Illinois will ban advertising gun designed for children, a marketing avenue designed to groom children, including those under the age of 10, to enter the weapons-obsessed culture fostered by violence-prone far-right radicals.  ABC News reports Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker will sign the law this week.

Democratic Attorney General Kwame Raoul noted companies like Wee 1 Tactical market a JR-15, a smaller version of the AR-15-style assault rifle designed for children’s hands that fires lower-power but just-as-deadly .22 caliber bullets.  To reinforce the cult-like tradition of gun fanciers, Wee 1 used the tagline “Get ‘em One Like Yours” in their marketing.

“We’ve gone after the marketing that has historically driven up the consumption by minors for those products that are harmful to them,” Raoul said, noting that the statute is based in laws that bar marketing tobacco to minors. “The firearms industry shouldn’t be immune to the standards that we put on other industries.”

Evidently upset with Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith indicting her client, Donald Trump, two more times in the past week, federal Judge Aileen Cannon on Monday “came out swinging at special counsel this morning, striking two of prosecutors’ sealed filings and demanding an explanation of ‘the legal propriety of using an out-of-district grand jury proceeding to continue to investigate’ the docs case,” according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

The docket items were struck because Jack Smith’s office wanted the information filed under seal, but Cannon doesn’t see the need for them to be hidden from the public.  Smith can refile in the documents after making them suitable for public viewing, if he so chooses.

Ukrainian security force detained a Russian agent suspected of trying to coordinate a missile strike on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a recent tour of the Mykolaiv region, with the agent collecting information on Zelenskyy’s travel schedule and agenda, CNN reports.

According to the Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU), the woman, a resident of Ochakov in southern Ukraine, “tried to establish the time and list of locations of the approximate route of the Head of State in the territory of the region,” including filming sites Zelenskyy was expected to visit.

In monitoring the woman’s communications, the SBU found that she was also transmitting information to Russian handlers regarding the location of ammunition caches and warehouses, as well as the location of electronics warfare systems.

“Deranged Jack Smith is going before his number one draft pick, the Judge of his ‘dreams’ (WHO MUST BE RECUSED!), in an attempt to take away my FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS – This, despite the fact that he, the DOJ, and his many Thug prosecutors, are illegally leaking, everything and anything, to the Fake News Media!!!” posted fat former President Trump on Monday morning in the midst of another public panic session over the afternoon deadline for his legal team to respond to the prosecution’s motion for a protective order in his post-2020 election coup attempt case.

Earlier Trump wrote “I never said anything bad or even slightly inappropriate to Liddle’ Mike Pence. What I did do was make him, over the many people who wanted it, Vice President of the United States. Disloyalty in politics is alive and well,” which means he’s getting nervous after Pence said he would be open to taking the stand as a witness for the prosecution in the upcoming trial.

Far right Cochise County, Arizona’s stupid new plan to “secure” ballots with holograms or invisible ink or some stupid bullshit like that appears to be tailored for one specific vendor tied to MAGA former state Senator and 2022 Secretary of State loser Mark Finchem, VoteBeat Arizona reports.

The company, Texas-based Authentix, which has zero experience in elections supply, has been angling for a contract with the county to print their ballots, the terms and scope of which is unknown except for the roughly $1 million price tag and that one of the Authentix’s founders, Olaf Halvorssen, was listed as a team member of a failed clean energy startup helmed by Finchem. To be fair, the company does have foreign contracts to produce watermarks and holograms on official documents like tax notes and what not, so it’s not like this is definitely another Cyber Ninjas situation where they’re just so far out of their league and going to completely fuck everything up.

But that any eventual watermarks on ballots by this company would be solid security features doesn’t mean they’ll be necessary because there’s zero evidence any ballots have been faked in the 2020 and 2022 elections. The whole venture also makes us think a little bit less of Mark Finchem: We’d understood him to be like his ticket-mate Kari Lake, as in genuinely and sincerely pilled up to his eyeballs on this “Stop the Steal” bullshit, that he really believed all the fantasies. Instead it now seems like he’s just another grifter looking to make a few bucks off the fucking rubes. Shame on you Mark for making us think you were the deceived when all along you were one of the deceivers.

MAGA fascist lawyer John Eastman, aka “Co-Conspirator 2” came clean in an interview last week, admitting he was trying to overthrow the United States government, Talking Points Memo reports.

Not really hiding his argument under any sort of legalese, Eastman might as well be Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes as he told Tom Klingenstein, chair of the board of directors at Eastman’s “think tank,” the Claremont Institute, that the outcome of the 2020 election was an “existential threat to the very survivability, not just of our nation, but of the example that our nation, properly understood, provides to the world… There’s actually a provision in the Declaration of Independence that a people will suffer abuses while they remain sufferable, tolerable while they remain tolerable.

“At some point abuses become so intolerable that it becomes not only their right but their duty to alter or abolish the existing government. So that’s the question. Have the abuses or the threat of abuses become so intolerable that we have to be willing to push back?” Eastman continued.

The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document. It was a political statement asserting that the Thirteen Colonies were no longer under the sovereignty of King George and the founding fathers knew they were signing their own death warrants if their homegrown militias were unable to force British troops back home. Eastman citing it is in effect the same thing: He should be willing to die in prison because his effort to overturn the 2020 election failed. Let’s hope he gets his wish.

In an “explosive” Sunday article “BREAKING EXCLUSIVE: Same DOJ Attorney Prosecuting President Trump, Declined to Prosecute Andrew McCabe for Lying Under Oath, Gave Imran Away Sweetheart Deal, and More,” with a typo in the headline because the guy’s name is actually Imran Awan, the Gateway Pundit “connects the dots” with a current member of Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team, DOJ Fraud and Public Corruption Section Chief JP Cooney, who gave “gave Imran Omar [sic] a sweetheart deal after getting caught spying on the US Congress.”

The article also technically isn’t an “exclusive” because it was first printed at JoeHoft.com, the eponymous blog run by Jim “Gateway Pundit” Hoft’s twin brother Joe. Which in turn was largely sourced from a Saturday morning tweet thread by batshit insane MAGA influencer Julie Kelly.

Anyway the “report” is poorly written and extremely hard to follow, and basically all it amounts to is that the case against Trump is “rigged” because these high-level Justice Department prosecutors who worked other politically charged investigations, including the contempt of Congress case against Steve “Bannan,” are working on the Trump case too. But the callout to the obscure fan favorite Imran Awan makes this a gem. Awan, a Pakistani-American IT technician who worked for Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and other Democrats in the House until 2017 when he and a few members of his staff, including his two brothers and his wife, were caught skimming equipment out of purchase orders, probably for resale. Awan was arrested at the airport trying to flee to Pakistan and in 2018 pleaded guilty to an unrelated bank fraud count, then was sentenced to time served plus three months probation (by none other than Judge Tanya Chutkan).

A flotilla of eleven ships from the Russian and Chinese navies reportedly on joint exercises near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands were greeted by a patrol of four US Navy destroyers, a joint statement from Alaska’s Senators acknowledged, per USA Today.

“Air and maritime assets under our commands conducted operations to assure the defense of the United States and Canada. The patrol remained in international waters and was not considered a threat,” the US Navy Northern Command told the Wall Street Journal in a statement.

Republicans Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski issued a joint statement acknowledging they had been in contact with Navy officials to ensure Alaskan fishing operations and other commercial sea traffic would not be impeded by the joint Chinese-Russia group.  “The incursion by 11 Chinese and Russian warships operating together – off the coast of Alaska – is yet another reminder that we have entered a new era of authoritarian aggression led by the dictators in Beijing and Moscow,” Sullivan said.

More than 70 Russian rockets, missiles and drones bombarded Ukraine overnight, concentrating on the area around the central Ukrainian town of Starokostiantyniv, Politico reports, killing at least six civilians and putting the town of 30,000 people on edge as the Kremlin took revenge for an attack that crippled Russia ships on the Black Sea.

The Russians used relatively routine drones and missiles to strike the inland city, but also deployed aircraft launched cruise missiles and Iranian-made, Shahed-136/131 strike UAVs.  Ukrainian officials said one of the bombs hit a blood transfusion center where civilians were queuing up to donate.

Ukraine continued to disrupt life around Moscow, sending a handful of drones toward a Moscow-area airport, where travel was disrupted for more than an hour as local authorities assessed the threat.

Trump’s lawyers continue to admit their client, indicted felon Donald Trump, repeatedly broke the law.  John Lauro did it twice on the day Trump was indicted for trying to overturn the 2020 election. And now spokeslayer Alina Habba admits to Fox’s resident delusional Trump sycophant Maria Bartiromo, telling her when asked if the classified docs case can come to trial quickly that defense attorneys need to take special care with the documents that are still classified, despite Trump’s claims he declassified them with his mind and despite how Trump himself handled the documents when was not authorized to possess.

I think realistically you have to remember that a lot of these cases involve classified document and classified records. [In fact, only one of Trump’s cases does.], which means that all the lawyers now have to apply for special clearance, right?  So it’s not a normal situation.  You can’t just take a classified document and review it.  You have to have SCIFs.  You have to have certain procedures put in place.

Donald Trump has no SCIFs at Mar-a-Lago or Bedminister after he left the White House.  She continued to say Jack Smith “didn’t think through” the complications of trial when requesting a speedy trial–which the public has a right to–because the defense needs to get clearances and build SCIFs for documents their defendant claims are his, Habba also claimed, when asked by Bartiromo about the $40 million in PAC money spent on legal fees so far, that Trump is, again, paying his fees out-of-pocket… with donations to his PAC.

Trump lawyer John Lauro is doing a “Full Ginsberg,” DC’s sobriquet for appearing on all five major Sunday morning shows in a row. Rather than have to pick from one or two clips, we’re going to go ahead and run our live blog feed to collect the stupid shit this guy says almost in real-time.

Remember when we wrote an article titled “Orange Satan raises over $6.66 million since indictment” back on June 14th, six days after the disgraced former president was hit with a 37-count federal indictment for stealing and hoarding classified documents? And then “Campaign raises over $7 million since Trump indictment” on April 3rd, just four days after he was charged in Manhattan?

Yeah, we wanted to write another one about how much they’ve raised in the six days since he was charged in DC, but we can’t find anything about it. Nothing on the Trump campaign website, no results from this month in a Twitter search of “Trump campaign raises after indictment.” Of course this could change in the next few days and they’ll release a statement saying they raised so many millions from fans outraged by the newest charges and blah blah blah. But this is another one of those threads where what they aren’t saying is even more important than what they do say. Like Politico pointed out last week, the fat bastard’s mounting legal issues are losing their punch as a motivator for fans to kick in – just as he needs more and more lawyers to defend him.

The overperformances of Democrats in special elections so far in 2023 – up by an average of 10 percent against expected partisan lean of the jurisdictions observed – has a number of Republican strategists pissing their pants over what it might portend for next year, ABC News reports.

“If you’re looking at this plus-22 [pro-Republican] seat and you want to know why this guy won by a lot smaller percentage than what you would have thought … it’s because this issue is still there. Republicans still have to figure out how to address the abortion issue,” Wisconsin Republican strategist Brandon Scholz told ABC News. “I think you have to be very concerned.”

“You could probably make a connection a little bit to the presidential race, that there’s a lot of candidates in right now. There’s the Trump folks and folks that are backing somebody else, and the party’s not united nationally around one candidate right now, or at least not completely. Sometimes that affects turnout and funding,” said Pennsylvania Republican consultant Josh Novotney.

Chris Nicholas, another Keystone State Republican lackey said Democrats “thought [abortion] could juice their turnout, and they were they were successful in that regard. And they weren’t subtle about it at all. They’re just like, ‘We know this is a hot-button issue for us, and we’re gonna keep milking it till it runs dry.’ I think you’ll see that a lot in the fall and next year as well.”

NASCAR driver Noah Gragson has been suspended indefinitely for liking a cruel, shitty Instagram post depicting police murder victim George Floyd’s face photoshopped onto Sebastian the crab from The Little Mermaid with the words “Under Da Knee,” shitty MAGA site the Post Millennial reports.

“I am disappointed in myself for my lack of attention and actions on social media,” Gragson later tweeted. “I understand the severity of this situation. I love and appreciate everyone. I try to treat everyone equally no matter who they are. I messed up plain and simple.” Let’s go Gragson!

As Samuel Alito makes questionable claims about the sovereignty of the Supreme Court, yet another scandal envelops the senior justice on highest court in the land.  Justice Clarence Thomas’s iconic recreational vehicle–seen in an image-defining 60 Minutes profile–was paid for by a rich Republican benefactor, the New York Times reports.

To be fair, a rich Republican donor who made a fortune in health care “financed” the RV for Thomas, meaning there was technically a repayment plan in place at some point.  Someone described as an “old friend” of Thomas’s, Anthony Welters, reportedly paid for the custom RV in 1999.

“Defendant’s Motion for Extension of Time is hereby DENIED. Defendant may continue to confer with the government regarding its proposed protective order before or after the August 7, 2023 5:00 PM deadline for his response. The court will determine whether to schedule a hearing to discuss the proposed protective order after reviewing Defendant’s response and, if included, his revised proposed protective order with modifications in redline,” wrote DC federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is not fucking around with fat former President Trump’s stupid games.

“Three days ago, on August 2, the Government proposed to defense counsel a protective order that largely tracked one entered in the defendant’s other pending federal criminal case in the Southern District of Florida,” asserts the Special Counsel’s office in a response written so pointedly, no dully-witted blogger should attempt to improve it.  “In emails not appended to the defendant’s extension motion, the Government followed up on the evening of August 3 and early afternoon of August 4. Thereafter, defense counsel finally responded by sending an entirely different protective order. Since the defendant’s proposal was inadequate, the Government proposed another alternative—this one modeled after a protective order entered in a case before Judge Carl J. Nichols recently tried by one of the defendant’s attorneys present at his arraignment. Defense counsel declined to substantively confer on that proposal on a Friday evening, see id., after which the Government moved separately for entry of the order. The Court ordered the defendant to respond by Monday with a redline of the Government’s proposal. Rather than spend time complying with the Court’s order, the defendant drafted a filing as to why he did not have time to review and consider the 5-page proposed protective order.