British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Thursday told reporters his Conservative Party would prefer a little more time before they get fucking destroyed for their years of misrule and will likely hold the next general election in the fall rather than the spring, the BBC reports.

“I want to keep going, managing the economy well and cutting people’s taxes But I also want to keep tackling illegal migration,” said Sunak said. “So I’ve got lots to get on with and I’m determined to keep delivering for the British people.” The deadline for a general election is January 2025.

After being shown the flabbergasting clip of Preacher of the House Mike Johnson and his “cronies” on a field trip to the border, claiming he’s spoken to Border Patrol agents who told him they don’t want $14 billion in manpower and equipment, as the Biden Administration proposed, Democratic Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett’s eyes display her shock at Johnson’s unrealistic claim that what the officers want is only policy change.  After pointing out that many of the Border Patrol agents are being pulled away from their families to placate conservative furor, Crockett countered Johnson:  “I will disagree and say that they need the funding, but I will also agree that there needs to be policy changes as well.  It’s not about doing one or the other.  It’s about doing both.”  That, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea, is how you undercut the performance art of the House Republican Conference.

With the campaigns of Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis pulling ads because of campaign finance crunches, Donald Trump has started to pick up the bargain basement ad campaign time in New Hampshire airing ads attacking Nikki Haley as the former South Carolina governor’s popularity starts to rise, NBC News reports.

Trump’s ads focus on Haley’s immigration position which isn’t that far from Trump’s–but the ads allow Trump to highlight the epidermal similarities to between Haley and the migrants he’s demonizing.  Given that Trump’s current support is polling around twice that of Haley’s and has been consistent, the campaign obviously wants to knock down any momentum Haley might gain.

Ron DeSantis’s hand-picked Surgeon General for Florida Joseph Ladapo called for the halt of the use of the mRNA coronavirus vaccine, saying there’s evidence that the vaccine alters human DNA, the Washington Post reports.  In fact, there is no such evidence and the trials of the vaccine show it to be safe.

An immigrant of Nigeria, Ladapo was imported from California to serve as Florida’s attorney general after making a name for himself by making unsubstantiated, outrageous claims, first about the coronavirus and then about gender-affirming care.  The promotion of vaccine hesitancy at this moment may be an attempt to promote DeSantis’s anti-vaccine status, given that 55% of Republicans have expressed skepticism about coronavirus vaccines.

In National Zero’s earlier report on the newly-released Epstein papers, we stated based on USA Today’s report that none of the four people named in the headline–Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Alan Dershowitz or Prince Andrew–were “accused of any wrongdoing.”  Well, turns out that was wrong…. so very, very wrong.

Beginning on page 174 of the released documents, a scene is laid out in which Derschowitz is accused of assault by “Jane Doe 3,” one of Epstein’s trafficking victims, who alleged Epstein forced her to have sex with Dershowitz.  Instead of this being an unfortunately common case that gets dismissed as a “he said/she said”  disagreement, the victim had other witnesses, including statements by Epstein’s household staff that Dershowitz was frequently at Epstein’s mansion alone with young girls, as well as invocations of the Fifth Amendment by Epstein and three of his indicted co-conspirators when asked if they knew of Dershowitz’s involvement with young girls.

In eight separate states in both so-called “Red” and “Blue” states on Wednesday, people were forced to evacuate the state capitol or take other actions after receiving bomb threats, Newsweek reports.  (Note the Newsweek story lists seven; as we were writing this story, the Chicago Tribune reported the eighth bomb threat today.)  No evidence of any explosive devices was found at the sites.

Officials said the state capitols in Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Hawaii and Illinois all reported bomb threats during the business day, causing the buildings to be evacuated and searched.

Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and England’s Prince Andrew are all among the names in the first batch of court papers relating to child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, whom Trump called “a terrific guy,” USA Today reports, noting that the documents reviewed do not accuse the people mentioned of wrongdoing.  [Edit 8:30 p.m.:  USA Today was very wrong in Alan Deschowitz’s case.]

Clinton’s name was mentioned in multiple sections because of questions about the credibility of a witness who claimed to have seen Clinton with Epstein on Epstein’s infamous private island, something that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s partner and criminal cohort, said never happened.

Trump is referred to when someone quotes Epstein saying he invited Trump to a casino; in another section, a witness–potentially a sex trafficking victim–was asked if she was ever asked to have sex with Trump, something she denied.

Saying Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbot overstepped his authority, the US Department of Justice sued Texas over its recently passed SB4, a law that broadens state and local law enforcement officers’ and courts’ authority to enforce immigration law, Reuters reports.

The Texas version of Arizona’s overturned “show us your papers” law gives allows state, county and local law enforcement the ability to detain and question people they suspect of being undocumented migrants, and it empowers some state and local courts with the authority to adjudicate cases involving people who are in the country illegally, with the authority to order deportations, threaten to turn the individual over to federal authorities, or in some cases, imprison someone for up to 20 years.  Constitutionally, the federal government handles international migration.

Republican Daniel Cameron, the GOP’s losing candidate in the last Kentucky gubernatorial election, proudly announced that he is going to lead a conservative anti-woke coalition called 1792 Exchange, NBC News reports.  The anti-woke coalition says that Cameron, Kentucky’s first African-American Attorney General, is the perfect fit to be the face of a group fighting wokeness.

Nathan Estruth, the 1792 Exchange founder who is not an African-American, said in a press release, “I simply cannot imagine a more capable and qualified chief executive to help us safeguard free exercise, free speech, and free enterprise.” Paul Fitzpatrick, the President of the 1792 Exchange who is also not an African-American commented, “We just getting started.”  The group did not comment on other candidates it considered for the position that apparently did not exist before hiring Cameron.

Tapper: I’m sure border patrol agents want funding for the next month

Johnson: No actually they don’t

Tapper: They don’t want the $14 billion?

Johnson: No pic.twitter.com/NZ6g7QVJV2

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) January 3, 2024

The Orange Caesar hath cast his die with the nine black-robed conjurers in the stone palace for a proclamation on his quest to cross the Rubicon and rule with awful bloody vengeance.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday tossed disgraced former President Trump’s bid for a full bench review of his bullshit “presidential immunity” claim to dodge the damages-only trial he’s facing in rape victim EJ Carroll’s long-running federal defamation lawsuit against him, set to kick off on January 15th if the Supreme Court doesn’t halt it, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports.

A brief recap in case this is all confusing as shit: Last May a federal trial jury found in favor of Carroll’s claim that Trump had defamed and sexually abused her – with the judge later also finding that Trump had committed rape. The trial took place in federal court but was tried under New York State law, so for all intents and purposes it was still a state-level civil case. This upcoming one, to be tried in front of the same judge, Lewis Kaplan, is strictly a federal one hence the federal appeals process. It’s also damages-only, as Kaplan in September ruled that all of Carroll’s claims had been proven factually, so the jury will be seated for the sole purpose of determining damages.

…if the Supreme Court denies Trump certiorari. Which they probably will.

Asked Wednesday by Fox News anchor Martha McSomething to confirm or deny the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman’s recent reporting indicating that fat former President Trump is concerned that the US Supreme Court will ultimately fuck him over and let states disqualify him under the 14th Amendment, temporary Melania Trump and sort of lawyer Alina Habba violated attorney client privilege and told Martha McWhatever that Donald is indeed worried the justices, his appointees included, will try “so hard to look neutral” and thus “make the wrong call.”

Police officials in Denver on Tuesday confirmed that the crazy asshole who shot his way into the building housing the Colorado Supreme Court the previous night – an incident which certain shitty politics websites like The Hill pretty much outright falsely implied in their headlines was connected to recent threats against the court for disqualifying fat former President Trump from the 2024 ballot – was just that, a crazy asshole drug addict who was armed while driving from Arizona on his way to see his ex-wife and kids uninvited, the Denver Post reports, with quotes from the man’s ex-wife.

Tori Schumacher told the Post that her ex, 44 year-old Brandon Olsen, has “no affiliation politically whatsoever,” and that “We’re just really sad this has happened to Brandon and that he hasn’t gotten the mental health help that he clearly needs. We’re hoping for the best for him… He’s a really loving, good guy, just had a mental breakdown. Drugs will do that to you.” So does MAGA, but we digress.

Horry County, South Carolina court records obtained by Palmetto State site FITS News (which still has ‘Murdaughs‘ as the left-most item on its top navigation bar), show that state Republican Party political director Braylee Estep, 22, was cuffed late Tuesday on charges of third degree assault and battery by mob, with unconfirmed reports indicating the arrest was connected to a brawl that happened last month at her mom Michele Stalvey Estep’s bar in the town of Conway.

“Her mom got into a fight – Braylee and another bar worker defended her mom – police were called and statements were taken,” a source told FITS. It’s not clear if the charges were definitely directly connected to the fight or maybe some retaliatory attack afterward, though FITS says Estep drove to the Conway Police Department and turned herself in before being bonded out Wednesday.

Woohoo! You overcame her sorceries! https://t.co/3boMjMh6vy pic.twitter.com/NT9TeBW4ks

— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) January 3, 2024

Alright! Sound of Freedom sold about $5 million in more tickets domestically in 2023 than Taylor Swift’s concert film! Take that, you evil sorceress! Fuck yeah!

Tee-hee-hee… Congresswoman Lauren Boebert grabbed Johnson’s endorsement for her run in Colorado’s 4th District and she switched from the… Pfffft… Hee-hee-hee, the Messenger reports.

The chairman of the Travis County, Texas GOP on Wednesday broke the news to “election integrity” fanboys that they’re scrapping their plan to hand-count all ballots in the March 5th primary, saying the party has the money and manpower to do it for the mail-in ballots only, KXAN reports.

“WHAT?! What the hell is this? This stern and icy robot lady is suddenly going to act like a journalist here? THIS IS FUCKING FOX NEWS! Why is she actually challenging me on this? Somebody press her pause button! I don’t like this anymore!” said Nikki “Nimrata” Haley’s brain on Wednesday as she faced the unpleasant visage of Fox’s Harris Faulkner interrupting Haley’s damage control schtick.

Raw Story fucking sucks, particularly with their staple of “take”-based reporting like “Deeply flawed’ MAGA complaints about Trump disqualification shredded by law professor” and “‘Not so fast’: Watergate prosecutor warns Supreme Court is going to hand Trump a shock,” headlines that might as well say “Hey libtards! Here’s some smart guy on MSNBC saying what you want to hear!”

Having qualified doing more or less exactly the same thing, we want to flag this piece by the Daily Beast’s very solid legal correspondent Jose Pagliery, titled “Jack Smith Keeps Telegraphing Some Seriously Scandalous Trump Crimes.” Pagliery tiptoes into and around how Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s filings keep bringing up certain crimes like treason and bribery as examples of situations – such as ordering “the FBI Director to plant incriminating evidence on a political enemy,” ordering “the National Guard to murder his most prominent critics,” selling “nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary,” etc – in which Trump should not be entitled to immunity.

So specific is Smith in these filings that Pagliery and other observers can’t help but sense might be hinting at more shit that actually happened, certain episodes that Smith has evidence and testimony supporting but for whatever reasons like time, bandwidth, evidentiary, and/or manpower limitations he hasn’t tried to develop additional cases against the fat orange fuck… at this point.

Big if true, and bigger still if it ends up meaning anything in the middle term of this year before the election is anybody’s guess. There’s no doubt Smith knows of much more than has already been alleged and there’s no doubt the trial will prove very ugly for Donald. Already just last month Smith revealed he has text messages indicating a previously unreported instance of Trump trying to start a riot at the TCF center in Detroit as votes were being counted on November 4th, 2020, which is pretty damning and could’ve been charged separately unto itself. The only real question is how much further down the iceberg is Smith going to go with the evidence at the trial?