The Florida Republican Party dealt a blow to its titular leader Governor Ron DeSantis:  it’s dropping its requirement mandating candidates that appear on its presidential primary ballot support the person who ultimately wins the nomination, a move supported by indicted golf club landlord Donald Trump NBC News reports.

The loyalty pledge was something brought up in 2016 to ensure that Donald Trump would not run as a third-party candidate he had lost the primaries; Trump refused to take the pledge then and he’s refused to taking it again this year, forcing the GOP to back down once again.

“Now they want to go to all-electric cars.  They don’t go far.  They cost a lot of money.  They got a little, they got some basic problems.  They very expensive and they don’t go far.  I think they want to keep you somewhere around your home.  They don’t wanna build highways or sumthin’.  They got some crazy plan.  They always have something,” Donald Trump muses like a stand-up comic who forgets the segue to his next bit.  “You know, they wanna build, I don’t know if you know, all-electric army tanks.  We have these army tanks–no, I just, ah, saw this, ahhh, yesterday.  They wanna build all-electric army tanks.  The army tanks, the greatest tanks, the Sherman tank, the greatest tanks in the world we build.  So now when we go in to obliterate a country with our army tanks, at least we won’t pollute it with the pollutants pouring out of the bank of the tank.”

Well, besides referring to the Sherman tank, which the US hasn’t used since 1957, as the greatest tank in the world–thereby proving most definitely that Trump did, obviously, rebuild the military because he knows more than the generals–Trump fucked up again.  He’s apparently referring to a Rand Corp report released in August which noted that the military is expanding its fleet of electric vehicles to use for support and non-combat functions; the report specifically states the military is not pursuing electric tanks.  But again: … more than the generals.

The number of people confirmed killed in the Maui wildfires was lowered from 115 to 97 as officials received DNA results from remains found at the scene confirmed some samples came from the same victims while others were animal remains accidentally collected, the Associated Press reports.  Hawaiian officials also announced the number of missing–which sat at more than 1,000 just three weeks ago–was lowered from 41 to 31.

Of the deceased, 74 have been positively identified. Officials said the downward revision was caused by a number of factors, including the chaos in the immediate aftermath of the fire.  Other remains may have been moved from their original locations as searchers looked for survivors, with responders unknowingly kicking the remains, which were found in subsequent searches.  Some of the remains tested turned out to be animal bones.

President Joe Biden will propose new rules protecting career civil servants in the federal government targeted for dismissal by now-indicted felon Donald Trump who characterized them as soldiers of the Deep State working against MAGA aspirations, the Washington Post reports.

In his last days in office, Trump signed Schedule F, which allowed wider justification for dismissing career non-partisan federal employees; Trump and conservatives claimed these civil servants were Deep State operatives hellbent on blocking Trump’s agenda, even though these people’s jobs are to implement the policy without regard to whoever is in the White House.

“The reason we put a nonpartisan civil service in place 140 years ago was so that the American people could trust that their government worked for them, irrespective of which party was in power,” Jason Miller, the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, said in an interview. “This action is about strengthening that foundation so that the people doing the work on behalf of the federal government from administration to administration are dedicated, are capable and are nonpartisan.”

“Biden Prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, has asked the Court to limit 45th President, and leading Republican Nominee (by more than 50 points, & beating Dems!) DONALD J TRUMP’S, PUBLIC STATEMENTS. So, I’m campaigning for President against an incompetent person who has WEAPONIZED the DOJ & FBI to go after his Political Opponent, & I am not allowed to COMMENT? They Leak, Lie, & Sue, & they won’t allow me to SPEAK? How else would I explain that Jack Smith is DERANGED, or Crooked Joe is INCOMPETENT?” wrote fat former President Trump on Truth Social after Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith asked DC Judge Tanya Chutkan to slap Donald with a “narrowly tailored” order imposing “modest, permissible restrictions on prejudicial extrajudicial conduct” by the fat orange defendant. Specifically trying to intimidate people on Truth Social.

Or calling them “deranged” like Trump literally just did to Smith. Twice. On Truth Social.

In an op-ed printed by the Washington Post on Friday, impeachment-skeptic Colorado Republican Congressman Ken Buck continues doubling down on his “this is bullshit” stance on going after Biden.

“Republicans in the House who are itching for an impeachment are relying on an imagined history. Their inquiry, formally announced by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif) on Tuesday, rests heavily on a fictitious version of Shokin’s career, with the alleged investigation of Burisma at the center. It’s a neat story, and one that performs well in certain media circles. But impeachment is a serious matter and should have a foundation of rock-solid facts,” Buck writes, as if this was news.

Still unfortunately necessary for him to openly acknowledge reality in defiance of the MAGA media machine’s ceaseless propaganda effort to revive something that was debunked four years ago.

As for the overall math of this impeachment inquiry vote, whenever McCarthy grabs his balls and tries to make it happen, it’s not just that he doesn’t have enough Republican votes – he might simply just not have enough Republicans at all when the time comes, literally. Utah Congressman Chris Stewart officially resigned on Friday and his seat won’t be filled until a special election in November. Dan Crenshaw is soon to be out on paternity leave, psycho Anna Paulina Luna is already out on maternity leave. Oklahoma Congressman Frank Lucas is sick. So is Steve Scalise, but he’s in and out. George Santos could get forced to resign in a plea deal any day now. This is with a five seat margin.

Yes, on the Dem side Alaska Congresswoman Mary Peltola’s husband was killed in a plane crash and there could be a few others out for whatever reasons they have. Either way, it’s going to be very close and Ken Buck and however many other reluctant Republicans there might be are not helping.

In a filing titled ominously “Government’s Opposed Motion To Ensure That Extrajudicial Statements Do Nor Prejudice These Proceedings,” Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team, after listing an absolute shit ton of angry, menacing posts and statements by fat former President Trump, request that DC Judge Tanya Chutkan “protect the due administration of justice in these proceedings and ensure the impartiality of the venire, the Government proposes two narrowly tailored orders that impose modest, permissible restrictions on prejudicial extrajudicial conduct by the parties and counsel,” and man, Trump is going to absolutely lose his shit over this one.

The first request is for a special order prohibiting “(a) statements regarding the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses; and (b) statements about any party, witness, attorney, court personnel, or potential jurors that are disparaging and inflammatory, or intimidating” and the second being a requirement that Trump’s team notify the court and the special counsel’s office that they’re conducting any sort of survey of local potential jurors. “The Government respectfully requests that the Court set forth a process to review efforts by either party to engage in contacts with members of the jury venire in this District undertaken for the purpose of discussing case-specific facts, including any pretrial survey, poll, focus group, or similar study,” Smith’s team wrote.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, the rebel warlord who turned against his own people and swore loyalty to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and sent his men to brutalize Ukrainian citizens in occupied territories, is deathly ill, the Daily Beast reports citing Ukrainian intel officials.

“The information is confirmed by various sources in the medical and political circles,” Ukrainian military intel spokesman Andriy Yusov told Obozrevatel, which first reported the news. “There is information that the war criminal Kadyrov is in a serious condition and the diseases that were there have worsened and caused such a serious condition,” Yusov continued, adding “It is not about injuries. Other details require additional clarification. He has been ill for a long time, and we are talking about systemic health problems. For the last few days, he has been in a serious condition.”

That Kadyrov is not in good health isn’t exactly a shock considering his appearance at a meeting in March left his lieutenants aghast at his bloated, pink visage. “People are attributing various diseases to me: Sometimes I have problems with my kidneys, sometimes with the liver. And they come up to me with different treatments, as if they know my medical history. I even began to have doubts and underwent medical tests, maybe I really am sick,” Kadyrov had said at the time.

“On May 12, 2023, Special Counsel John H Durham submitted his Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns (‘Durham Report’). Plaintiff and his lawyers tout the Report as ‘newly discovered evidence’ and they now ask me to reconsider my previous rulings. But far from ‘seismically alter[ing] the legal landscape of this case’, the Durham Report changes nothing. Nor could it really. Even if the Durham Report uncovered the sort of vast conspiracy alleged by Plaintiff (it plainly did not), it would not change the many legal conclusions I made in the Order dismissing Plaintiff’s lawsuit. And whatever the Durham Report can be said to have uncovered, for purposes of this case, it does not change my findings that Movants acted in bad faith in bringing this lawsuit and that this case exemplifies Mr Trump’s history of abusing the judicial process. Therefore, for the reasons set forth below, Plaintiff and his lawyers’ Motion for Indicative Ruling Based Upon New Evidence is denied,” writes Florida federal Judge Donald Middlebrooks in a ruling dismissing disgraced former President Trump’s attempt to wiggle out of sanctions Middlebrooks slapped him and his idiot lawyers with in the incredibly stupid Trump v Clinton et al 2016 election lawsuit that Middlebrooks tossed last year.

A new survey by German broadcaster RBB finds support for the far right and pro-Trump Alternative for Germany Party (AfD) rising above 30 percent for the first time in the Brandenburg region, a state completely surrounding the capital city of Berlin, a worrying sign for centrists going into the September 2024 regional elections, the Times of London reports on the right marching vorwarts.

Shana Tova! Happy New Year! pic.twitter.com/K140u39OJI

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 15, 2023

During the secret battle between Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team and LSD-brained edgelord Twitter owner Elon Musk over a search warrant for disgraced former President Trump’s account, for which Twitter ended up paying a $350,000 fine over Musk purposely dragging his feet on to “cozy up with the former president,” Smith’s team warned DC Circuit Court Judge Beryl Howell that if the deranged ex-president was made aware, he “could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago,” referencing the August 2022 MAGA terrorist attack on the FBI’s Cincinnati field office, Politico reports.

“The former President’s obstructive efforts continue unabated with respect to this investigation here, in which he has determined to pay the legal fees of potential witnesses against him and repeatedly disparaged the lead prosecutor on his Truth Social platform… This pattern of obstructive conduct amply supports the district court’s conclusion that the former President presents a significant risk of tampering with evidence, seeking to influence or intimidate potential witnesses, and ‘otherwise seriously jeopardizing’ the Government’s ongoing investigations,” Smith’s team wrote.

Not much more than the specific warning about violence is new in the reporting, much of it already picked up last month by Politico and CNN. They do mention that they were able to obtain 32 direct messages from the account, though nothing about the contents or if they were of any use.

Sources tell Semafor that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is still campaigning for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination despite voters having largely forgotten it was still happening at this point.

“I fought against Fauci when he was popular,” DeSantis said during a Thursday interview with former Fox News journalist Megyn Kelly in which he was introduced as a presidential candidate. “It’s easy for Republicans to ding him now because he’s unpopular with the broader electorate. Back then, Donald Trump used to cite Fauci’s poll numbers as a reason why Fauci was somebody that should be listened to,” DeSantis continued, referring to the former president and all-but-certain nominee.

Other reports indicate that DeSantis’s recent visits to the state of Iowa are for the purposes of securing support for the still-ongoing presidential campaign, rather than simply engaging in sometimes awkward conversations with residents about certain subjects related to politics at county fairs and other public gatherings in the state in which presidential candidates often appear.

Shitty British tabloid Daily Mail, a trashy, malware-clogged outlet that we don’t typically want to rely on but whose coverage at least slightly more often than not seems to pan out, reports that the long-dormant rumors of an affair between South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and scumbag Trump minion Corey Lewandowski have been validated by accounts of a secret meetup in Rapid City, South Dakota while both were in town for disgraced former President Trump’s MAGA cult rally.

Claiming their investigation “has uncovered extensive evidence of the couple’s romantic relationship: Dozens of trips that mixed business with pleasure, flights on donors’ private planes, and stays at luxury resorts where their intimacy was observed and noted,” the Mail also sources from multiple MAGA/GOP operatives and even a gubernatorial aide in Pierre. “We often had no idea where she was, or even if she was in state or out of state, she would simply disappear,” the aide said of multiple trips coinciding with what other sources said were meetups with Lewandowski.

The circumstantial evidence they put together is pretty good, if it still falls just a little bit short of a smoking gun. Or a pic of Noem with her hand down Lewandowski’s pants. Whatever.

Struggling with Bidenflation as the ruble continues to plummet against the dollar, the Central Bank of Russia on Friday raised its core interest rate another 0.25 percent to a total of 13 percent, once again showing how Russians traded mean tweets for higher beet prices, the AP reports.

“[Biden]flationary pressure in the Russian economy remains high. Significant pro-[Biden]nflationary risks have crystallized, namely the domestic demand growth outpacing the output expansion capacity and the depreciation of the ruble in the summer months. Therefore, it is required to additionally tighten monetary conditions,” said the bank’s board in a statement which, although they probably wanted to add it, did not include anything about how they wish they had Trump back and can’t take much more of the woke Biden Regime policies which caused prices to skyrocket.

Asked by NBC’s Kristen Welker if he’ll take the witness stand in his defense testify under oath that he never told his guys to delete the footage of them hiding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, fat former President Trump said “Sure, I’m going to- I’ll testify,” and “Look, It’s a fake charge by this deranged lunatic prosecutor who lost in the Supreme Court nine to nothing, and he tried to destroy lots of lives. He’s a lunatic. So it’s a fake charge. But more importantly, the tapes weren’t deleted. In other words, there was nothing done to them. And, they were my tapes. I could have fought them. I didn’t even have to give them the tapes, I don’t think. I think I would have won in court. When they asked for the tapes, I said, ‘Sure.’ They’re my tapes. I could have fought them. I didn’t even have to give them. Just so you understand, though, we didn’t delete anything. Nothing was deleted.”

US intelligence officials tell CNN it appears the ChiComs have suspended their spy balloon program in the aftermath of the famous incident when American fighter jets shot down a wayward orb and its large gondola in the Atlantic following a week of aimless transcontinental drift and frenzied bitching by elected Republicans amplified wall-to-wall coverage in right wing media back in February.

Officials say they’ve observed no new launches and believe the Xi Regime to have deflated the program after the diplomatic blowback from the February shitshow. Reports also indicate leadership “reprimanded” the operators for fucking up and losing control of the balloon, especially now that the gondola underneath was recovered from the water largely intact by Navy divers.

So for all the screaming from MAGAmerica about the balloon and how Joe Biden just let it happen to the point where they literally demanded he be impeached over it here’s the final score: His response – waiting to shoot it down when it was over water where it could be recovered and not over land where 100 tons of wreckage falling from 80,000 feet might have just been dangerous to Americans, as well as ordering Secretary of State Tony Blinken to postpone a trip to China – scared the Xi Regime out of launching any more of the balloons that Republicans said were such a grave threat to our national security. Of course it’d be foolish to expect them to acknowledge it, especially since their goldfish brains already forgot about it, but here we are with no more ChiCom spy balloons coming to terrorize hardworking traditional American families who just want their kids to be safe.

House Republicans are a bit apprehensive with Oversight moron James Comer “being the public face of the inquiry” after he’s “undermined his credibility by being a sloppy communicator – especially in TV interviews during the past year in which he has overstated his committee’s findings,” Axios reports on the vibe coming from the caucus as the “inquiry” gets underway.

“Comer’s entire strategy has been too broad on the investigations, and too narrow on communications,” a leadership aide told Axios, adding “The committee should focus on firsthand testimony and bank statements,” rather than tailoring circlejerky stories for the Fox News audience.

“There is no valid basis, under the relevant law and facts, for the Honorable Tanya S. Chutkan, United States District Judge for the District of Columbia, to disqualify herself in this proceeding,” Special Counsel Jack Smith said in his response to the long-shot motion by Donald Trump to get the judge removed from Trump’s federal lawsuit in DC relating to his attempt to undermine the 2020 presidential election.

“The defendant cites only one case in which a court found that recusal was warranted on the basis of a judge’s statements. But that case—United States v. Microsoft Corp., 253 F.3d 34 (D.C. Cir. 2001)—undermines the defendant’s position rather than supports it, because the judge’s extrajudicial statements in that case are so easily contrasted with this Court’s, in both content and setting,” Smith stated, noting that in Microsoft, the judge was removed because he indeed made prejudicial statements in the antitrust case, including secretly telling reporters he believed Microsoft should lose the case.  Chutkan’s statements, made during sentencing hearings for January 6th convicts in response to the defendants’ statements, were milquetoast by comparison, with Chutkan saying the leaders of the coup had not yet been held responsible while she sentenced the defendants.