Republican GOP hopeful and candidate hoping the Base doesn’t target people with androgynous names next Nikki Haley became the first Republican of note, either officeholder or not, to castigate Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville for the latter’s Senatorial holds on scores of military officers’ promotions.

“For my husband who’s serving overseas, and for all those military men and women, the idea that this is what they’re looking back and seeing, and this is what they are dealing with on top of the stresses of keeping themselves safe and being away from their families, it’s wrong,” Haley said on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show, according to ABC News.  “They’re, you know, dangling these promotions out there and using them as fodder.”

Tuberville has put a hold on flag and senior officers for a Pentagon announcement that it would reimburse members of the military and their families who have to travel to obtain a safe abortion where the procedure is legal; it’s the same policy for any medical procedure.  A self-declared pro-lifer, Tuberville’s protest has resulted in the first vacancy at the head of the Marines in a century and a vacancy at the chairmanship for the Joint Chief of Staff.

The Hawaiian community of Lahaina was described as “like a war zone” after wildfires swept through the community of 13,000 people on the northwest portion of Maui.  Six people were confirmed killed.  Some accounts told of residents jumping into the ocean to flee the fast-moving fire.  Hundreds of residents and tourists were sheltering at a local high school, while thousands more are seeking shelter at other locations around the island.

Besides each having religiously-led dictatorial regimes hellbent on demonizing people who don’t strictly conform to their specific interpretation of their scriptures, Iran and Florida have other things in common, like hellish temperatures.  With coastal waters hovering close to the 100ºF mark as happened at its North American counterpart, Iran is seeing the heat index in some areas reach 158ºF, nearing the calculated maximum for human tolerance.

According to the Washington Post, the spike in Iran’s coastal areas is largely due to sharp increases in temperatures in the Persian Gulf, which have been stuck in the 90ºF range for weeks, an unusually long time for such a streak.  Surface water temperatures, measured via satellites, reached 97.6ºF, the highest seen in the 20-year record.

German political pundits are abuzz with salacious gossip after it was revealed that the Berlin government has paid €55,000 (~$60,000) for hairstyling and make-up for former Chancellor Angela Merkel since she left office in 2021, Politico reports.  Merkel gets reimbursed for such costs because she is frequently called on to attend events in her official capacity as the former leader of the European leader.

By comparison, recent FEC filings show Donald Trump’s publicly funded attempt to stay out of prison is spending $600 per day for a hairstylist for Melania Trump, who makes no official appearances and does not participate in events in her role as a candidate’s wife, a defendants’s spouse or as a former third First Lady.  That’s $108,000 in the first six months of the year.  The cost was written off as “strategy consulting” by the campaign that is struggling with less than $6 million cash in its coffers.

Hey, no sympathy here for Craig Roberton, the Utah man killed by FBI agents who wanted to question him about threats against the President of the United States Robertson made online prior to Joe Biden’s trip to the state.

Robertson was questioned previously by law enforcement about posts he made on Facebook, including one that read, “In my dream I see Joe Biden’s body in a dark corner of a DC garage with his head severed and lying in a huge pool of blood.  Hoorah!!!”  In September, he posted, “The time is right for a presidential assassination or two. First Joe then Kamala!!!”  Y’know:  free speech.

After the initial FBI interview harassment, Robertson posted, “Hey, FBI, you still monitoring my social media? Checking so I can be sure to have a loaded gun handy in case you drop by again.” On Monday, Robertson posted that he heard Biden was coming to Utah, saying it was time to “clean the dust off the m24 sniper rifle.”

Well, the FBI did drop by again after Robertson continued to make escalating threats against Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and others.  And Robertson did apparently have a loaded gun handy.  He did just what the Republicans have been telling their followers to do:  fight the FBI.  Fight law enforcement.  They’re coming for your rights.  They are the enemy.  It did not end well for him, as it won’t for others who follow similar beliefs. 

A 22-page statement by a whistleblower within the FBI to the Senate Judiciary Committee alleges that an agent’s supervisors instructed him to shut down his investigations into Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies last year, Insider reports.  The account is tenuous and sketchy, but should be addressed solely because of the feeding frenzy of rightwing politicians to exaggerate events for political benefit.

Set aside the source, which sometimes features questionable reporting.  The story, as told, is that an 14-year FBI agent who specialized in Russian-language operations was told in 2022 to back off investigating Giuliani and Trump allies.  The report notes that the agent got “excellent” or “outstanding” reviews from 2010 to 2018 and that he was part of the team that supported the Mueller investigations.

However, the story also notes that the agent was told to back away from the investigations relating to Giuliani et al in a meeting regarding the agent’s performance.  Here’s where some Columbo-ing comes in:  he stopped getting superlative job reviews five years ago.  He was told not to work on politically- and historically-significant investigations, but he wasn’t told the investigations into those people were closed.  Sounds more like a disciplinary issue rather than political cover-up.  But who knows what Jim Jordan will make of this.

The GOP is a Party of projection.  Nearly two years ago to the day after being arrested for child sex trafficking, a major GOP donor federal prosecutors likened to notorious Donald Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein–not because of the money part but because of the pimping part–was sentenced to 21 years in prison for child sex trafficking charges.

Anton “Tony” Lazzaro would groom girls around 14- or 15-years-old with gifts, alcohol and money and then lure them into sexual relations.  One prosecutor likened Lazzaro’s operation to a sex “trafficking assembly line.”  In the sentencing, Judge Patrick Schiltz noted Lazzaro showed no remote and exhibited sympathy for only two people:  himself and Jeffrey Epstein.

Lazzaro was a major funder for GOP candidates in his home state of Minnesota as well as Republican candidates across the country.  His arrest and the subsequent disclosure led to the dismissal of the head of Minnesota’s Republican Party, who was a close friend and ally of Lazzaro.

It’s like putting a convicted pedophile in charge of a nursery school.  Or letting a drunk driver drive the bus.  Or denying meeting with Russians when your son admits to meeting with Kremlin representatives.  They’re just foolish and dangerous things.  So, too, is what Donald Trump’s lawyers just proposed to Judge Aileen Cannon, so that obviously doesn’t mean she’ll reject it.

See, Donald Trump–who’s indicted on forty federal charges relating to mishandling classified documents, including charges that he flouted standard practice regarding classified material by showing it to other unauthorized people and leaving the documents unsecured–has asked the court to allow him to construct a SCIF–a secured compartmentalized information facility–on his open-to-the-public supper club at Mar-a-Lago, claiming to facilitate the defense preparation in his case.

“President Trump respectfully requests that the Proposed CIPA Protective Order be modified to approve re-establishment of a secure facility in which President Trump was permitted previously to discuss (and review2 ) classified information during his term as President of the United States,” the request reads.  Because, sure, let a man who has admitted to possessing classified documents without authorization and has even bragged about it in recorded discussions, should be trusted this time.

A Utah man who had made threats against President Joe Biden and others was killed in a shootout with FBI agents when officials went to investigate the threats, ABC News reports. The unidentified man had been making threats online since April, but only recently had the FBI determined that he had elevated his threats to include comments about taking action on them.

FBI agents attempted to detain the man in the early morning hours at his Provo, Utah home, but he resisted leading to agents having to use fatal force.  Few details are available.

With his latest move to suspend Monique Worrell, the elected prosecutor for Florida’s 9th Circuit which encompasses Orange and Osceola Counties, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, a man desperately trying to tread water in a failing presidential campaign, has removed two of the three Black prosecutors Florida voters put into office in the last election cycle.

Florida has 20 judicial districts.  After the last election, three state attorneys races were won by Black candidates, all Democrats:  Andrew Warren in the 13th Circuit, Monique Worrell in the 9th , and Harold F. Pryor in the 17th.  DeSantis removed Warren and replaced him with a white woman.  He replaced Worrell with Andrew Bain, a Black Federalist Society judge DeSantis appointed to the 9th Circuit in 2020 who was previously better known for his time on the Florida A&M football team.  Worrell, a liberal, won her position with two-thirds of the vote;  Bain, a conservative, has no public support.

In a leaked memo from the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, James Comer’s staff asserts that it doesn’t have to prove Joe Biden or any specific Biden family member were paid to attempt to influence foreign policy, relying simply on the specter of impropriety, not evidence of corruption, to provide a reason for impeachment.

“President Biden’s defenders purport a weak defense by asserting the Committee must show payments directly to the President to show corruption,” the memo states.  “This is a hollow claim no other American would be afforded if their family members accepted foreign payments or bribes. Indeed, the law recognizes payments to family members to corruptly influence others can constitute a bribe.”

Without noting that the GOP is led by a man who has 20-foot gold letters spelling out his name adorning buildings he manages and who put his name on everything from a defunct bottled tap water product to a bankrupt airline, the memo also notes that Hunter Biden was pushing “the [Biden] brand” to make money.  It also claims that simply because “millions of dollars have come into the Biden family’s bank accounts from foreign sources,” corruption must be implied without noting that Donald Trump, while president, collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from China personally and had a previously undisclosed bank account in the Asia nation.

UPDATE 12:59 p.m. ET:  Okay, readers, this is a rare time when we have to completely refocus a story as new information came in.  CNN reports that one of the key points of the search warrant applied for by the Special Counsel’s office for Twitter was that the prosecutors “found reason to believe that the former President would ‘flee from prosecution,'” although it later said it “errantly included flight from prosecution as a predicate’ in its application,” noted in a footnote.  Prosecutors also “found that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that disclosing the warrant to former President Trump ‘would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation’ by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates.”

Original story:  After Elon Musk made his $44 billion impulse buy, Twitter was fined $350,000 for failing to comply with a search warrant from Special Counsel Jack Smith to turn over information about Donald Trump’s Twitter account, Politico reports.

What additional information Smith may get from Twitter–other than the already-publicly available posts (including those he deleted) made by the indicted court-designated rapist–is unknown, but given rumors that Smith is investigating fundraising efforts based on a false claim of fighting election fraud, the posts soliciting donations would be key to a future probe.

Republicans’, um, dedication to governing leaves a lot to be desired.  From failing to reveal any relevant evidence justifying the multitude of hearings about impeaching Hunter Biden, to LB² Lauren Boebert being embarrassingly lying about missing a vote because she was too busy doing social media posts (but claiming she didn’t vote as a protest against overspending Socialist, Marxist, LGBTQ people or somesuch nonsense), to Ted Cruz’s famous vacation to Cancun when he abandoned his dog in a heat-less house during a winter power outage not to mention abandoning his constituents, Republican leadership is lacking.

But nothing is more embarrassing than calling a hearing in which you claim Constitution-rattling information about bribery of the President of the United States would be disclosed… but you don’t bother to show up.  And that’s where Republican House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer sits now.  Having skipped the hearing where Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer was supposed to blow the lid off the Biden Crime Family [Spoiler alert:  he didn’t], Comer is now in damage control mode.

According to the Daily Beast, Comer is now claiming he participated in the hearing via conference call.  It’s an unusual claim for the committee chairman, given that during the hearing he wasn’t heard making a single comment or asking a single question.  And it’s even more curious given that all the participants in the hearing–even members who participated via video calls–are listed on the hearing minutes; Comer is not listed as attending the July 31st closed-door hearing.

In a rare appearance in Florida, GOP presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis returned to his gubernatorial job momentarily from his flailing White House campaign to announce he removed another elected Black district attorney for a bogus reason.  After DeSantis’s announcement, his subject takes to the mic to lambast the decision done to boost DeSantis’s cred among racist, misogynist right wingers who don’t believe the law applies to them–particularly when the law is enforced by a non-white, non-male prosecutor.

Having already removed Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren for, DeSantis claims, failing to protect the citizens of the county for refusing to waste county resources on prosecuting minor crimes, DeSantis now goes after Monique Worrell, the elected prosecutor for Florida’s 9th Circuit which encompasses Orange and Osceola Counties.

DeSantis originally cited the shooting of two Orange County police officers by a suspect who was out on bail as the justification for removing Worrell, citing complaints from local law enforcement officers–overwhelmingly white and male–who claim Worrell is responsible for releasing the criminal.  In fact, as in most of the United States, a judge set the defendant’s conditions of bail, not the prosecutor.

Even though the state Department of Education stated that it would authorize teaching the course in its entirety, eight of Florida’s eleven largest school districts have pulled AP Psychology from its course curriculum, leaving more than 28,000 students without a clear class plan days before the school year starts, the Washington Post reports.

Republican Florida Governor and the Ernst Röhm of the current conservative culture war Ron DeSantis demands Florida schools don’t teach subjects to students that make their straight, white, self-declared Christian parents feel uncomfortable, like slavery, gender studies, and literature.  According to the College Board, a vital part of the AP Psychology curriculum is a study of how sex and gender influence society and personal development; without that subject address, the College Board would not certify the AP course.

More than 560 schools in Florida taught the AP Psychology class, but because of DeSantis’s authoritative dicta, schools are dropping the class, for which students can save money by getting college credits.  Because of the DeSantis administration’s habit of changing policy talking points based on the political winds, school districts refuse to believe the state’s education officials about their consent to carry the course, fearful that the state’s top undersized autocrat will again change his direction in the future.  Schools are switching to seminar courses on psychology or other college-level course curricula, which may not provide the opportunity to gain college credit.

Super-senior Democratic California Senator Dianne Feinstein was hospitalized briefly after a “minor fall” in her San Francisco home, but she is currently recovering at home, CBS News reports.  “Senator Feinstein briefly went to the hospital yesterday afternoon as a precaution after a minor fall in her home. All of her scans were clear and she returned home,” her office said in a statement Wednesday.

The 90-year-old is under pressure to resign after a bout of shingles kept her from her duties in Washington for weeks earlier this year, and she’s been recorded receiving significant help and prompting from her staff as she conducted her official duties.

An in-depth review by Reuters finds that of 14 fatal political attacks committed since the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection identified as having a clear left-right partisan dimension to them, 13 of their perpetrators were right wingers. The one they identified as “Left wing” was Clark County, Nevada Public Administrator Robert Telles, which we’re not sure we agree with because is it really “politically motivated” if a public official stabs a journalist to death for exposing his corruption?

Anyway at least 33 people have been killed in politically-motivated MAGA scumbags in the last two-and-a-half years since the Capitol riot, 10 of them the Black victims of white supremacist shithead Payton Gendron in the May 2022 Tops Supermarket massacre in Buffalo, New York.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s 2024 presidential campaign has hired a debate coach, ABC News reports on the saddest political news you will read all day. Seriously he hired a “coach” to prep him for the upcoming debate against a bunch of scrubs like Nimrata “Nikki” Haley and Doug Burgum after he already twice won the highest office in the nation’s fourth largest state. Jesus Christ lol.

In related news, the short little bastard has suspended another duly elected prosecutor, this time it’s Orange-Osceola State’s Attorney Monique Worrell, per the Orlando Sentinel’s Chris Cann. No details were available yet, but it’s probably over abortion or education or some culture war bullshit again.

After having ignored strategists’ advice and stupidly said the now-failed Issue 1 effort to make participatory democracy more difficult for Ohio voters was specifically about blocking the expansion of abortion rights in the state, GOP Secretary of State and declared US Senate candidate Frank LaRose omitted it from his statement on the crushing defeat of his flagship campaign initiative.

“I’m grateful that nearly 1.3 million Ohioans stood with us in this fight, but this is only one battle in a long war. Unfortunately, we were dramatically outspent by dark money billionaires from California to New York, and the giant ‘for sale’ sign still hangs on Ohio’s constitution. Ohioans will see the devastating impact of this vote soon enough. The radical activists that opposed Issue 1 are already planning amendments to shut parents out of a child’s life-altering medical procedure, force job killing wage mandates on small businesses, prevent law abiding citizens from protecting their families and remove critical protections for our first responders. I’ve said for months now that there’s an assault coming on our constitution, and that hasn’t changed. I’m just getting started in the fight to protect Ohio’s values,” said LaRose in the statement after Issue 1 went down in flames Tuesday night.

“This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution,” LaRose told reporters in June after GOP polling firm OnMessage had specifically told him not to do it.