In the first town hall meeting since he was one of sixteen “false electors” charged by Michigan’s Attorney General, Wyoming, Michigan mayor Kent Vanderwood faced multiple calls for his resignation while he faces criminal charges, WOOD NBC-8 in Grand Rapids reports.

Each one of the sixteen false electors is facing eight counts, including forgery and a specific charge of election forgery, a count similar to election fraud.  The sixteen Trump supporters each signed a forged document claiming that they were the rightfully designated Michigan representative to the Electoral College assigned by the state legislature after the 2020 election representing the certified outcome of the election; that was a lie.  The group signed the forged document and submitted a copy to the National Archives asserting the legitimacy of the document, a potential federal felony.

“His name is on the paper. You cannot deny that. This is a stain on this city, a stain on our state, and we must get back to some type of decency and civility in our government,” said an unnamed person who spoke at the meeting said. “It resulted in an insurrection against our government. Five people lost their lives due to this action that is perpetrated against this country. Our mayor has to be held accountable for his part in that. Each of us must be accountable for our silence in that. I ask this mayor to resign.”

The Supreme Court stayed a ruling by a George W. Bush appointee that blocked an ATF rule about the unregulated manufacture of parts used to make “ghost guns,” homemade or shop-built parts that are used to manufacture unregistered and unregulated weapons by an individual, Steven Mazie of the Economist reports.

Plaintiffs in the case got Federal District Judge Reed O’Connor to block the ATF’s regulation of manufactured parts that are used to construct guns.  Challenging aspects of the Gun Control Act of 1968, the suit claimed that new federal authorities that regulate the manufacture, sale and distribution of gun parts is not covered in the 1968 law or its updates.  SCOTUS maintained ATF’s right to regulate those activities until it can hear the case itself.  In the 5-4 vote, Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch voted in the minority.

The teenage cousin of the perpetrator of the horrific 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when 22 were killed, threatened to murder his sister and then “do the same thing” his cousin had done, reports ABC News.   The 17-year-old, who was taken into custody for making terroristic threats, is reportedly on probation for an unspecified offense and he was allegedly intoxicated when he made the statements to his sister, according to affidavits from witnesses.

According to a recorded statement by the sister, the boy threatened to shoot her in the head and “stated that he would ‘shoot the school'” that was located across the street from the family’s home before adding ominously, “school is starting soon.”  It’s unclear if there were weapons in the house or if the teenager had access to the weapons.

Republicans in Ohio are already kind of resigned to the failure of Issue 1 at the polls on Tuesday, seeing massive early turnout a bad sign for the ballot measure engineered specifically to kneecap a November ballot measure guaranteeing abortion rights in the Buckeye State by raising the threshold for all future referenda to pass from 50 to 60 percent and increasing the number of counties from which signatures in ballot measure petition must be drawn, Punchbowl reports.

That more than 1.2 million Ohioans have already turned out for the single question August special election makes it pretty much a done deal to Republicans, and a not great sign for a leading proponent, Secretary of State and 2024 GOP Senate primary candidate Frank LaRose, who pushed hard for the pointless waste of taxpayer resources designed solely to make participatory democracy more difficult, especially with regard to abortion. “Frank LaRose has wrapped his arms around this issue and staked his entire political career. He has spent the entirety of the summer campaigning on this issue, to the detriment of his day job,” Ohio Dem Party Chair Elizabeth Walters told Punchbowl.

“If Issue 1 does not pass then a lot of things are at risk,” said credibly accused domestic abuser and fraud Congressman Max Miller. “Not only abortion but also gun ownership and possession, redistricting, education curriculum for our children and other big issues. All these things will be at risk because a simple majority will be able to fundamentally alter our constitution on a whim.”

Donald Trump’s string of stiffing municipalities and local governments for the massive bills accumulated by those agencies for his cult rallies continues, with the city of Pickens and Pickens County in South Carolina having to dip into their tourism budget to cover $30,000 in security costs for a July rally Trump’s campaign refuses to pay for, the Greenville News reports.

There are a number of outstanding claims from local governments against the Trump campaign for rallies Trump held but which never got paid for excess salaries for the police and civil servants who had to put in additional hours to accommodate Trump’s vanity events to placate his wounded ego.  Of 30 municipalities where Trump held rallies since the November 2020 election, only one–Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania–reported the Trump camp has no outstanding invoices for the rallies.

In Pickens County, however, things are a little more complicated.  Tight budgets caused the city of Pickens to pull back on their plan to sent $10,000 to the county to pay for costs.  Instead, the city is going to try to collect directly from the Trump campaign, a move some county officials want to piggyback on to save their valuable taxpayer funds. “If the city of Pickens is sending an invoice to the campaign to be reimbursed, it only makes sense to me that the county’s expenses should be billed to the city so that they can include that as part of their total invoice,” County Councilwoman Claiborne Linvill said, noting that setting the precedent of having taxpayers pay for security for all political rallies would end up being very costly.

Florida Republican Governor and floundering GOP presidential candidate has fired his campaign manager, Politico reports.  Generra Peck was fired from the campaign; Peck will now be a chief campaign strategist, not responsible for daily operations. With James Uthmeier, his chief of staff from the governor’s office, taking over the campaign.

Georgia Democrats Bee Nguyen and Jen Jordan–who, thankfully for her sake, is not related to sexual abuse misprisioner and suit coat avoider Jim Jordan–have been called to testify before the grand jury investigating the election interference attempt by Donald Trump and others, MSNBC producer Kyle Cheney reports.

The two Democrats were present during hearings where one-time lawyer and hair dye model Rudy Giuliani and others insurrection activists urged Georgia lawmakers to reject the certified results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, won by Joe Biden, to give the state to Donald Trump, contrary to the will of Georgia’s voters.

Casey Gannon of CNN reports that the Washington, DC federal special grand jury assembled by Special Counsel Jack Smith that handed down indictments for disgraced former president Donald Trump is again meeting Tuesday morning, a sign that its investigation into the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack is not over and more indictments–against Trump and others–may be in the offing.

Minyon Moore, the one-time CEO of the Democratic National Committee, was appointed to be the chair of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, another sign of the importance of Black women to the campaign of President Joe Biden, Politico reports.

The White House Political Director in the last two years of the Clinton Administration, Moore is a member of the DNC’s national committee and was a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton during her 2008 and 2016 campaigns. Many pundits credit her with securing Kamala Harris’s position as Vice President on the 2020 presidential ticket.

NOW WE HAVE PROOF! TGP EXCLUSIVE: Massive 2020 Voter Fraud Uncovered in Michigan – Police Find: TENS OF THOUSANDS of Fake Registrations, Bags of Pre-Paid Gift Cards, Guns with Silencers, Burner Phones, and a Democrat-Funded Organization with Multiple Tem… https://t.co/6eqOIrbA68

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) August 8, 2023

“Let’s see! My political Opponent, Crooked Joe Biden, tells Merrick Garland and the DOJ to indict and arrest me on bogus charges and accusations, trying desperately to steal the Election. But that wasn’t enough! He now wants Thug Prosecutor, Deranged Jack Smith, to file for a Court Order taking away my first amendment rights, SPEECH. So, based on yet another Radical Left Hoax, I’ll be the only ‘Politician’ in American history not allowed to SPEAK. THE NEVER ENDING WITCH HUNT CONTINUES. MAGA!” posted disgraced former President Trump on Truth Social early Tuesday, yet another in a long string of posts freaking out over the standard protective order prohibiting him from disclosing any grand jury material handed to his team in discovery ahead of trial on charges stemming from his failed attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.

It’s not clear precisely why this is still bothering the fat bastard so much. In the Mar-a-Lago case his lawyers didn’t do anything to oppose the same type of protective order set by federal Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart after a request from Jack Smith’s team. They bitched a little bit over the terms set by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the Stormy Daniels payoff case, calling it an “unprecedented and extraordinarily broad muzzle on a leading contender for the presidency,” but we can’t recall Trump himself ever really addressing it. Maybe it was that Smith’s team highlighted that batshit “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” post in their protective order request in the coup attempt case (but not asserting it was a violation one way or another) that irked the fat bastard so badly, like he’s extra upset over them using his own words against him.

So butthurt was Trump and/or his lawyers over that on Monday his lawyers alleged a Biden Campaign tweet with a silly “Dark Brandon” meme on a coffee mug as somehow being a “thinly-veiled reference to the indictment” in their motion opposing the terms of the protective order.

House Republicans have concluded that any “momentum” they had earlier this year for impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for something the border has been squandered by too much dicking around and not enough votes to make it actually happen, Politico reports.

The US Marshals service on Monday assigned additional officers to guard DC Circuit Judge Tanya S Chutkan as she prepares to oversee the apocalyptic case against disgraced former President Trump for his efforts to remain in power after his humiliating defeat in the 2020 election, CNN reports.

“Ensuring that judges can rule independently and free from harm or intimidation is paramount to the rule of law, and a fundamental mission of the USMS,” spokesman Drew Wade told CNN. “While we do not discuss our specific security measures, we continuously review the measures in place and take appropriate steps to ensure the integrity of the federal judicial process.” The Marshals did not cite to CNN any specific threats, but doing more to keep Chutkan safe as she prepares to oversee the case against the most dangerous terrorist leader in US history seems like a no-brainer.

It’s already been made clear the leader of the failed Maricopa County, Arizona “audit” and subsequently failed company “Cyber Ninjas” Doug Logan really doesn’t want people reading his correspondences with other “Stop the Steal” figures from the post-2020 election period as he’s been fighting in court for nearly two years to keep the private. What’s already been made public just makes him look like an asshole who had no idea what he was doing, like when he told an associate “It’s on my list to read through the Arizona election laws. I guess I should move that up on the list,” literally just days before he was officially hired by the Arizona state Senate to Maricopa “audit.”

Pretty embarrassing, but probably pretty short of criminal activity unless it somehow contradicted sworn testimony. His texts in January 2021 concerning the breach of a county clerk’s office in rural Georgia on the other hand are probably a little more on the “Oh shit I could end up in prison” side.

So we can get why Logan wants to continue fighting a public records lawsuit brought by the Arizona Republic for access to his texts. Maybe it’s the embarrassment factor as, per the Republic, Logan’s already been informed he won’t face charges in connection to the recent indictments brought against three (or more) of the MAGA assholes who possessed and tampered with a Dominion vote tabulator absconded from a town clerk’s office in the Great Lakes state, which happened around the same time he exchanged 2,400 texts with conspiracy freak defendant Stefanie Lambert – reportedly more than any other person – before, during, and after the Maricopa shitshow.

It’s not clear what Logan’s level of involvement was in the Michigan plot, but we would hazard the evidence fell short of getting caught on tape walking into a clerk’s office like he was during the January 2021 Coffee County, Georgia heist. So the texts with Lambert are likely at minimum embarrassing to Logan’s non-existent professional reputation. But if they’re not incriminating in Michigan then they might be interest to prosecutors in Georgia or even Arizona.

Surpassing 40,000 donors, Mike Pence reached the threshold needed to participate in the upcoming first Republican presidential debate, scheduled for August 23rd in Milwaukee, hosted by the Fox cable propaganda network.  Pence had already reached the other criterion:  having a pulse in the polls.

The other Republicans who have reached the requirements set by the RNC:  indicted felon Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis; South Carolina Senator not named Lindsey Graham Tim Scott; former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley; former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and political dilettante Vivek Ramaswamy.

Trump has not committed to participating, and given his multiple court proceedings, it’s possible he could have other plans, as dictated by a judge.  However, should he attend, it might be the first time Trump and Pence have been in the same venue at the same time since their last days in the White House.

An elite North Korean cyberwarfare team hacked into the computer systems of a Russian missile designer, gaining access to key plans for about five months, and apparently lifting design specs that helped boost its own missile program, Reuters reports.

Dubbed ScarCruft and Lazarus by cybersecurity experts, the North Korean teams were able to infiltrate the NPO Mashinostroyeniya defense technology company.  Months later, North Korea announced it has itself developed technologies for its missile systems similar to what NPO Mashinostroyeniya had.

The situation gets a little sticky when you consider Russia and North Korea are actively seeking ways to increase trade between the two countries.  North Korea needs food; Russia needs ammunition.  And they’ve already held high-level talks about increasing their trade.

“We will continue to follow the information wherever it takes us and provide it to the American public,” Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy tells Trump advisor Sean Hannity.  “The difference here is, we don’t do it for political purposes.  We follow the Constitution.  That’s exactly what was played out during the Nixon administration and Congress.  They voted to have an impeachment inquiry and I raised it on this show not long ga-go, that because of the actions of the Biden Administration withholding information that that would rise to the level w-we would need impeachment inquiry to give the strength of the Congress to get the information that we need to give to the American public and follow through on our Constitutional authority.  That is exactly what we’re doing and that is exactly what we’ll continue to do.”

According to a new filing in the case, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan has ordered the special counsel and Donald Trump’s lawyer to meet for a hearing in court sometime before the close of business on Friday, August 11th to determine the details of the protection order the government has asked for.

The Special Counsel’s office responded to Donald Trump’s attorneys’ response to its motion for a protective order covering information prosecutors will turn over to Trump’s team, stopping Trump from using it to intimidate witnesses, potential jurors, and court officers.  “On Sunday, August 6, defense counsel appeared on five television programs and discussed this case in detail, publicly commenting on topics including the parties’ disagreement over the protective order, the defense’s planned legal arguments, the defendant’s actions and statements during the charged conspiracies, and expected testimony of a prospective witness. For instance, regarding the protective order, defense counsel stated:”… and then listed five times when John Lauro stated he advocated to disclose information the Special Counsel’s office would release to Team Trump.

The defendant’s proposed order would lead to the public dissemination of discovery material. Indeed, that is the defendant’s stated goal; the defendant seeks to use the discovery material to litigate this case in the media. But that is contrary to the purpose of criminal discovery, which is to afford defendants the ability to prepare for and mount a defense in court—not to wage a media campaign. The Court should instead enter the Government’s proposed order. …

This District’s rules prohibit defense counsel from doing precisely what he has stated he intends to do with discovery if permitted: publicize, outside of court, details of this case, including the testimony of anticipated witnesses. Local Criminal Rule 57.7(b) provides that it is the duty of attorneys in criminal cases not to publicly disseminate “information or opinion” regarding, among other things, “[t]he existence or contents of any . . . statement given by the accused” or “[t]he identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses.” This is because such statements risk tainting the jury pool with inadmissible evidence or otherwise harming the integrity of these proceedings.

Frank Artiles, a one-time Republican Florida state senator, will go to trial next February for his scheme to run a sham third-party candidate to sway a state senate race after a judge wrapped up three years of the defendant’s delaying tactics, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

After Republican Ileana Garcia claimed a 32-vote victory upset against incumbent Democrat José Javier Rodríguez, Artiles said she won because he got the name of Alex Rodríguez, an auto parts salesman friend of Artiles who shares a last name with the incumbent and has the same name as a popular baseball player, on the ballot as an independent candidate to confuse voters.  It worked:  Alex Rodríguez took 6,200 votes even though he didn’t campaign or print a single yard sign.