A New York appeals court on Thursday unsurprisingly rejected Ivanka Trump’s bid to pause the ongoing trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s $250 million lawsuit against her obese orange father’s deeply corrupt business empire because her upcoming testimony is scheduled “in the middle of a school week” which would cause “undue hardship,” the Messenger reports.

“Biden primary challenger” Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips’s first town hall meeting in New Hampshire was, to put it gently, a fucking disaster, with voters screaming at him when he failed to answer a simple question about an Israel-Gaza ceasefire and being accused of “gaslighting” the lone Black woman at the sparsely attended event, the Washington Post reports. The best part is how Phillips claims he’s going to do 119 town halls in the Granite State before the primary. Only 118 to go.

We’ve got a new book about Donald Trump out, this one by Jonathan Karl, and it’s certainly got some juicy bits to it.  In a summary in The Atlantic, Karl writes about a conversation he had with former Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon when Trump’s 2024 announcement site of Waco, Texas was announced.

Waco, of course, was the site of the April 19, 1993 fire at a cult compound which anti-government forces blame on federal agents attempting to serve warrants on David Koresh and other cult leaders.  Two years later, Timothy McVeigh chose the same date to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City.  In far-right anti-government circles, Waco means something.

And it’s something Steve Bannon understood.  “We’re the Trump Davidians,” Bannon told Karl with a chuckle when Karl inquired about the choice of site for the 2024 campaign introduction.  Trump’s 2020 campaign kick-off speech was on June 19th–Juneteenth–in Tulsa, the site of the worst massacre of Black citizens in US history.  Trump’s campaign kickoff sites have special meaning.

Republican Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita was reprimanded by the state’s Supreme Court for his remarks about an abortion doctor who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim who had to flee Ohio to get treatment, Reuters reports.

The court ruled that Rokita made a comment in a July 2022 Fox cable propaganda network that Dr. Caitlin Bernard was “an abortion activist acting as a doctor” after it was revealed that she performed the abortion on the girl, who had to seek an abortion in another state after doctors in Ohio were too afraid of legal repercussions after Republicans in the state passed an oppressive abortion ban.

Curiously, all five justices on the court wanted to punish Rokita, but the three-judge majority opted for a formal reprimand.  The other two would have opted for a more severe punishment.  Rokita released a statement claiming victory, saying the case was brought by “liberal activists” who “hate the fact that I stand up for liberty.”

A night after Republican colleagues orated a lengthy rebuke of Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville for wholesale blocking the promotion of executive and flag officers because of a Pentagon medical travel policy, the Senate took the hours needed to approve the promotions of three officers, including the heads of two branches of the Pentagon. According to the Washington Post, Admiral Lisa Franchetti will become the first woman to lead the Navy and join the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General David W. Allvin will take command of the Air Force.

But the one that should cost Tuberville his seat:  Lt. General Christopher J. Mahoney was promoted to four-star general and assigned to be the Vice-Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Corps’ No. 2 officer who will have to step in to the leadership role while Commandant Eric Smith recovers from a health issue likely brought on executing the two roles Mahoney will now be doing.

Thanks to “internet hooligan” Acyn, we have this wonderful edit of the shitshow happening on the House floor–not the Speaker shit show; that was last week–with monumental failure Marjorie Taylor Greene introducing a bill that would require the Department of Interior to preserve all statues and monuments on their grounds–Marge’s attempt to protect Confederate statutes honoring secessionist slaveholders.  Former flag-flying Trump-era Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke read a version of MTG’s bill that would only cover monuments to “the Founders,” but a Democrat noted the version of the bill being considered would cover “all monuments,” including those to secessionists.  (Did Marge intentionally circulate an old version?  Sounds like something she would do.). Marge herself finally makes an appearance, praising Col. Robert E. Lee.  And yes, he is Col. Lee, as was his final rank in the US Army, which is the only rank that should be honored on the floor of the Capitol.

“No court in American history has imposed a gag order on a criminal defendant who is actively campaigning for public office – let alone the leading candidate for President of the United States. That centuries-long practice was broken on October 17, 2023, when the district court entered its Opinion and Order, A1 (the ‘Gag Order’), muzzling President Trump’s core political speech during an historic Presidential campaign. Given the Gag Order’s extraordinary nature, one would expect an extraordinary justification for it. Yet none exists. President Trump has made months of public statements about this case, but the Department of Justice (‘the prosecution’) submitted no evidence of any actual or imminent threat to the administration of justice.”

“Instead, when asked about the supposed threat to the case, the prosecution admitted, ‘of course this prejudice is speculative.’ Based this speculation, the district court entered a sweeping, viewpoint-based prior restraint on the core political speech of a major Presidential candidate, based solely on an unconstitutional ‘heckler’s veto.’ The Gag Order violates the First Amendment rights of President Trump and over 100 million Americans who listen to him,” write disgraced former President Trump’s lawyers in their “emergency” appeal to the DC Circuit to lift the gag order.

Love the violating “the First Amendment rights of” the “over 100 million Americans who listen to him,” part, which neatly puts that “They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you. I’m just standing in the way” line of Nazi bullshit neatly fit into what’s supposed to be a federal appeal.

Sam Bankman-Fried, the head of the FTX crypto-currency exchange, was convicted of all seven fraud and conspiracy charges related to his failed crypto exchange, the New York Times reports.  He now faces up to 110 years in prison, if sentenced to the max on all counts,

Federal prosecutors are investigating if New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s 2021 campaign took illegal contributions from the Turkish government for who the hell knows what reason, the New York Times reports following a Thursday FBI raid on Adams’s top fundraiser Brianna Suggs.

The judge in the disbarment hearing for John Eastman, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers and a co-conspirator in the Fulton County racketeering case, has made a “preliminary finding of culpability” for eleven separate charges relating to his effort to have then-Vice President Mike Pence throw out slates of electors on January 6th to re-install Donald Trump illegally into the Oval Office, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports.  Yvette Roland, a judge in California State Bar Court, will now hear “aggravation” testimony to determine the suitable punishment.

Former Trump White House official Ivanka Trump on Thursday asked a New York appeals court to pause the ongoing trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James’s $250 million lawsuit against her obese orange father’s deeply corrupt business empire because her upcoming testimony is scheduled “in the middle of a school week” which would cause “undue hardship,” CNBC reports.

Ivanka did not elaborate on why she simply couldn’t just hire a babysitter considering she was already pretty wealthy before her husband scored a $2 billion payday from the Saudi royal family.

The newly-hired North Dakota Republican Party Executive Director Dave Roetman is now the newly-fired North Dakota Republican Party Executive Director after just 10 days on the job after the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead started asking Chair Sandi Sanford why the fuck she would take on an asshole who wrote shit like Black people “should move to Wakanda,” replying “I’d eat there” to an article about a restaurant that had a whites males-only hiring policy, “Here’s a quarter, keep it between your knees” to a woman asking for relationship advice, and other MAGA-type stuff.

Trump: They want to build just low-income—everyone’s gonna build low-income housing. At some point, or senior citizen. At some point, though, people have to, like, work and create things, you know, not just places to stay pic.twitter.com/iguqyb0len

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) November 2, 2023

“Having considered the parties’ briefs identifying certain jury procedures that both parties have agreed upon, and for good cause shown, the Court orders as follows: 1. The Court will use a written questionnaire in advance of in-person jury selection. The Government will prepare a written questionnaire for distribution to prospective jurors and meet and confer with defense counsel regarding the questionnaire before submitting it for Court approval on January 9, 2024.”

“To the extent the parties do not agree on any question, the Government, at the time it submits the proposed questionnaire, shall also submit a joint filing identifying the disputed language and succinctly stating the parties’ respective positions. After review and approval by the Court, the questionnaire will be distributed to prospective jurors summoned to complete it at the courthouse on February 9, 2024,” wrote DC Circuit Court Judge Tanya Chutkan in a Thursday order making it very clear she is not screwing around when it comes to starting the trial on time in early March.

Fox News host Jesse Watters was abruptly “on a pre-planned vacation” Thursday, a day after he went on a deranged rant about Arab Americans saying he’s “had it” with them over reactions to the Israel-Gaza conflict, a mid-week absence that’s unlikely to be a coincidence.

New Jersey Dem Congressman Rob Menendez on Thursday put out a statement explaining why he voted against expelling lying piece of shit Long Island Republican Congressman George Santos over the dozens of federal felony charges Santos currently faces, writing “Last night, I joined over 30 of my House Democratic colleagues to prevent what we believe would be a bad precedent for this institution. In the history of our country, only five Members of Congress have been expelled, three for joining the Confederacy, two after being convicted of serious crimes. A decision of this magnitude must not be based on our opinions about the suitability of a colleague or their politics.”

“Instead, it must be based on facts and the final determinations of any ongoing legal proceedings or investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Without these critical steps completed, we must trust in the voters who elect Members of Congress to make their own decisions about who will represent them in Washington. With all the challenges we are facing both domestically and abroad, we must return to the important work of the American people, and I look forward to doing so,” he continued.

We just looked into it and it turns out there’s another Democrat named Menendez from New Jersey currently serving in Congress. He works in the other chamber, the Senate. And *checks notes* that guy’s also facing trial for federal felonies in- Oh shit! He’s actually Rob Menendez’s dad! Wow! That’s freaking funny. Weird how Rob didn’t mention his dad in this one though. All he said was the decision “must be based on facts and the final determinations of any ongoing legal proceedings.” Oh well.

You can tell the fat bastard is really freaked out if he’s sounding the CARAVANS alarm again. Maybe it’s his idiot sons testimony in New York, maybe it’s something else. Must be good either way.

A Connecticut judge on Wednesday ordered a new Dem primary election in the Bridgeport mayoral race after candidate John Gomes brought forth some pretty credible and damning evidence of ballot box stuffing to rig the September 12th primary for Dem incumbent Joe Ganim, the AP reports.

Confusingly, the re-do primary election is scheduled for after next week’s general election – in which Gomes is also on the ballot as an independent. How that’s actually supposed to work in practice we have no idea, though Gomes’s lawyer proposed to the judge the re-do would only be necessary if Ganim won the general. What would happen next is again a black box as we don’t know if that primary winner is then the mayor or if there’s another general election.

The specifics don’t really matter however since the MAGA chodes already had all the “facts” they needed in the “surveillance videos show possible ballot stuffing” part of the AP’s headline. It’s been a while since we had any fresh stories of election fraud in local contests that the 2020 truthers could use to “prove” their fantasies of a massive conspiracy to steal the presidency from their Orange Overlord. The stuff they had was getting pretty stale, but now this Bridgeport shitshow hits all too close to the narrative in Dinesh D’Souza’s widely-derided “2000 Mules” in which he claimed that five weeks’ worth of cellular GPS tracking data proved that “traffickers” were dumping massive quantities of ballots into drop boxes in the Atlanta area in the run-up to the 2020 election.

https://twitter.com/MrSantosNY/status/1720114231490576653

House Republicans are finally getting ready to grab their balls and subpoena Hunter Biden after 10 months of overpromising and underdelivering for their fans, the Messenger reports.