Amid corporate layoffs, Tesla’s retiring Chief Financial Officer Zachary Kirkhorn will retire with a golden parachute that includes $550 million in stock options after taking a relatively modest $300,000 annual salary, Bloomberg reports.  Having joined Tesla in 2010, Kirkhorn is just in his late 30’s and spent early parts of his career at McKinsey and Microsoft.

Ignoring Donald Trump’s lawyers’ attempt to further delay the various criminal proceedings against their client, Judge Tanya Chutkan set the hearing for Friday, August 11th at 10 a.m. ET to hear arguments about the protective order regarding Trump’s attempts to intimidate witnesses and court officers.

It’s quite likely posts like this one, made by Trump minutes before the judge’s order was issued, will be subject to the discussions.

Indicted felon Donald Trump’s Tuesday afternoon rally in New Hampshire, which had an estimated crowd in the triple digits, featured the expected litany of scenes:  Trump complaining about being indicted, Trump calling the indictments fake, Trump insulting the Fulton Co. DA by insinuating she had an affair with a defendant/gang member, Trump making a Christie fat joke.  Y’know, the normal stuff.

A 40-year-old college student with no political experience who heads a local chapter of College Republicans announced she’ll run for GOP nomination for the US Senate seat held by incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin, showing once again Republicans have no serious candidates or policy on which to run, NBC News reports.

Rejani Raveendran, a single mother of three who is the head of the College Republicans at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, will announce her candidacy Tuesday evening.  A 2011 migrant from India where she was a nurse and midwife, Raveendran became a US citizen in 2015.  She plans to graduate from college next year with a degree in political science, which she believes qualifies her for one of the 100 seats in the US Senate.

The man Donald Trump chose to lead the US Coast Guard covered up explosive details about decades’ worth of rape and abuse allegations at the service’s academy, attempting to hide from the public attacks and harassment endemic at the institution since at least the 1980s, CNN reports.

Karl Schultz took over as Commandant of the Coast Guard in April 2018 as the seven-year investigation was wrapping up.  Operation Fouled Anchor, as the probe was called, looked at dozens of rapes and sexual assaults that happened on the New London, Connecticut campus of the Coast Guard Academy, which typically accepts fewer than 400 cadets each year.

The report outlines the way Academy leadership downplayed sexual assaults at the institution, sometimes burying reports or refusing to investigate allegations of sexual assault, including leaving the accused on duty; many of the accused ended up accepting commissions into the Coast Guard.

In a new filing on the circus that is Donald Trump’s legal world, Jack Smith’s lawyers complied with Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order to set a day for a hearing by this Friday, August 11th, on the proposed protective order that would prevent Donald Trump from disclosing sensitive information he receives from prosecutors in the discovery process.  The government is prepared for a hearing scheduled in any of the next three days, before Chutkan’s deadline.  Trump’s lawyers, of course, aren’t professional enough to be prepared:

President Trump will not appear. However, he would like to have both his counsel John Lauro and Todd Blanche at the hearing. Todd Blanche is not available on Thursday, since he must appear for a court proceeding in the prosecution brought against the same defendant, President Trump, by the Special Counsel in SD Florida. Mr. Lauro is available on Thursday, with a preference for an aftenoon setting.  However, since we lost Friday as an option, we would respectfully request a setting on Monday (after 12:00 p.m.) or Tuesday (all day) to allow for both Mr. Blanche and Mr. Lauro to be present.

Five members of the white nationalist Patriot Front group in Washington state are suing an activist who infiltrated the group and then exposed its members, causing some of them to lose their jobs for their affiliation with the violence-loving domestic terrorist group, the Seattle Times reports.

David Alan Capito, 37, also known as Vyacheslav Arkhangelskiy and Vincent Washington, pretended to support the group’s xenophobic and hate-filled rhetoric, ultimately becoming a regular attendee at events.  Named the groups official photographer, he would take photos of the participants at group events, and he also surreptitiously photographed their vehicles, including their license plates.  He also worked with an unspecified group of activist hackers who, with Capito’s help, were able to access online chats of group members.

Washington residents Colton Brown, 33, the leader of the chapter; James Julius Johnson, 37; and his wife Amelia Johnson, 31, joined Paul Gancarz of Virginia, a one-time leader of the Washington chapter, and Daniel Turetchi of Pennsylvania in bringing the federal lawsuit against Capito. 

Given the widespread and general bigotry of Republican Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida, the plight of the Lake County (Florida) School Board should be expected:  do they placate the xenophobic glory-seeking presidential candidate by kowtowing to his policies of hate and discrimination, or do they demonstrate common sense to benefit the students in their care?

Turns out, Lake County is making one small step toward the latter, according to the Associated Press, reversing an earlier decision to remove the children’s book “And Tango Makes Three” from school shelves because the family of penguins written about in the children’s storybook has a factually-accurate depiction of two male penguins heading the family unit.

Reportedly one parent issued a complaint about the book, prompting school officials to remove it from the shelves at all schools.  “And Tango Makes Three” describes a scene that happens in the wild, where two same-sex penguins will form a partner unit to raise a chick, a situation that is completely intolerable to conservatives who don’t believe science supports homosexuality in nature; in fact, homosexual relationships as well as transgenderism are found throughout the animal kingdom.

In the first town hall meeting since he was one of sixteen “false electors” charged by Michigan’s Attorney General, Wyoming, Michigan mayor Kent Vanderwood faced multiple calls for his resignation while he faces criminal charges, WOOD NBC-8 in Grand Rapids reports.

Each one of the sixteen false electors is facing eight counts, including forgery and a specific charge of election forgery, a count similar to election fraud.  The sixteen Trump supporters each signed a forged document claiming that they were the rightfully designated Michigan representative to the Electoral College assigned by the state legislature after the 2020 election representing the certified outcome of the election; that was a lie.  The group signed the forged document and submitted a copy to the National Archives asserting the legitimacy of the document, a potential federal felony.

“His name is on the paper. You cannot deny that. This is a stain on this city, a stain on our state, and we must get back to some type of decency and civility in our government,” said an unnamed person who spoke at the meeting said. “It resulted in an insurrection against our government. Five people lost their lives due to this action that is perpetrated against this country. Our mayor has to be held accountable for his part in that. Each of us must be accountable for our silence in that. I ask this mayor to resign.”

The Supreme Court stayed a ruling by a George W. Bush appointee that blocked an ATF rule about the unregulated manufacture of parts used to make “ghost guns,” homemade or shop-built parts that are used to manufacture unregistered and unregulated weapons by an individual, Steven Mazie of the Economist reports.

Plaintiffs in the case got Federal District Judge Reed O’Connor to block the ATF’s regulation of manufactured parts that are used to construct guns.  Challenging aspects of the Gun Control Act of 1968, the suit claimed that new federal authorities that regulate the manufacture, sale and distribution of gun parts is not covered in the 1968 law or its updates.  SCOTUS maintained ATF’s right to regulate those activities until it can hear the case itself.  In the 5-4 vote, Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch voted in the minority.

The teenage cousin of the perpetrator of the horrific 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when 22 were killed, threatened to murder his sister and then “do the same thing” his cousin had done, reports ABC News.   The 17-year-old, who was taken into custody for making terroristic threats, is reportedly on probation for an unspecified offense and he was allegedly intoxicated when he made the statements to his sister, according to affidavits from witnesses.

According to a recorded statement by the sister, the boy threatened to shoot her in the head and “stated that he would ‘shoot the school'” that was located across the street from the family’s home before adding ominously, “school is starting soon.”  It’s unclear if there were weapons in the house or if the teenager had access to the weapons.

Republicans in Ohio are already kind of resigned to the failure of Issue 1 at the polls on Tuesday, seeing massive early turnout a bad sign for the ballot measure engineered specifically to kneecap a November ballot measure guaranteeing abortion rights in the Buckeye State by raising the threshold for all future referenda to pass from 50 to 60 percent and increasing the number of counties from which signatures in ballot measure petition must be drawn, Punchbowl reports.

That more than 1.2 million Ohioans have already turned out for the single question August special election makes it pretty much a done deal to Republicans, and a not great sign for a leading proponent, Secretary of State and 2024 GOP Senate primary candidate Frank LaRose, who pushed hard for the pointless waste of taxpayer resources designed solely to make participatory democracy more difficult, especially with regard to abortion. “Frank LaRose has wrapped his arms around this issue and staked his entire political career. He has spent the entirety of the summer campaigning on this issue, to the detriment of his day job,” Ohio Dem Party Chair Elizabeth Walters told Punchbowl.

“If Issue 1 does not pass then a lot of things are at risk,” said credibly accused domestic abuser and fraud Congressman Max Miller. “Not only abortion but also gun ownership and possession, redistricting, education curriculum for our children and other big issues. All these things will be at risk because a simple majority will be able to fundamentally alter our constitution on a whim.”

Donald Trump’s string of stiffing municipalities and local governments for the massive bills accumulated by those agencies for his cult rallies continues, with the city of Pickens and Pickens County in South Carolina having to dip into their tourism budget to cover $30,000 in security costs for a July rally Trump’s campaign refuses to pay for, the Greenville News reports.

There are a number of outstanding claims from local governments against the Trump campaign for rallies Trump held but which never got paid for excess salaries for the police and civil servants who had to put in additional hours to accommodate Trump’s vanity events to placate his wounded ego.  Of 30 municipalities where Trump held rallies since the November 2020 election, only one–Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania–reported the Trump camp has no outstanding invoices for the rallies.

In Pickens County, however, things are a little more complicated.  Tight budgets caused the city of Pickens to pull back on their plan to sent $10,000 to the county to pay for costs.  Instead, the city is going to try to collect directly from the Trump campaign, a move some county officials want to piggyback on to save their valuable taxpayer funds. “If the city of Pickens is sending an invoice to the campaign to be reimbursed, it only makes sense to me that the county’s expenses should be billed to the city so that they can include that as part of their total invoice,” County Councilwoman Claiborne Linvill said, noting that setting the precedent of having taxpayers pay for security for all political rallies would end up being very costly.

Florida Republican Governor and floundering GOP presidential candidate has fired his campaign manager, Politico reports.  Generra Peck was fired from the campaign; Peck will now be a chief campaign strategist, not responsible for daily operations. With James Uthmeier, his chief of staff from the governor’s office, taking over the campaign.

Georgia Democrats Bee Nguyen and Jen Jordan–who, thankfully for her sake, is not related to sexual abuse misprisioner and suit coat avoider Jim Jordan–have been called to testify before the grand jury investigating the election interference attempt by Donald Trump and others, MSNBC producer Kyle Cheney reports.

The two Democrats were present during hearings where one-time lawyer and hair dye model Rudy Giuliani and others insurrection activists urged Georgia lawmakers to reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, won by Joe Biden, to give the state to Donald Trump, contrary to the will of Georgia’s voters.

Casey Gannon of CNN reports that the Washington, DC federal special grand jury assembled by Special Counsel Jack Smith that handed down indictments for disgraced former president Donald Trump is again meeting Tuesday morning, a sign that its investigation into the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack is not over and more indictments–against Trump and others–may be in the offing.

Minyon Moore, the one-time CEO of the Democratic National Committee, was appointed to be the chair of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, another sign of the importance of Black women to the campaign of President Joe Biden, Politico reports.

The White House Political Director in the last two years of the Clinton Administration, Moore is a member of the DNC’s national committee and was a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton during her 2008 and 2016 campaigns. Many pundits credit her with securing Kamala Harris’s position as Vice President on the 2020 presidential ticket.

NOW WE HAVE PROOF! TGP EXCLUSIVE: Massive 2020 Voter Fraud Uncovered in Michigan – Police Find: TENS OF THOUSANDS of Fake Registrations, Bags of Pre-Paid Gift Cards, Guns with Silencers, Burner Phones, and a Democrat-Funded Organization with Multiple Tem… https://t.co/6eqOIrbA68

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) August 8, 2023

“Let’s see! My political Opponent, Crooked Joe Biden, tells Merrick Garland and the DOJ to indict and arrest me on bogus charges and accusations, trying desperately to steal the Election. But that wasn’t enough! He now wants Thug Prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, to file for a Court Order taking away my first amendment rights, SPEECH. So, based on yet another Radical Left Hoax, I’ll be the only ‘Politician’ in American history not allowed to SPEAK. THE NEVER ENDING WITCH HUNT CONTINUES. MAGA!” posted disgraced former President Trump on Truth Social early Tuesday, yet another in a long string of posts freaking out over the standard protective order prohibiting him from disclosing any grand jury material handed to his team in discovery ahead of trial on charges stemming from his failed attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.

It’s not clear precisely why this is still bothering the fat bastard so much. In the Mar-a-Lago case his lawyers didn’t do anything to oppose the same type of protective order set by federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart after a request from Jack Smith’s team. They bitched a little bit over the terms set by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the Stormy Daniels payoff case, calling it an “unprecedented and extraordinarily broad muzzle on a leading contender for the presidency,” but we can’t recall Trump himself ever really addressing it. Maybe it was that Smith’s team highlighted that batshit “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” post in their protective order request in the coup attempt case (but not asserting it was a violation one way or another) that irked the fat bastard so badly, like he’s extra upset over them using his own words against him.

So butthurt was Trump and/or his lawyers over that on Monday his lawyers alleged a Biden Campaign tweet with a silly “Dark Brandon” meme on a coffee mug as somehow being a “thinly-veiled reference to the indictment” in their motion opposing the terms of the protective order.

House Republicans have concluded that any “momentum” they had earlier this year for impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for something the border has been squandered by too much dicking around and not enough votes to make it actually happen, Politico reports.