In a landmark ruling, a Montana judge decided that the state government has violated its own constitution ensuring every citizen’s “right to a clean and healthful environment” by subsidizing fossil fuel harvesting and use over other energy sources, the Washington Post reports.  The case, brought by Montanans between the ages of five-years-old up to age 22, is believed to be the first successful constitutionally-based argument about the right to a clean environment brought by minors suing to ensure governments honor their stewardship of the nation for future generations.

The Montana Environmental Protection Act, originally passed in 1971, was updated in 2001 to loosen environmental protections to be more fossil-fuel friendly.  Recent revisions and other legislation, however, provided funds for fossil fuel harvesting and use in the state, while impeding the development of renewable fuels.  Article II Section 3 of the state constitution, however, requires the government to protect the environment:

All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. They include the right to a clean and healthful environment and the rights of pursuing life’s basic necessities, enjoying and defending their lives and liberties, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and seeking their safety, health and happiness in all lawful ways. In enjoying these rights, all persons recognize corresponding responsibilities.  [Emphasis added]

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan denied a request by indicted felon Donald Trump’s lawyers seeking to remove the judge from the case relating to Trump’s coverup of hush money payments to a porn star he had a sexual encounter with, claiming he was biased because his daughter’s employer, Authentic Campaigns, does work for Democratic candidates, the New York Post reports.

Trump lawyers also sought Merchan’s recusal because the judge donated a total of $20 to Democratic candidates in the 2020 election cycle.  [A search of the FEC database shows no donation to federal candidates by anyone named “Juan Merchan” in New York.]

“The speculative and hypothetical scenarios offered by Defendant fall well short of the legal standard,” Merchan wrote in his decision, saying he “examined [his] conscience and is certain in [his] ability to be fair and impartial.”

A filing in the Fulton County [Georgia] court clerk’s office apparently listing as many as 39 charges against Donald Trump mysteriously appeared–and within minutes, disappeared–from the clerk’s website, Reuters reports.  The list of charges include some that were expected–such as RICO and various false writings/statements–but also included some unusual ones for Trump, such as “Conspiracy to commit impersonating a Public Officer.”

The district attorney’s office and the court clerk’s office both confirmed that no indictment of Donald Trump has been handed down by the grand jury.  The origin of the document is unexplained.

Six Mississippi former law enforcement officers who dubbed themselves the “Goon Squad” pleaded guilty to state charges for detaining and torturing two Black men for more than an hour after breaking into their home in January, ABC News reports.  One of the officers put a gun in a victim’s mouth and pulled the trigger; the gun did not discharge.

According to court documents, a neighbor called police because the victims, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, two Black men, lived in a house with a white woman, Kristi Walley, a disabled childhood friend of Parker’s whom Parker was helping to care for.

For 90 minutes, the group used stun guns, sex toys and other instruments to torture Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in their Rankin County house.  Brett McAlpin, Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmon, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke–all members of the sheriff’s department–and Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield pleaded guilty to state charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to hinder prosecution. Elward, the one who put the gun in the man’s mouth, also pleaded guilty to aggravated assault.

Sixteen members of Congress have reimbursed themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars each from campaign donations for personal money they spent on their campaigns thanks to a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that removed limits on repayments for personal spending on campaigns, Roll Call reports.  Before the SCOTUS ruling, there were time and amount limitations for repayment of personal loans to politicians’ own campaigns; those limits do not exist any longer.

Republican Ohio Senator JD Vance has take 42% of donations, or $480,000 since his 2022 election to repay himself.  Republican Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson took $400,000 in May for a personal loan that goes back to 2010; with a personal net worth exceeding $40 million, Johnson has more than $8 million in personal loans for all his Senate campaigns that he’ll likely take donors’ money to re-enrich himself.  Oklahoma’s GOP Senator Markwayne Mullin, who once claimed he only made $50,000 per year but amassed a fortune putting his net worth somewhere over $35 million, has started to repay the $1 million he used.  Mullin’s campaign now has less than $200,000 cash on hand.

Mehmet Oz, the TeeVee doctor from New Jersey who made an unsuccessful run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, has repaid himself more than $1 million of the $26 million he reported lending to his campaign.  He continues to fundraise off the Republican base to try to recoup his losses.  On financial disclosures, Oz reported his personal net wealth between $76 million to $300 million, mostly from his television show in which he frequently promoted snake oil cures. 

With tensions rising as thousands of Wagner forces settled into neighboring Belarus and transiting to an isolated patch of Russian territory on the Baltic Sea, Polish authorities have been on alert for subversive actions from the Russian mercenary force, arresting two Russians for spreading recruitment fliers throughout Warsaw and Krakow, the Associated Press reports.

Polish’s Internal Security Agency, its equivalent of the FBI, arrested two people identified only as Alexei T. and Andrei G. on Friday for taken $5,000 to hand out and spread fliers in the two cities.  In recent months, Poland has detained more than 22 people for working within Poland for Russian interests.

Wallowing as the perpetual bronze medalist in the ratings war, CNN will undergo another major primetime programming shift prompted by the end of the disastrous reign of former chairman Chris Licht as the original cable news outlet preps for the upcoming presidential elections, it reports.

Anderson Cooper will hold onto his weeknight 8 p.m. ET slot, but Kaitlan Collins is being booted from the 9 p.m. hour in favor of a new “limited” show debuting this fall featuring one-time NBA star Charles Barkley and TV personality Gayle King.  Abby Phillips will take over at 10 p.m. and Laura Coates will host the 11 p.m. hour.

“I mean, this was a crooked app0intment,” one of the little-known Republican Ohio House delegation who wears suit coats, Warren Davidson, says on a little-watched conservative propaganda network about Special Counsel David Weiss, who was appointed US Attorney by indicted felon Donald Trump.  “Ah, um, might’ve as well just appointed a member of the Biden crime family, ah, to run the investigation.  Basically we fear he’s just going to find evidence and destroy it rather than prosecute.  When I talk to constituents all over Ohio this summer, uh, they’re ready for a trial.  I mean, most of the folks I’ve talked to in my counties feel like there’s enough for a conviction in any one of our counties.”

Without evidence, Davidson baselessly accuses David Weiss, an attorney who has never been accused of tampering with evidence or found to have acted unethically in any of his prosecutions.  This is all the GOP has to run on:  slanders and lies. 

Further evidence that the Fulton County, Georgia grand jury’s probe is going far beyond previously-indicted felon Donald Trump:  MSNBC reports two key witnesses who heard hair dye dispenser and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s December 2020 presentation on overturning the 2020 election were seen entering the Fulton County courthouse Monday morning.

Former state representative Bee Nguyen and former state senator Jen Jordan both sat in on briefings by lawyers representing Trump who asserted to the Georgia legislature that there was massive fraud in the state’s 2020 vote count–but only for the presidential race.  They’re expected to testify about the presentation and their other independent findings about the falsity of the stolen election claim.

Besides witnessing Giuliani’s presentation and hearing the coup plan, Jordan ran into a number of fraudulent Republican electors in the Capitol on December 14th as they enacted their plan.  Nguyen went even further to debunk the Trump camp’s claims:  she pored over the list of votes Giuliani et al claimed were fraudulent, finding the names of her relatives and personal friends on the list.  She further investigated, interviewing others on the list, finding their votes and voter registration were valid.

The IRS has a continuity policy on their website that details how they will continue to collect taxes if a nuclear attack happens on US soil.

The IRS literally wouldn’t stop taxing us if the entire country was nuked to pieces.

Let that sink in.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) August 14, 2023

In what is the clearest demonstration of why her food poisoning factory disguised as a gun showroom shuttered, Marjorie Taylor Green’s “little bitch” Lauren Boebert (LB²) took to Twitter Monday morning to complain about competent government agencies planning to continue to operate after an emergency.  The Republican Colorado Congresswoman and wannabe social media sensation was thankfully not in office 2001, because she would have surrendered on 9/12.

“I am reading reports that failed former Lt Governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, will be testifying before the Fulton County Grand Jury. He shouldn’t. I barely know him but he was, right from the beginning of this Witch Hunt, a nasty disaster for those looking into the Election Fraud that took place in Georgia. He refused having a Special Session to find out what went on, became very unpopular with Republicans (I refused to endorse him!), and fought the TRUTH all the way. A loser, he went to FNCNN!” writes disgraced former President Trump on Truth Social (just after yet another screaming meltdown about DA Fani Willis). It’s not clear if this would violate his pretrial conditions in DC, since as far as we know Duncan’s only a witness in Georgia. Certainly can’t be helping though.

Former Second Lady Karen Pence tells ABC News she “never felt afraid” while she was in the Capitol on January 6th while thousands of murderous Trump fans attacked the building seeking to literally lynch her husband Mike for refusing to unilaterally overturn the 2020 election.

“I just was discussing this with someone here in Iowa a few minutes ago, I never felt afraid. I really felt like we just had such a peace and God’s presence,” said Karen, who appears to understand that it’s a political liability with GOP primary voters to acknowledge that they showed up that day fully intent on killing her entire family for betraying the Orange God Emperor.

Far right fascist with shitty hair and Trump admirer Javier Milei on Sunday scored the highest share of votes in Argentina’s presidential primary election, a “political earthquake” all but certainly dooming the hyperinflation-wracked and deeply dysfunctional country to being led by a Bolsonaro-endorsed psychopath who openly supports selling children and organs, the BBC reports.

“We are the true opposition, we are the only ones who want a real change, because remember, a different Argentina is impossible with the same old people, with the same old people who have always failed, with the same old people who have been failing for 100 years,” said Milei, a former TV host campaigning on a promise to abolish the Ministry of Women and the Argentine peso.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s regime on Monday reached an important symbolic milestone in the quest to destroy their economy as the ruble is now worth less than one American penny, and trading at 101 to $1 on the foreign exchange markets, Financial Times reports, while spelling it “rouble.”

Marion County Record publisher Eric Meyer tells Axios that the police raid on the office of his paper and his home – the stress of which literally killed his 98 year-old mother – is headed to a federal judge soon as it was a clear violation of laws prohibiting search warrants on journalists.

“I believe when the rest of the story is available to the public, the judicial system that is being questioned will be vindicated,” said Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody, who sounds kind of scared.

Staying true to their brand of never letting a tragedy go to waste, the sick fucks of MAGA Nation over the past few days have begun “baking” a sinister agenda behind the horrific firestorm that killed at least 96 people and incinerated the historic town of Lahaina, Hawaii last week.

Their new fantasy? A mashup remix of the Jewish space lasers wiped out Paradise, California this time starring perennial QAnon villain Oprah Winfrey. “⚠️ Oprah Winfrey Has Been Buying Up Land in Maui Like Crazy ⚠️ 🚨 520-acre plot for $3.89 million (2023) 🚨 330 acres for $2.47 million (2023) 🚨 Two 10-acre swaths of land for $100,000 each (2022) IN THE LAST FEW YEARS SHE HAS GONE FROM ABOUT 100 ACRES OF LAND IN MAUI TO OVER 1000 ACRES! Then All of A Sudden Out of Nowhere A Fire Comes And Destroys Many Homes Near Her But Her Land Remains Untouched! SOUND FAMILIAR?!?!?!” tweeted conspiracy dickhead @MattWallace888 on Sunday.

“Let’s see if we can’t get ‘Directed Energy Weapon’ to TREND!!!” wrote @TPV_John with a meme of Oprah holding a laser gun and beams of fiery energy coming down from the sky on the scene of the fire saying “DON’T WANT TO SELL YOUR BEACHFRONT PROPERTY TO BLACKROCK? EVERYBODY GETS A DIRECT ENERGY WEAPON BLAST!” These people are fucking assholes.

Fat former President Trump went off Monday on DC federal Judge Tanya Chutkan, trying to portray her as “biased” by, in his words, posting her words as she was “angrily sentencing a J-6er in October of 2022. She obviously wants me behind bars. VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!”

The disgraced loser also shrieked about special counsel Jack Smith, writing “How dare lowlife prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, break into my former Twitter account without informing me and, indeed, trying to completely hide this atrocity from me. What could he possibly find out that is not already known. Just like the early morning raid of Mar-a-Lago! Why isn’t the DOJ raiding Crooked Joe Biden, the most CORRUPT (and Incompetent!) President in the history of the United States?”

Officials now say 93 people have been confirmed killed in the wildfire on Maui, making it the deadliest wildfire in the United States since 1918, CNN reports.  As of Sunday m0rning, only two of the victims who have been found in the wake of the fire spreading through the western side of the island have been identified, with officials saying identifications will take time, while also stressing more fatalities are expected.

Locals who have lost housing in the fire are pushing hotels across the island close to full occupancy as people scatter for shelter.  More than 2,200 structures were destroyed in the fire, with 80% of them estimated to be residential units.  Nearly 1,500 people are staying in public shelters.

Speaking at the Iowa State Fair on Sunday, Democratic presidential nomination longshot Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said he would support a federal ban on abortion after the 15th week of pregnancy, Politico reports.  “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life,” but also said: “Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child.”

Trump advisor Peter Navarro, a possible “Co-conspirator 6” in Donald Trump’s federal indictment in DC–doesn’t it suck for you when people have to specify which active indictment of yours they’re discussing?–will have his trial on two contempt of Congress charges start September 5th, the day after Labor Day, Judge Amit Mehta ruled.