems. Question: when was the last time Cornyn stayed up all night fighting for our border?”

Then Paxton pasted that tweet with “This is a question all Texans should be asking. Unbelievable that John Cornyn would stay up all night to defend other countries borders, but not America.”

Finally the payoff: “Ken, your criminal defense lawyers are calling to suggest you spend less time pushing Russian propaganda and more time defending longstanding felony charges against you in Houston, as well as ongoing federal grand jury proceedings in San Antonio that will probably result in further criminal charges,” Cornhole Cornyn responded. And then all hell broke loose.

North Carolina MAGA Congressman Greg Murphy seems a little preemptively worried that calling TikTokers and Swifties overly emotional and irrational might not actually work, even as he projects confidence that Republican voters are the ones capable of controlling their impulses.

A transcript of former South Carolina Gov Nikki “Birdbrain” Haley’s Tuesday morning interview with syndicated AM radio host cock knob Hugh Hewitt is mostly pretty anodyne stuff about how Biden should resign, the next president will be a woman because it’ll either be Haley or Kamala Harris, blah blah blah. Hewitt – a Trump fanboy – for whatever reason is trying to stir shit, asking repeatedly about Donald mocking her husband, National Guard Major Mike Haley, and it’s only at the end did Nikki go into a rant about the fat Orange God Emperor’s weakness and sloth:

Emphasis ours on what was a pretty fucking snappy line. Nikki Haley sucks yet somehow she’s managing to pack a harder punch than Chris Christie ever did on the campaign trail. Maybe it’s just because it’s a “two-way” that makes it stick out more. Too little, too late, entertaining nonetheless.

Possibly realizing that it won’t end up being anything close the dramatic denouement he seeks, disgraced former President Trump has decided to skip going to the Thursday showdown in Fulton County, Georgia over the relationship between District Attorney Fani Willis and her deputy Nathan Wade as planned and will instead head to New York City to sit in on Judge Juan Merchan’s scheduling hearing to see whether the fat fuck will go on trial next month for paying porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in hush money over 45 seconds of sex, Lawfare’s Anna Bower reports.

#Bidenomics pic.twitter.com/yRp14tWQRq

— House Republicans (@HouseGOP) February 13, 2024

House Republicans, realizing that their Biden impeachment dumpster fire is steadily running out of fresh garbage to burn, are going to now shift to using that cocksucker Robert Hur’s final report to keep “questions about President Biden’s mental state in the spotlight,” Axios reports.

“Someone might ask [Hur] if Biden is unfit to lead,” a “House GOP leadership source” tells Axios about how a hearing is going to go. “Give him a chance to frame it.” Axios’s water carrying for their Republican patrons on Capitol Hill can only go so far, as the second half of their article is peppered with all the different ways this can and probably will go pretty badly for Team MAGA.

“Republicans could face hypocrisy blowback for this focus. In the federal documents case in Florida, Trump faces 32 felony counts related to unauthorized retention of national security secrets,” they write, deeply understating what it will actually look like when Jamie Raskin, Jasmine Crockett, Robert Garcia, Dan Goldman, Jared Moskowitz, Max Frost, and the rest of them have their five minutes in a televised hearing with Robert Hur – whose report explicitly states that fat former President Trump committed a crime when he stole classified documents from the White House.

Russian “law enforcement” on Tuesday issued arrest warrants for Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, State Secretary Taimar Peterkop, and Lithuanian Culture Minister Simonas Kairys for the crime of “desecration of historical memory” over the removals of Soviet-era World War II monuments in the aftermath of the Putin Regime’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine, Deutsche Welle reports.

“These are people who take hostile actions against historical memory and our country,” Kremlin spokesworm Dmitry Peskov told reporters. We’ll just leave the parallels between Russian right wingers butthurt over monuments to Soviet commies being removed and American right wingers butthurt over monuments to Confederate Democrats being removed up to our readers.

And that whole thing about Putin facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for actual crimes against humanity perpetrated against the civilian population of Ukraine.

“Tricky Nikki is CRASHING in the Polls. She is 15 points down to Crooked Joe Biden, and I’m crushing him in all Polls. She’s got no reason to make it to the South Carolina Primary. The other day, she had almost no people attend her ‘rally’ (We had thousands and thousands who couldn’t even get into the large arena), an embarrassment to her wonderful husband, in Africa. I think he should come back home to help save her dying campaign,” wrote fat former President Trump in an early Tuesday Truth Social post, evidently not really understanding that a military officer cannot simply abandon the troops under his command in a war zone to show up at campaign rallies, that men have been literally executed for such acts of dereliction of their duty in the not-too-distant past.

BREAKING: Senate on track to pass foreign aid bill without border security provisionshttps://t.co/CnxEkumVx8

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 13, 2024

A coalition representing tens of thousands of drivers for rideshare and delivery apps like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash says its members will refuse to work on Valentine’s Day as a protest for fair pay and better conditions for the contractors, Reuters reports.

With 100,000 members, the Justice For App Workers and other worker advocates say that new pay algorithms used by the companies have lowered net pay for drivers, who are all contactors and do not get paychecks or benefits.  “A year into algorithmic pricing, drivers have seen incredible decrease of our pay… whatever calculations and algorithms they’re using, it’s absolutely useless,” said the president of the California-based Rideshare Drivers United union, Nicole Moore.  Uber, for what it’s worth, claims their drivers made an average of $33 per “utilized hour.”

Once again, the leading Republican presidential candidate stated he would not honor America’s commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance–a statement that feeds uncertainty around the world, not just in Europe–and he’s also invited Russia to invade NATO member he feels hasn’t lived up to a financial obligation that doesn’t exist, a call perking up his buddy Vlad’s ears.  Donald Trump’s long-standing hatred of the defense alliance is clear, and its roots are set in simple manipulation and general ignorance.

Well into his second presidential campaign in 2016, Trump had little to say about NATO, which is, believe it or not, far more than Trump said before his infamous descent down an escalator in June 2015.  Despite putting himself out as a potential Reform Party candidate for the 2000 election, Trump hadn’t commented on the defense alliance in any manner noteworthy enough to be reported by any news outlet through 2014.