A backer of child trafficking-themed and Trump-promoted QAnon fan film Sound of Freedom was arrested late last month on charges of child kidnapping in Missouri, Newsweek reports, while forcing National Zero to do the homework and determine that they really fucking oversold their headline.

The film, starring Q-pilled maniac former headliner Jim Caviezel as a fictional version of real-life anti-trafficking activist Tim Ballard, was completed in 2018 and set to be distributed by 20th Century Fox’s Latin American subsidiary, only to be shelved when Disney bought the Fox entertainment properties from the Murdochs. The filmmakers bought the movie back from Lord Mouse but needed a distribution deal to get it into theaters, a lengthy search exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In came the Christian-themed Angel Studios, who crowdfunded the $5 million from its “Angel Guild” of 100,000+ group of small investors, who overwhelmingly approved Sound of Freedom‘s message and got it released this year. Among those was 51 year-old Fabian Marta of Chesterfield, Missouri, who apparently kicked in enough get a spot in the ending credits as “Fabian Marta and family.”

Three Montana women were hospitalized Wednesday after one, possibly two, otters attacked the group as they floated by on inner tubes on the Jefferson River in Gallatin County, KCFW reports.

One of the women was so severely bitten in the face and arms during the altercation with the angry little bastard (or bastards) that she had to be airlifted to Bozeman for treatment. The other two were transported to the same facility by land. Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials told KCFW the aquatic mustelids typically give birth in spring and by later in the summer can be seen out and about with their adorable little babies, which often precipitates such contentious encounters when the otters perceive a threat, so people are urged to give them plenty of space.

The Florida Education Commission sent a letter to all superintendents in the state backing away from its previous demand that no LGBTQ subjects be taught in AP Psychology courses, USA Today reports.

To comply with the culture war started by Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the state Education Department sent a letter to superintendents informing them that LGBTQ topics must be removed from all educational materials, including the AP Psychology courses.  That move caused the College Board to decertify those classes being taught in Florida.

However, on Friday, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. sent a letter to those same superintendents saying, “In fact, the Department believes that AP Psychology can be taught in its entirety in a manner that is age and developmentally appropriate and the course remains listed in our course catalog.”

Donald Trump filed a formal plea of not guilty with the federal court in Florida concerning the three additional charges added in the superseding indictment to the Florida federal prosecution regarding his theft of classified documents, Politico reports.  He also waived his right to be present at the arraignment on the additional charges scheduled for August 10th.

Federal District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, DC wants a little clarity from professionally-neutered Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a.k.a. “Co-conspirator 1,” who filed paperwork last month effectively admitting he said defamatory statements against Fulton County election workers Shae Moss and Ruby Freeman.

It’s a curious filing in the case, given that Moss and Freeman are suing Giuliani for defamation.  Admitting both that he made that statements and that the statements were false and defamatory is an unusual defense strategy, so Howell wants Giuliani to either explicitly state that he is knowingly admitting that all the substantive claims Moss and Freeman allege are true, thereby moving to an immediate default judgment for the plaintiffs, or submit a statement explaining exactly what the fuck he meant when he stipulated to every element of proof needed to prove the case against him.

Again, although it’s unusual for a defendant to admit they committed the offense they’re accused of, it’s not unusual:  Two of Donald Trump’s lawyers did it multiple times yesterday in a federal criminal case.

Forget how cartoonishly “Mob”-by the missive is. These nine words constitute a threat to multiple prosecutors, and they encapsulate exactly why Donald Trump is running for president again: not because he wants to serve the public, but because he wants to power of the federal government to exact revenge on his perceived enemies.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a new Connecticut law that would essentially abolish religious exemptions for school vaccination requirements while upholding medical exemptions, the Hartford Courant reports.

Citing Supreme Court precedents that allow states to set their own vaccination requirements for education, the federal court panel upheld the 2021 state law that required all children enrolling in school to have a slate of inoculations as necessary during the coronavirus pandemic.  While the judges unanimously agreed that Connecticut had the constitutional authority to enact the vaccine regulation, the panel sent back to the lower court a portion of the case about the requirement for special-needs students to get vaccinated that related to how the opinion defined “special needs” and “special education” student.

“Connecticut’s decision to eliminate a religious exemption while permitting a medical exemption to the vaccine requirements undervalues the role of religious belief in American life and is irrational,” Norm Pattis, attorney for one of the plaintiff groups, We the Patriots, said. “As the good book says: ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?’.”

After indicted conservative multi-shirt aficionado Steve Bannon started calling for a Republican primary challenger to take out firebrand GOP Georgia Congresswoman and conservative missing link Marjorie Taylor Greene, indicted former president Donald Trump and accused sex trafficker Matt Gaetz intervened to put an end to the effort, the Daily Beast reports.

Bannon expressed frustration and exasperation with Marge during the disastrous Speaker vote in which she came out in support of milquetoast Kevin McCarthy.  Both Gaetz and Trump contacted Bannon to instruct him to lay off the QAnon-supporting Georgian, pointing to the seemingly insurmountable support she has in her district, where she got 65% of the vote in the midterms after winning the primary with 70%.

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opponent to President Vladimir Putin who was sentenced to nearly a decade in prison for challenging Putin in the last election after surviving an assassination attempt by the Kremlin, was sentenced to an additional 19 years of incarceration and moved to a harsher penal colony, Politico reports.

Navalny was tried in what he described as a “sham trial” for supporting extremists movements in Russia–essentially, anything that challenges Putin’s absolute power–and given a “Stalinist” sentence for voicing opposition to Putin and continuing to hail demonstrations against the Kremlin.   Per the prosecution’s instructions, Navalny will be transferred to a prison colony, where he will be further isolated from leaders of his now-banned political party.  Human rights advocates fear Navalny may face violence at the hands of prison gangs loyal to Putin.

Already frail after surviving being poisoned by polonium in 2020 and seeking treatment in Germany, Navalny continued his political advocacy when he returned to Russia in January 2021 and was promptly jailed for just voicing his opinions against the Putin regime.

The Chinese city of Zhouzhou, with a population over 700,000 and located about fifty miles south of Beijing, flooded following heavy downpours and the failure of multiple nearby levees, but the event that put parts of the city 23 feet underwater was the opening of floodgates on dams to save the Chinese capital, the New York Times reports.

Zhouzhou was one of scores of cities, towns and villages around Beijing that was intentionally flooded by officials to spare Beijing from damage.  Officials forced one million people to evacuate with just hours of notice before opening up floodgates and spillways to alleviate the pressure after nearly two-and-a-half feet of rain fell on parts of Beijing over the previous week.  Social media chatter on Chinese sites shows people searching for hundreds, if not thousands, of friends and relatives still missing, with many fearing their loved ones did not make it out of the flood zone before officials opened the gates.

A key goal of the plan was to reopen the Beijing Daxing Airport, a massive complex with five runways.  By Monday, planes at the airport had to transit through water that covered their landing gear tires, making some of the airport inoperable.  “Ensure the absolute safety of key defense targets such as Xiong’an New Area and Beijing Daxing Airport,” Li Guoying, China’s minister of water resources, ordered on Tuesday.

President Biden will designate approximately one million acres of land around the Grand Canyon in Arizona as a national monument as a way to protect revered Native American lands and hold off uranium mining in the area, the Washington Post reports.

The area, to be designated the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni Grand Canyon National Monument, sits north of Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park approaching the Utah border to the north and the Colorado River to the east.  The Havasupai, Hopi and other tribes in the region have lobbied for the protection of the lands, saying the territory was part of the land their tribes would travel during nomadic periods.

The Obama Administration has put a 20-year moratorium on mining for uranium on the land in 2012, but the Trump cabal ignored that order and attempted to selling uranium mining rights on the land in 2020, a move that was blocked by internal administration officials as well as outside groups threatening lawsuits.  Advocates called on Biden to strengthen protections for the land, providing permanent blocks on mining.

Footage purportedly shows a Ukrainian naval drone overnight attack on the Russian amphibious attack vessel Olenegorsky Gornyak, damaging it so severely it caused a breach in one of its compartments, causing the ship to list to port severely. Ukrainian forces say the attack by the unmanned drone in Novorossiysk, a Russia port on the Black Sea.

A new ABC News/Ipsos survey finds a plurality – 49 percent – of respondents think disgraced former President Trump should drop out of the 2024 presidential race after he was hit with four new felonies over his failed post-2020 election coup attempt, while 36 percent say he shouldn’t.

Nearly two-thirds – 65 percent – said the charges listed in Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s newest indictment are “serious” – among them 51 percent who said “very serious” versus 24 percent who said they were not – among those 17 percent who said “not serious at all.”

And in our favorite-est flavor of sample overlap, 46 percent of respondents once again said the charges were “politically motivated,” meaning an indeterminate but certainly non-zero number of people think the fat fuck deserves it no matter what, even if “politics” is a factor in the case.

Shitty MAGA federal Judge Aileen Cannon, who of course ended up with her boss, disgraced former President Trump’s upcoming federal espionage act violation and obstruction of justice trial, very nearly blew a case against the owner/operator of a child pornography site by refusing to allow defendant William Spearman’s mother and sister to sit in the courtroom during the jury selection process, a pretty blatant violation of his Sixth Amendment right to a public trial, Reuters reports.

Cannon also stupidly forgot to swear the jurors in. It was only because the defendant agreed to a “conditional” plea deal with the prosecution while the selection process was still ongoing that prevented an eventual guilty verdict from being overturned because of the dipshit judge’s conduct.

A new CNN/SSRS survey finds 55 percent of respondents saying “the United States has already done enough to stop Russian military actions in Ukraine” versus 45 percent saying “the United States should do more,” a troubling shift in public opinion that will no doubt be seized upon by the Kremlin in their propaganda and their many loyal friends in the Republican Party here at home.

The Supreme Court of India on Friday dealt a blow to dictator Narendra Modi’s regime by by suspending opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi’s bullshit slander conviction, voiding for now at least his two year prison sentence and restoring him to his seat in parliament as well as his eligibility to continue running for public office in next year’s elections, Reuters reports.

Gandhi was convicted in March on the charges brought by a Modi minion in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), over comments he made in 2019 deemed insulting to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other people surnamed Modi, including the lawmaker, also named Modi. It’s not clear if this is the final say, but for the time being Gandhi is a free man and can get back to work.

Despite being founded by a millennial, National Zero isn’t really into covering the avocado toast-SoulCycle-NFT-blockchain-whatever bullshit. Mostly because of stereotypical millennials like the woman above, Heather Morgan aka “Razzlekhan,” a white female rapper and “fintech” entrepreneur who just… Like this isn’t satire, she was by all accounts taking herself seriously as an artist.

But the story has a happy ending as Morgan and her husband, Ilya “Dutch” Liechtenstein, on Thursday pleaded guilty to hacking into a bitcoin depository and stealing $4.5 billion of the digital pretend money that their particularly odious subspecies of millennial douchebags love so much.

The College Board, the organization that produces Advanced Placement courses and SAT tests, announced that Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’s anti-LGBTQ policies have effectively negated the ability to certify AP Psychology classes in the state.

“We are sad to have learned that today the Florida Department of Education has effectively banned AP Psychology in the state by instructing Florida superintendents that teaching foundational content on sexual orientation and gender identity is illegal under state law. The state has said districts are free to teach AP Psychology only if it excludes any mention of these essential topics,” the College Board said in a statement.

The organization went on to say that because of the DeSantis-demanded requirements banning discussion of LGBTQ issues in classrooms mean that the course cannot be taught to the level required for college credits, the Board recommends removing the course from the available curriculum until the state revoke the DeSantis dictum.

Newest Trump attorney admits on two different Trump-friendly shows that Trump is guilty.  What John Lauro describes is quite literally what Trump was charged with in count two of his indictment, “Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding.” His fucking lawyer just admitted it on national television. Well actually this was the second time he did it. The first time was on Frau Ingraham’s show, the second on some Newsmax crap.