Speaking to the Washington Post, the leader of the far-right “Alternative for Germany” party credits disgraced former US President Trump’s “style of communication” in its recent electoral successes.

“We have become clearer in what we what we want and what we think. We have more of the Trumpian style of communication,” says AfD’s top candidate Maximilian Krah.

A mysterious, since-deleted tweet yesterday from the official Project Veritas account signaled something was happening:  “SOS Hannah Giles just fired us all.”  Now it seems to be true:  the right-wing muckraking organization laid off 25 employees this week, leaving its staff at just 18 people, the Daily Beast reports.

You may remember Giles dressed as a streetwalker with James O’Keefe as her fake-fur wearing pimp, in promo shots for their groundbreaking scam that dismantled ACORN, a community rights group.  After O’Keefe was ousted from the group for his financial mismanagement, the board installed Giles as CEO.  With her at the helm, fundraising plummeted, and so, staff gotta go.

Sheesh, Rudy Giuliani has become a caricature of himself:

They were real criminals.  They really murdered people.  That’s what RICO is for.  It isn’t necessarily for organized crime, but it’s for a major criminal enterprise. This is hardly that.  This is an election fraud argument.  [Old man gurgles.]  …totally inconsistent with RICO.  RICO is for serious, long-term criminal organizations. They can be political corruption.  The Biden Family is a perfect RICO case!

The animated hair dye dispenser demonstrates why his law license was pulled:  Giuliani used RICO to prosecute “white collar” criminals, too, such as Michael Milken, who didn’t murder anybody.  And you actually need evidence–not GOP accusations–to indict people.

A Virginia GOP Committee member looks to have a habit of putting on outrageous and vulgar displays insulting President Joe Biden looks to have taken his schtick a step too far with his latest stunt.

According to MeidasTouch, Ron Hedlund, a member of the Soviet-sounding Virginia GOP Central Committee, showed up at a youth baseball game with a pickup truck featuring a drawing of an 18-foot penis on the side.  While the kids played the game, he inflated a towering “air man” from the bed of the truck reading “Fuck Biden” down the side.

Hedlund has a history of profane displays in public places.  He was detained by state police for driving onto a restricted area of the Virginia War Memorial with a “Fuck Biden” sign in the bed of the truck during a 2021 Veterans Day ceremony.  And curiously, a zombie Instagram account for @ronhedlund shows a profile pic of the man during the January 6th insurrection, but no media report his participation or arrest.

The FBI will assist state and local law enforcement officials investigating the multitude of threats that have been made against the grand jurors who indicted the previously-indicted Donald Trump and 18 of his co-conspirators, the Washington Post reports.  The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office said its investigators are working with colleagues from local and state agencies, including the Atlanta Metro Police to check into each threat and provide protection to the members of the grand jury.

A member of the Proud Boys from Florida has disappeared days before he is to be sentenced for his role in the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress, prompting officials to start a manhunt for the fugitive, the Associated Press reports.

Naples resident Christopher Worrell, 52, had been on house arrest after being found guilty of various crimes for using pepper spray on police officers protecting the Capitol. Worrell was put on house arrest after being released from prison when a judge found his civil rights had been violated because he received poor medical care for a broken hand.  Prosecutors were seeking a 14-year prison sentence.

Block is going to be deleted as a “feature”, except for DMs

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 18, 2023

A morning promise from X-generator and Twitter killer Elon Musk to remove the block function on Twitter has been fact-checked by his own platform. Blocking someone prevents them from viewing your content and commenting on your content; muting someone allows them to see and comment on your content, but you don’t see their posts on any thread.  By not allowing people to block people from viewing content, Musk will encourage harassment of users by trolls and stalkers, which is why the feature is mandated by app stores.

Liberty-eliminating Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis held a 30-minute meeting with democracy-defending Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp Friday, as DeSantis attempts to develop relationships with other Republican governors Donald Trump has attacked.

According to Politico, DeSantis has also cozied up to GOPers Kim Reynolds of Iowa and John Sununu in New Hampshire, both early primary states where a governor’s endorsement goes a long way.  Sources told Politico DeSantis did not solicit, nor even discuss, an endorsement from Kemp.

DeSantis, at this point, is simply trying not to lose.  When Trump’s legal problems finally exclude him from consideration for the nomination, DeSantis wants to have allies in the smoky back rooms of the Republican National Convention to push his nomination.

An aide impeached Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton referred to as his “second son” has emerged as a key part in the impeachment of the beleaguered Texas Republican, having witnessed Paxton planning the renovation of his house that was allegedly paid for by a wealthy benefactor, the Texas Tribune reports.

Drew Wicker was present during a meeting between Paxton and a home renovation contractor where Paxton was gushing of $20,000 of marble countertops that he wanted installed in his home.  The contractor repeated noted he’d have to talk with “Nate”–believed to be real estate developer Nate Paul, who had cases before the Attorney General’s office–implying he would have to get Paul’s approval for the cost.  Wicker took the statements to mean Paul would be the one picking up the tab, and he asked Paxton about it later; Paxton assured the aide he would be paying for the renovation.

That doesn’t seem to be what happened, though.  According to documents filed in Paxton’s impeachment, Paxton didn’t pay a dollar for the granite countertops or for tens of thousands of dollars of other renovations done to the house owned by Paxton and his wife, a Republican Texas state senator. 

Republican Florida performance artist and dirty diaper baby Matt Gaetz, somehow still a member of Congress after reportedly hiring the services of trafficked underage sex workers, has introduced a censure of federal district court Judge Tanya Chutkan who is overseeing Donald Trump’s federal case regarding his attempt to undermine the Constitution.  The measure also calls for the further weaponization of House committees by the GOP, demanding an investigation into Chutkan so that Republican members of the House can attempt to harass, intimidate and slander her.

According to Forbes, Gaetz is upset about a number of things relating to Chutkan’s independence as a jurist and her past statements, saying that she’s obviously prejudiced against Trump and therefore should have recused herself from the trial, a demand he’s never made about conservative judges and justices who have stated defined opinions about cases they adjudicate.  Gaetz is particularly upset about comments by Chutkan that called comparisons between January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress and the 2020 BLM protests “a false equivalency” and that such comparison “ignores a very real danger that the January 6 riot posed to the foundation of our democracy.”

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko told his state-run television network that he would not hesitate to use the nuclear weapons Russia deployed in his country starting in June if he believes the nation is being attacked, UPI reports.  Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the delivery of tactical nuclear missiles to Belarus as a reward to Lukashenko for supporting Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Belarus became home to thousands of Wagner mercenaries after a stalled coup sent Putin temporarily into hiding.  Using Belarus as a jumping-off point, Wagner fighters have transited a narrow strip of land between Poland and Lithuania to get to an isolated outcrop of Russian territory on the Baltic Sea.

Polish and Lithuanian officials have expressed concerns that the Wagner troops are infiltrating their nations.  One possible concern is that the Wagner troops could be used to instigate a false flag attack on Russia or Belarusian territory, thereby giving the Kremlin an excuse for military action against its NATO neighbors.

Classic pop music performer and right-wing tool Kid Rock will likely be spared becoming the target of the hypocritical rightwing even though he was photographed at a Nashville concert Thursday night drinking a (gasp!) Bud Light, the trans-friendly brand he shot up with a semiautomatic rifle to show how manly he is.  He did, after all, show his performative violence by blasting cases of the beer to placate the violence-loving Trump supporters who constantly question their own sexuality when faced with LGBTQ issues.

Unsurprisingly, GOP presidential nomination frontrunner with multiple criminal indictments, Donald Trump, will skip Wednesday’s televised Republican candidates debate to do a sit-down interview with freelance liar and misogynist Tucker Carlson online, the New York Times reports.

Too much of a coward to face the multitude of accusations about poor management, high deficits, skyrocketing federal debt and a lack of success at any of his key goals (except a tax break for himself), Trump will seek to avoid answering for his poor performance in office and his criminal activity out of it.

Angry that a memo leaked detailing his conflict of interest between his position on the state ethics committee and a $400,000 per year job being Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s “muscle” harassing Disney, Glen Gilzean accused the committee he once led of “weaponizing” the information to make him look bad, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

“[I]t is deeply inappropriate that your legal opinion was disseminated to the press at the same time you sent it to me,” Gilzean wrote in the email whining to the commission. “As far as I’m concerned, someone on your staff knowingly leaked this memo and weaponized it, how did this happen?”  The memo, in fact, had not been leaked and was released pursuant to a public records request from a journalist.

Gilzean was chosen by DeSantis to head the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, the new organization DeSantis created to replace the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the entity that provided oversight of Disney development, because Disney opposed DeSantis’s anti-LGBTQ policies that criminalize discussing non-straight Christian relationships and target minorities for scorn and violence.  Gilzean, who led the non-partisan ethics committee–claimed he did not know he could not take a public sector job and remain on the volunteer ethics committee, even though the rules for members on the committee expressly bans it.

In a string of raids conducted Thursday, FBI agents arrested ten current and former police officers from the Antioch and Pittsburg (California) police departments on charges ranging from criminal conspiracy to using police dogs against their targets, the Washington Post reports.

Following a two-year federal investigation, the defendants were charged with an array of felonies including criminal conspiracy, illegally distributing steroids,  fraud, and obstruction.  One of the charges is abuse of office “under color of law,” a charge similar to the one brought against the Trump organized crime syndicate.

Morteza Amiri, an officer with the Antioch police, was charged with instructing his police dog, Purcy, to attack, resulting in bites that required medical attention on 28 people; 19 of the people were Black.  Only one in seven residents of Antioch is Black, putting the proportion of Black people Amiri ordered Purcy to attack at an unusually high clip.

“And to that end I also think, look, I– if I President of the United States, we’re going to get a new chairman of the Federal Reserve,” former target of the Trump mob Mike Pence mildly asserts.  “I mean, this business of quantitative easing that’s been underway must end.”  The announcement elicits a smattering of weak applause for the crowd, numbering in the double-digits, in a Jeb Bush-level response.

For the record, the quantitative easing Pence laments was started by the Trump administration in March 2020.  Under current chair Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve has committed to ending the Trump administration’s QE policy:  “The Fed also retained its commitment to reversing a previous policy of quantitative easing (QE) that involved purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. QE was aimed at providing more liquidity to capital markets.”

Russia’s intelligence service is recruiting desperate, unknowing Ukrainian refugees to conduct intelligence and even sabotage operations in Poland, starting with paying them to distribute pro-Kremlin fliers around Poland but escalating within weeks to acts of war, the Washington Post reports.

Western nations have been supplying Ukraine with weapons and ammo by shipping them through neighboring countries; 80% of the material is funneled through Poland, which has a 300-mile border with Ukraine.  To date, Russia has not been able to disrupt this supply path, with military observers noting Russia has been unable to destroy a single supply train or convoy since the Kremlin order the invasion in February 2022.

The people who responded to the job offers, found in generically worded fliers, online ads or apps like Telegram, aimed at the thousands of refugees coming from Ukraine, were first told to hand out or post similar fliers.  They were then instructed to track shipments along roadways and ports.   In March, Polish authorities said the handlers–likely Russian GRU agents–told their “employees” that they were directed to derail a train headed to Ukraine.

In a sign that Republicans are more backward than oil-rich Arabs, the leaders of the United Arab Emirates will announce the creation of a multi-billion dollar investment fund to finance green energy projects around the world, a major shift for a nation that collects tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues each year, Politico reports.

A European government official privy to the information said the managers of Dubai’s sovereign wealth funds said the amount discussed for initially funding the projects was set at $25 billion, targeted with shifting economies of underdeveloped nations away from fossil fuels.  The UAE is expected to announce the opening of the fund as it hosts the COP28 global climate talks in November.

Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Donald Trump’s latest attempt to delay one of his civil lawsuits scheduled for trial:  the latest defamation lawsuit relating to E. Jean Carroll’s defamation claim stemming from Trump’s sexual assault of the magazine columnist in a department story dressing room in the 1990s.

“This case was largely stalled for years due in large part to Mr. Trump’s repeated efforts to delay, which are chronicled in the Court’s prior decisions.1 Mr. Trump’s latest motion to stay – his fourth such request – is yet another such attempt to delay unduly the resolution of this matter,” Kaplan wrote, maintaining the January 15, 2024 court date.

Although it’s expected to weaken by the time it makes landfall, Hurricane Hilary is gaining strength, expected to become a Category 4 storm before it’ll lose power prior to hitting the Los Angeles area, the Weather Channel reports.

It’s rare for a hurricane to hit the West Coast; the last storm believed to be of hurricane strength to hit California was an unnamed 1858 storm that struck San Diego.  In 1997, Tropical Storm Nora became the last major storm to hit land on the West Coast.

Officials warn that southern Californians should be prepared for heavy rain and flash flooding as the storm hits the area, which is expected early next week, with rain reaching Tucson and Phoenix by Tuesday.