Citing an “erosion of governance” illustrated by the unnecessary risk to the US economy caused by Republicans craving performance art, credit bureau Fitch downgraded the US credit rating from AAA to AA+ on Tuesday, NBC News reports.

“In Fitch’s view, there has been a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years, including on fiscal and debt matters,” the rating agency said in a statement.  Besides the lack of stability in government because of Republican immaturity, Fitch cites increasing federal debt–largely driven by GOP policies lowering taxes while increasing debt and deficits–and a risk of the US falling into recession as other reasons.

Overall, Fitch notes that the US economy has strong underpinnings, but the periodic instability of the federal government–driven by anti-responsibility conservatives who do not believe in fiscal conservatism in paying accrued bills, in the vein of the titular leader of the Republican Party, Donald Trump–is largely driving the rating downgrade.

Once a status symbol illustrating one’s notoriety and fame, the blue checkmark on Twitter has now transformed into a sign that the person financially supports not one, but two wannabe oligarchs who claim wealth and brilliance but rely on the payments by working-class Americans to continue their endeavors.

Now, however, according to the Verge, Elon Musk has recognized the shame heaped on the customers who pay the $8 per month fee to Musk for a handful of additional features, so he’s made the display of the once-prized icon from their user profiles.

In marketing, you typically want to broadcast how many people buy your product; it shows market penetration and promotes the FOMO of buyers to induce them to buy.  Not on Twitter:  Musk is now acknowledging the shame his customers should feel for supporting his destruction of a once-respected brand.

Trump lawyer John Lauro on Wednesday floated another fantasy on television, telling CBS This Morning he’s going to ask DC Circuit Judge Tanya Chutkan to move the disgraced former president’s trial to West Virginia, which Lauro said is “in close proximity” and “much more diverse.”

Yeah, he actually said that “diverse” part about the Mountain State, whose population is 89 percent non-Hispanic white and where Trump won by 39 percent in 2020. We can’t find a clip of it just yet.

Professor defends lack of interest in Barbie movie as a '48-year-old man with erectile dysfunction' https://t.co/tuNBBu6H2b

— Fox News (@FoxNews) August 2, 2023

“I hope the charges brought by the American Javert are thrown out, but the TDS Dead Ender Coalition should listen carefully to what John Lauro told @BretBaier last night: The former president will be subpoenaing everyone who had anything to do with the unusual circumstances of the 2020 election in order to prove his genuine suspicion of the process, which I think means everyone from Mark Zuckerberg who provided the ‘Zuck Bucks’ to the PA Supreme Court to the ’51 former Intelligence Community members’ who signed the ‘laptop is Russian disinformation letter’ to the old execs at Twitter who suppressed the @NYPost story to Hunter and President Biden and on and on and even perhaps to all participants in the Steele Dossier ought to clear their calendars for whenever the trial is scheduled. Show trials are only choreographed in Stalin’s Russia.”

“Lauro made clear this one – if it begins – is going to explore every corner of the 2020 election with former President Trump empowered to subpoena everyone who can help prove his innocence” says right wing radio host Hugh Hewitt on Twitter (or “X” if you’re a douche). Normally we would’ve just embedded the tweet but the frame doesn’t show the whole thing if it’s more than 240 characters.

Anyway this fucker didn’t have to post a near-verbatim copy of our gag article “JUST WAIT FOR DISCOVERY LIBS!” from Tuesday night. It’s like he’s devaluing our hard work by validating our anticipated reaction to the bullshit that Trump lawyer was spewing on TV. What a prick.

Fulton County, Georgia Sheriff Patrick Labat tells the New York Times his office isn’t going to give disgraced former President Trump if (really when) he’s arraigned there in the next few weeks.

“Unless someone tells me differently,” his deputies and staff will use “normal practices, and so it doesn’t matter your status. We’ll have mug shots ready for you,” said Labat. Should be fun!

On June 4th, 2014, the US Senate sort of unanimously confirmed Judge Tanya S Chutkan to US District Judge of the District of Columbia. The vote was 95 to 0, with five Senators not voting for whatever reasons they had that we would probably end up wasting a lot of time tracking down.

Among the 95 yes votes were 17 currently sitting GOP Senators: John Barrasso, Susan Collins, John Cornyn, Ted Cruz, Deb Fischer, Lindsey Graham, Charles Grassley, John Hoeven, Ron Johnson, Mitch McConnell, Jerry Moran, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Jim Risch, Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, and John Thune. Two more, Mike Lee and John Boozman, didn’t vote but they might as well have voted yes if they couldn’t be bothered to show up to register their disapproval of the judicial nominee.

So for the next year or so or however long it takes to resolve the new post-2020 election coup plot charges against disgraced former President Trump and the fanboys scream in pain and horror as Chutkan torments them from the bench, remember this: She’s there with the assent of not just the “RINOs” like Moscow Mitch and Lindsey Graham and Lisa Murkowski, but their heroes like RonAnon, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio. Not an “Obama judge,” a “Cruz-Johnson-Rubio-Paul-Obama judge.” Those fucking losers handed her the gavel she will hammer Trump with.

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s destruction of the once-vaunted state education system is taking hits from multiple directions as the GOP presidential candidate attempts to legitimize bigotry and slavery in the state schools’ curriculum.

As NBC News reports, DeSantis endorsed the adoption of a new college entrance exam, the Classical Learning Test, an eight-year-old standardized test that claims to provide an alternative to the SAT and ACT, but which concentrates its subject matter on a white, Western perspective, largely ignoring the history and contributions of other cultures.  The Florida Board of Governors will vote in an upcoming meeting on accepting the test, giving it the same weight as the more established exams in admissions for Florida state schools.  The CLT is used at around 200 universities across the United States, primarily conservative, Christian schools that shun ongoing academia, preferring to teach a worldview as believe in a white American suburb in the 1950s.

Just wait libs. If you think President Trump is down for the count then you haven’t sat for the maestro’s final symphony. The grandmaster’s checkmate. The 93 yard Hail Mary with zero seconds left on the clock. Gunslinging new cowboy lawyer John Lauro gave a hint of the plan on Tuesday night: Trump can subpoena whatever evidence he wants to expose the plot to rig the 2020 election against him. That means EVERYTHING will come out in discovery before the trial even starts.

All the Chinese bamboo ballots, the secret Venezuelan supercomputer’s sixth-order polynomials, the illegal changing of laws by state legislatures making it easier to vote by mail, the Italian satellites, the German server gunfight between the US Army and CIA, the secret radioactive kinematic artifacts stamped on the ballots, Facebook and Twitter suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, the 2,000 mules ballot trafficking plot, the Zuckerbucks paid to election offices, the media bias against Trump which was basically election interference, the Chinese thermostats and more will be exposed.

Much more. There will be just massive, explosive new revelations that will leave you Demonrats so fucking sorry you ever messed with Trump. You socialist losers have awakened a dragon that will completely incinerate you and everything you hold dear. So go ahead and drink your stupid trans Bud Light and enjoy the moment. You have no idea what you just started. Trump will finish it.

National Zero will resume our regular news coverage now that we’ve provided an alternative viewpoint for our right wing readers. We hope their spirits have been lifted after a pretty rough day.

As conservative firebrands like Marjorie Taylor Greene and her LB², Colorado’s Lauren Boebert consistently cry about border issues–although neither’s state actually sits on the border and although illegal border crossings are down dramatically–and child trafficking because adrenochrome while simultaneously asserting the FBI needs to be shut down, the agents continue to do their jobs.

Over the last two weeks, FBI agents found more than 200 sex trafficking victims, including 59 child trafficking victims, according to NBC News.  Working with local and state law enforcement in Operation Cross Country arrested or identified 126 predators and 68 traffickers.

“Sex traffickers exploit and endanger some of the most vulnerable members of our society and cause their victims unimaginable harm,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement released before his office’s other big news. “This operation, which located 59 actively missing children, builds on the tremendous work the FBI has undertaken over many years to rescue minor victims and arrest those responsible for these unspeakable crimes.”

“I don’t possess any information that is ex– inculpatory.  I mean, I know they have written lies in the newspaper that I cooperated against him.  Like hell I did!  There’s nothin’ to cooperate about.  If I cooperated against him, you should put me in jail for perjury.  I don’t have any information that he violated any law.  What I do have is, I was seriously considerin’ indicting them for 18 USC Section 241 for indicting a man for exercising his right to free speech, that’s a conspiracy against rights,” Rudy Giuliani, a.k.a. Co-conspirator 1, claims suggesting a completely fascist way to deal with a criminal indictment:  indict the prosecutors.  (And yes, the still for most of this video is a cash-for-gold scam, which is what you get when you clip from a low-rent, third-tier conservative propaganda network.)

That the fanboys had known Trump’s indictment on the gravest of his crimes against democracy was coming brought no comfort to them as they reacted to the news of his legal jeopardy sharply increasing on Tuesday. This roundup was a very long time coming and savors their pain accordingly.

“The funny thing is you people think that there is not going to be a repeat of the fraud in the 2024 election as was the case in 2020. And that no matter what happens, no matter what they do to the man, or how much your freedoms keep getting taken away, the most that all of you will do is simply write angry comments in websites” – The current top comment on the Daily Caller article “Donald Trump Indicted For Third Time,” written in a comment on the internet. That said, we could certainly buy that this guy is a Capitol rioter currently out on bail or already did time for it.

“No reasonable prosecutor would pursue this” – Top comment on TownHall’s article. Nice inversion of the “No reasonable person” line from one of the famous unindicted co-conspirators.

“0bama, Biden and Hillary tried to illegally overturn the 2016 election using dirty FBI agents, dirty judges, and fabricated evidence to frame Trump associates. Proven. In. A. Court. Of. Law. If they’re not guilty of insurrection, no one is” – Top comment on the Breitbart article “Indictment 3.0: Jack Smith Indicts Trump Day After Hunter, Joe Biden Implicated,” because lol they had to mention the Bidens in the headline to remind readers of the whole point of the GOP’s “investigation.”

“What unmitigated bullshit” – Top comment on PJ Media’s article.

“Dems are trying to do through the legal process what they couldn’t do through TWO impeachment. Having read the indictments and hearing Jack Smith’s presentation I don’t think I’ve never seen a more political document and poisonous presentation in the 45 years I’ve been paying attention to DC politics” – Top comment on the Fox News story “Special Counsel Jack Smith says Jan 6 ‘fueled by lies’ from Trump, praises ‘heroes’ who defended Capitol.” The impotent rage is strong with this one.

“Be useful, Kev. Call the House back to Washington” – Top comment on the Gateway Pundit article “Speaker McCarthy Statement on New Trump Indictment: ‘Attempt to Distract from From the News and Attack the Frontrunner.’” Yeah, good luck with that. The House isn’t back until next month.

Jesse Watters is telling us he didn’t read the indictment without actually telling us he didn’t read the indictment. It literally says “The Defendant, DONALD J TRUMP, was the forty-fifth President of the United States and a candidate for re-election in 2020. The Defendant lost the 2020 presidential election. Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power. So for more than two months following election day on November 3, 2020, the Defendant spread lies that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that he had actually won. These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. But the Defendant repeated and widely disseminated them anyway — to make his knowingly false claims appear legitimate, create an intense national atmosphere of distrust and anger, and erode public faith in the administration of the election,” backed up by voluminous evidence he did know he lost.

One of the unanswered questions from the historic indictment on charges Donald Trump attempted to criminally steal the 2020 election, issued earlier today by the grand jury, is, Who are the six as-yet unindicted co-conspirators?  Well, the Washington Post and NBC News had their ideas, and their in agreement:

1. Rudy Giuliani:  Co-Conspirator 1, an attorney who was willing to spread knowingly false claims and pursue strategies that the Defendant’s 2020 re-election campaign attorneys would not.  NBC identifies as Rudy Giuliani.
2. John Eastman (confirmed by Eastman’s lawyer):  Co-Conspirator 2, an attorney who devised and attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding to obstruct the certification of the presidential election.
3. Sidney “The Kraken” Powell:  Co-Conspirator 3, an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud the Defendant privately acknowledged to others sounded “crazy.” Nonetheless, the Defendant embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3’s

House Oversight Chair and one of the Three Stooges of Weaponization James Comer seems to be overlooking reality, claiming that there’s more evidence pointing to Joe Biden being guilty of a felony than anything pointing to Donald Trump being guilty of one–even going so far as to claim Democrats were cribbing his notes about what he would say about Biden.

HUGE! The AP reports that heels-wearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s handpicked cronies on the Reedy Creek Improvement District board have voted to squash all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the special municipality surrounding Disney World outside of Orlando!

“Our district will no longer participate in any attempt to divide us by race or advance the notion that we are not created equal,” Administrator Glenton Gilzean said in a statement. “As the former head of the Central Florida Urban League, a civil rights organization, I can say definitively that our community thrives only when we work together despite our differences.”

After months of anticipation, Donald Trump was indicted on Wednesday on four counts covering charges by Special Counsel Jack Smith regarding his role in the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress in his attempt to undermine the 2020 election results. It’s the third set of criminal charges Trump has been hit with in the past year, following charges leveled in Manhattan and previously by Smith.  Read the 45-page indictment here.

The new charges bring the total number of criminal counts Trump faces on local, state and federal levels to 78, with charges stemming from his interference in the Georgia election still outstanding.  Pundits expected charges on defrauding the United States, obstruction of justice and depravation of rights for Trump’s efforts to throw out states’ Electoral College slates of electors.  

Obama appointee, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, has been appointed to the case.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is scheduled to make a public statement Wednesday after the Washington, DC grand jury handed up a sealed indictment, one assumed to include charges against former president Donald Trump for his role in the attempts to undermine the certified results of the 2020 presidential election.

The grand jury in Washington, DC investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress handed up an indictment Wednesday, but the court did not announce the name or initials of the person or persons charged, multiple outlets report.

“I hear that Deranged Jack Smith, in order to interfere with the Presidential Election of 2024, will be putting out yet another Fake Indictment of your favorite President, me, at 5:00 P.M. Why didn’t they do this 2.5 years ago? Why did they wait so long? Because they wanted to put it right in the middle of my campaign. Prosecutorial Misconduct!”  –Post from Donald Trump on Truth Social.