George Chidi, an independent journalist who writes a local politics blog has received two separate subpoenas to testify before the Fulton County grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s election results, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. He’s been asked to testify sometime between August 7th and August 30th.

In the capitol on December 14th, 2020 to witness the official declaration of delegates by the state, Chidi recognizes some Republicans were meeting in a room down the hall.  With his camera recording, Chidi went into the room before being quickly ushered out; participants told him it was an “education meeting,” but later put a guard on the door to prevent anyone else from entering.  Later, they invited members of the media in to witness the signing ceremony.

However, the organization of the meeting is of interest to Willis and Special Counsel Jack Smith as a way to determine who the organizers of the event were and if they had assistance from organizations closer to Trump, like Rudy Giuliani. 

Monday was obviously very disappointing for the fanboys who were actually paying attention to the details of the news about former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer’s testimony to the House Oversight Committee. All that hype and bullshit telling them THIS would be the day that everything changed, that Joe Biden would be implicated in a vast influence peddling racket and exposed once and for all to voters as the ruthless kingpin of the “Biden Crime Family,” ended in yet another letdown gnawing at their already thin patience with the fucking clowns in the House GOP.

For those that didn’t read stories describing how Archer testified that Hunter Biden was merely ripping off these foreign scumbags by overpromising and non-delivering on an “illusion” of access to Washington, DC and not even Joe Biden himself (which, holy shit, that is really freaking heartbreaking for the MAGA kids), there’s Trump spinning it into “really bad news for Biden” but also that he’ll be indicted again, which is actually bad news for Trump. But that’s still kind of a “win” for the vast swaths of the deliberately ignorant and misinformed in Donald’s fanbase, right?

California’s newly-empowered state agency designated to oversee and guarantee citizens’ privacy rights in the digital world is taking on its first major investigation into how automobile manufacturers use and exploit the plethora of data they collect from so-called “smart” vehicles, the Washington Post reports.

The California Privacy Protection Agency will look at how manufacturers collect data; whether the consumer understands what data is collected; and what the manufacturers do with that data.  Created by the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, the CPPA gained the ability to direct its own investigations on July 1st.

The Agency is requesting information from manufacturers on what data is collected regarding the drivers and passengers, not just about where and when they travel, but any information collected from entertainment consoles and mobile phones that are collected to the onboard system.

“No one should really get hung up, as sometimes Republicans are wont to do, on whether sufficient proof exists to convict Joe Biden of a financial crime,” Trump advisor and lawyer Laura Ingraham claims.  “That’s irrelevant here.  If Biden had any brains, he would never have wanted fund to go directly to himself anyway.  It would be better if it all went to his son or brother or anyone in his family for that matter as long as it went to a Biden.”

Of course, this is “guilt by innuendo.”  Ingraham is setting the stage for Republicans to claim that *any* money going to *any* Biden from *any* foreign source is corrupt and means Joe Biden cannot be president.  And let’s not get started about Republicans need for “evidence” to prove a crime:  the titular leader of their Party literally admitted to crimes and they still think he’s innocent of… everything.

Very, very upset that the justice system should break down so horribly that a judge appointed by the titular head of their Party refused to accept a sloppily-written plea deal submitted by a US Attorney appointed by the titular head of their Party to close a five-year investigation started under the titular head of their Party and brought to fruition by his rightful successor, House Republicans now want to delve into just how incompetent the people Donald Trump appointed to office are.

Well, no.  That won’t be their aim, but GOP House committee chairs Jim Jordan, James Comer and Jason Smith–the House’s Three Card Monty–want to find out how a deal that potentially would have led to the shutdown of further investigations into Hunter Biden came so close to reality, NBC News reports.

After reviewing some of the issues with the plea deal, the trio said in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, “Taken individually, each of the provisions discussed above raises serious concerns about how the Department has handled this matter. But when considered together, the provisions appear to be even more troubling.”  What the three failed to mention is that the US Attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, was authorized to bring charges independently of the DC big shots as a way to ensure the independence of the investigation–something the Weaponization Gang claims to support.

A new lobbying group aimed squarely at the “Want to believe” crowd’s confirmation bias has registered with Congress to begin hitting the bricks to lobby for legislation to make public anything and everything the government and military know about UFOs and aliens, Politico reports.

“As I’ve been kind of involved with some of these more scientific approaches looking into the topic, I really started to perceive a hole in how this topic is kind of handled in our society,” said Nick Gold, a Baltimore-based media and tech consultant who for now is putting his own money into “Declassify UAP” LLC’s efforts, with possible merch sales and donations coming down the line. “A lot of strong and sometimes strange personalities that kind of suck a lot of the air out of the UFO/UAP issue,” Gold added, in explaining why there’s been a stigma to the question for so long, but also that there hadn’t been any serious effort to needle Congress among the “millions of people who were very fascinated with this topic and wanted to see some kind of governmental congressional progress around it. It never really transformed in 75 years of this being a public issue into an actual quote-unquote issue that we address as citizens in the way through our representatives and our democracy and our government and the way that we attack other issues.”

City officials have removed the glowing, pulsating “X” Elon Musk erected above the office building that was once home to a popular social media platform, another public humiliation for the wannabe oligarch who purchased Twitter on a whim last year, CNBC reports.

After being stopped from removing the Twitter sign on the side of the building because he lacked the proper permits, Musk left a half-finished job streetside to order, in a Trumpian way, a new garish sign erected on the roof of the building.  The large “X” was installed over the weekend, but workers were seen on the scene Monday morning dismantling it.

Asked if the latest dud of a Blockbuster Star Witness in the GOP attempt to slander Joe Biden, Devon Archer, corroborated various unfounded claims Republicans sling around recklessly about alleged bribes Joe Biden took, QAnon Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona sounded downtrodden.  “He didn’t know anything about it,” Biggs said as he left the hearing.  When asked specifically about information related on an unverified FBI Form 1023 that transcribes a claim from an anonymous witness, Biggs was also out of luck:  “The 1023?  He didn’t know anything about that.”

President Joe Biden announced that the headquarters for the US Space Command will stay in Colorado, reversing an order by Donald Trump to move the entire operation to Alabama after Trump had a hissy fit when Democrats dominated the 2020 elections in the state, the Associated Press reports.

During a 2020 campaign rally in Colorado Springs, Trump had promised that the commands for the Space Force and other non-terrestrial defense efforts would stay in Colorado, home of the Air Force Academy, NORAD command and nearly two dozen space-centered projects and bases.  The Colorado location was preferred by the commander of US Space Command, General James Dickinson, who cited its altitude, the comparatively consistent weather, the fact that it doesn’t get pummelled by hurricanes periodically, and the security risk a move to Alabama would cause to the readiness of the command as some of the myriad reasons to stay in Colorado.

However, after Democrats dominated the 2020 election in the state with just 42% of Coloradans voting for Trump as he lost the state for the second time.  Democrats also held the Senate seat and their majority in the Congressional delegation as well as picked up a state senate seat.

In an grievance-filled 780-word op-ed submitted to Newsweek, indicted felon Donald Trump rehashes a series of grievances regarding the 2016–not 2020–election, again claiming the “Deep State” acted against his candidacy and that those forces–led by Hillary Clinton and James Comey–are again out to thwart his fourth attempt at the presidency.

Quoting the Fox propaganda network to characterize investigations into his campaign’s admitted connections and discussions with Russia regarding ways in which the Kremlin could help his campaign, Trump claims Barack Obama and Joe Biden attempted to “villify” him through these accusations.  (Note that Fox used the word “villify” while Trump attempts to falsely shape the term to be Obama’s and Biden’s.  Trump continues his lies and misstatements throughout the piece, even mischaracterizing completed investigations by his own political appointees that found no malfeasance into the investigations into Trump’s actions.  Trump’s ongoing delusions have created a history in which his actions that actually happened no longer exist and now he is but an innocent victim of a plot to undermine him for no reason other than his proclaimed love of the American people.

“The Durham Report proves that the key figures involved knew from the start that the Russia Collusion conspiracy theory was a lie. The FBI launched their witch hunt without a scrap of legitimate evidence—and when they came upon exonerating information time after time, they covered it up and kept the hoax going forward,” Trump writes.

A Super PAC supporting the doomed candidacy of Democratic-hopeful and Republican show pony Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. collected nearly $6.5 million in July, with nearly $5 million of it collected as the candidate testified before a House committee where Republicans propped up the anti-vax conspiracy theorist as a viable alternative to President Joe Biden.

As Politico notes, American Values 2024 has received significant support from people who have supported Donald Trump’s candidacy in the past, a sign that Republicans hope RFK Jr.’s visibility will chip away at the incumbent’s support within the Democratic Party, likely hoping to reduce turnout for Biden in the general election, as happened when disaffected Bernie voters failed to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

“The fact that Kennedy gets so much bipartisan support tells me two things: that he’s the one candidate who can unite the country and root out corruption and that he’s the one Democrat who can win in the general election,” Tim Mellon, a Trump supporter in the past two election cycles, said in the press release.  Mellon also provided more than 95% of the donations to Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s $54 million border barrier fund, so his hopes for an RFK ascendance is a mirage.

New York Democratic Congressman and former federal prosecutor Dan Goldman left the hearing featuring Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer unmoved by Archer’s testimony, saying that it did not disclose massive corruption and dirty dealing as Republicans described, but said Archer related generic chit-chat any father would have with associates of his child:

Most of the time, now-President Biden didn’t even know who the people were at the dinner, he was just asked to say hello and he would talk about the weathe– [Devon Archers] described it several time, they asked over and over and over, he described what the weather was, how– ‘what’s going on on your end’–he, the witness, was very, very consistent that none of those conversations ever had anything to do with any business dealings or transactions.  They were purely, what he called, casual conversations.

Days after Republican Florida Governor, presidential candidate and man very particular about the lifts put in his shoes Ron DeSantis was in the community to beg for money from the wealthy, the district attorney for the region sent a letter to US attorney requesting an investigation into DeSantis’s alleged fraud and lies surrounding his publicity stunt involving kidnapping migrants from Texas.

Per the Boston Herald, the district attorney for the Cape Cod region, Cape and Islands DA Robert Galibois, sent a letter to Merrick Garland asking the Department of Justice to investigate the circumstances that brought 49 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard after DeSantis-funded operatives told them they would be flown to Boston where food, shelter and work would be provided.  No one in Martha’s Vineyard, which is about three hour drive from Boston, was advised of the migrants’ arrival by Florida representatives, so in fact, no housing or jobs were awaiting them, as they were promised.  Interviews with the migrants done after their arrival shows they were lied to in an effort to get them on the flights, Galibois said.

“I stand behind and support a request made to you on July 6, 2023, from the Governor of California, the Attorney General of California, and the Sheriff from Bexar County Texas (where this and a subsequent comparable journey to California originated), to open federal criminal and civil investigations into these incidents,” Galibois wrote.

Per a post on Truth Social:  “I assume that an Indictment from Deranged Jack Smith and his highly partisan gang of Thugs, pertaining to my “PEACEFULLY & PATRIOTICALLY Speech, will be coming out any day now, as yet another attempt to cover up all of the bad news about bribes, payoffs, and extortion, coming from the Biden “camp.” This seems to be the way they do it. ELECTION INTERFERENCE! PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT!”

As Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira leaves the Florida courthouse where he could not enter a plea regarding the four felony counts he faces for assisting indicted felon Donald Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice to hide national security documents at his Palm Beach supper club, De Oliveira’s non-official lawyer in the case–De Oliveira has yet to find a suitable Florida-licenced attorney to represent him–talked a big game while ignoring the damning assertions laid out in the indictment:  “Now it’s time for them to put their money where their mouth is.  I’m looking forward to seeing what discovery is.”  De Oliveira’s arraignment was rescheduled for August 10th, when he hopes to have a lawyer who can represent him in a Florida courtroom.

Just 60% of the American public have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the US military’s ability to defend the nation from threats a new Gallup poll shows, according to Politico, the lowest such rating since 1997 and a continuance of a five-year downward trend.

While the level of faith in the military is higher than its recent low in 1980, when just 50% of Americans had confidence in the military after the Vietnam era and the Iranian hostage crisis, public opinion has been hit by the withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as continual attacks by right wingers who claim the military’s policies on LGBTQ rights and abortion access have weakened the US military.  In addition, false conservative talking points claiming that the military is running out of ammunition has also likely undermined public confidence in the readiness of our military.

The statute that authorizes monitoring US citizens under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act should be modified to eliminate the law’s application for domestic criminal investigations, a new review by the Biden Administration suggests, Reuters reports.

Criticized by members of both sides of the political aisle, FISA’s Second 702 has been used by the FBI to get evidence against US citizens, including those who participated in the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress, not involved with foreign agents.

The White House review recommended Attorney General Merrick Garland “remove FBI’s authority to conduct queries for evidence of a non-national security-related crime in its Section 702 data. … FBI’s use of Section 702 should be limited to foreign intelligence purposes only and FBI personnel should receive additional training on what foreign intelligence entails.”

The first US commercial nuclear power plant built from scratch since the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island has been put online as the Unit 3 reactor of Tennessee’s Plant Vogtle joins the power grid, the Associated Press reports.

Vogtle Unit 3 began construction in 2009 and was expected to be online by 2016, but environmental concerns after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, one-time owner Westinghouse’s bankruptcy, construction problems and new regulatory issues pushed the initiation date back.  Dozens of nuclear plants that began construction prior to the 1979 TMI meltdown have been brought online, but construction of new nuclear plants was halted until the Vogtle expansion was proposed in 2006.

The unit will generate 1,100 megawatts of electricity, enough to power half a million homes.  Georgia Power Co. now gets 25% of its electricity from nuclear power, a key component in the fight against climate change by reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.  And that percentage will increase:  Vogtle Unit 4 has been authorized to be fueled up and is expected to enter service in March 2024.

Three years after receiving a questionable $700 million pandemic assistance loan from the Trump administration, YRC–the company that operates the Yellow and Roadway trucking brands–has shut down operations as of Monday morning, putting 30,000 employees out of work, CNN reports.

The Teamsters, which represents 22,000 YRC workers and which agreed to new contract terms last week to help stave off bankruptcy, said it received a notification Sunday.  “Today’s news is unfortunate but not surprising. Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government. This is a sad day for workers and the American freight industry,” said Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in a statement.

Saying the company was vital for the American economy, the Trump administration approved a fast-tracked $700 million bailout in 2020, sending the money just six weeks after the request was submitted, even though the company was being sued by the federal government on claims it overbilled shipments to the US military.  A major investor in YRC, Apollo Investment has close ties to Jared Kushner:  it loaned Kushner $184 million in 2017 to facilitate refinancing its loans on Manhattan properties, and later that year, Kushner recommended Apollo co-founder Josh Harris for a White House advisory board.