An anonymously quoted House Republicans tell Politico titular Speaker Kevin McCarthy is increasingly screwed if and when fat former President Trump wins the 2024 nomination.

“The reality is, if we get Trump, there’s probably a good possibility that we don’t keep the House” in 2024, said a conservative who has not endorsed Trump or any other contender yet. “McCarthy knows that. He knows that if Trump’s on top of the ticket, that we probably lose New York and California… If we lose the House, there’s no way McCarthy stays as minority leader. He’s gone.”

“There’s not a person who is more black and white, who is more hot and cold, who is more politically divisive than Trump,” said one “centrist” Republican in a Biden district who says Kev has to stay out of the presidential race as long as possible. “So, while McCarthy spent six months keeping us all together, it’s like the worst thing that you can do is take a stance for or against Trump.”

“MTG became a RINO and turned on the American people. The caucus made the right move” – The current top comment on the Gateway Pundit article “Greene Booted From House Freedom Caucus.”

A week after the reliably Republican-supporting Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity declared they had raised $70 million in their anti-Trump effort, the influential conservative Club for Growth PAC announced that it formed a new “sub-PAC” to attack indicted felon Donald Trump, Politico reports.

Win it Back PAC filed foundational paperwork with the Federal Election Commission showing Club for Growth president David McIntosh as its designated agent.  Club for Growth’s treasurer, Adam Rozansky, was listed in the same role for Win it Back.

That didn’t play well in the Trump camp.  “Their goal is to maintain their shady influence over Washington because they know President Trump stands in their way as he protects Americans from these vultures,” Trump campaign senior consultant Chris LaCivita said. “These swamp dwellers will be crushed— without mercy and without remorse— and put back under the bridges where all trolls reside.”  LaCivita went on to say MacIntosh  “is a pro-China, America last, failed congressman wannabe…organizing another swampy D.C. insider super PAC.”

You’ve gotta love John Pierce.  No, seriously.  The man’s committed.  As a lawyer for dozens of the domestic terrorists who attacked Congress during the Republican-led assault on January 6th, he’s got to sell the innocence of his clients, including Ken Thomas, who was found guilty of a dozen counts including four counts of assaulting or impeding police officers.  Pierce, however, goes down the “both sides” path regarding violence during the attack on the Capitol:  the police AND the terrorist were both responsible for the attack, Pierce claims before going on to say calling the attack “violent” misrepresents the dozens of people who were there peacefully.

Kudos to CNN’s Abby Phillip who is having none of it, detailing how Pierce is falsely equating the violence perpetrated by his clients (allegedly) and others.  Phillip spends nearly a full minute dressing down Pierce for his lies, but Pierce continues insisting that the indictments of his clients were void because others weren’t violent, and therefore given the non-existent transitive property of peacefulness in law, their non-criminal activity rubs off on his criminal clients, and therefore Pierce’s clients should be found not guilty.

After a 38-year-old man passed a note saying he had a homemade bomb on board, a flight bound for Seattle from Atlanta was rerouted to Spokane, where it made a safe landing, the Seattle Times reports.  No bomb was found on board, and the man claimed he could not arrive in Seattle because members of a drug cartel were there waiting to kill him.

In a long note he handed to a flight attendant, Brandon Scott said he had a homemade bomb.  “This is not a joke,” the note read. “Several pounds of homemade explosives are in my carry on bag. I have a detonator with me. Handle this matter carefully and exactly how I say, otherwise I will detonate the explosives and kill everyone on board.”

Scott surrendered to police upon landing in Spokane.  He said he didn’t think contacting local police at the airport in Seattle or from the plane prior to landing would help because he didn’t know where the alleged assassins would be, so he believed faking an airline bombing was a completely plausible alternative.

Confronted by one of Fox’s nondescript white men asking about why he’s not connecting with voters on his presidential campaign, Republican Florida Governor and animated Beanie Baby Ron DeSantis defers to the support he gets from the monied backers of the Republican Party:

“Well, I think, did you just see the news today, ah, about the record fundraising haul we’ve had.  Nobody’s been able to match that in the history of modern presidential politics, so we’ve got a huge amount of support, ah, to be able to take the case to the people.  We really haven’t started that yet.” … which is an odd thing to say considering DeSantis has been on a barnstorming campaign tour since at least March.

In the months since the FBI seized government documents from Donald Trump’s Florida Museum of 1980s Gaudiness Mar-a-Lago, his sycophantic domestic terrorists have shifted their threats from FBI agents to the various federal and state prosecutors taking on Trump-related cases, the Washington Post reports.

In the weeks after the August search, FBI offices around the country were targeted with violence, and the Bureau and the Justice Department took care to redact the names of agents involved when possible in court documents to prevent their release to the public.

However, in the intervening week as cases went to court and indictments were released, MAGAts shifted their ire from the agents who executed the search to the various federal, state and local prosecutors involved in the multiple fraud, financial crimes, national security and obstruction cases going on.  Without citing specific threats, officials with the Justice Department and independent experts on extremism noted online chatter is targeting individuals in the federal government as well as the New York state prosecutor’s office and the prosecutors in Manhattan (NY) and Fulton (GA) Counties.

Citing reports that the victims claim they were deceived, leaders in California and San Antonio, Texas have asked federal officials to investigate Republican Florida Governor and presidential hopeful sinking his campaign Ron DeSantis for potential crimes related to his scheme to ship migrants around the country, NBC News reports.

“It is unconscionable to use people as political props by persuading them to travel to another state based on false or deceptive representations.  We urge USDOJ to investigate potential violations of federal law by those involved in this scheme,” said a letter signed by three Democrats:  California Governor Gavin Newsom, the state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta and the Sheriff of Bexar County, Texas (home of San Antonio) Javier Salazar.  Both jurisdictions had flights or bus trips of migrants paid for by money allocated by DeSantis.

Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team are taking a particular interest in a now-infamous December 18, 2020 meeting in the Trump White House Oval Office where Rudy Giuliani, Sidney “Kraken” Powell, Overstock.com founder dipshit Patrick Byrne, and traitor Mike Flynn pitched the recently unelected loser on an executive order to have the DOJ and or Department of Homeland Security seize voting machines to “prove” the “fraud” in the 2020 election, CNN reports.

“Defendants respectfully request that the Court stay its July 4 preliminary injunction pending Defendant’s appeal of that order. See Notice of Appeal, Dkt. 296. The Government faces irreparable harm with each day the injunction remains in effect, as the injunction’s broad scope and ambiguous terms (including a lack of clarity with respect to what the injunction does not prohibit) may be read to prevent the Government from engaging in a vast range of lawful and responsible conduct—including speaking on matters of public concern and working with social media companies on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.”

“These immediate and ongoing harms to the Government outweigh any risk of injury to Plaintiffs if a stay is granted, and for the same reason, a stay is in the public interest. Moreover, Defendants have shown a substantial case on the merits regarding Plaintiffs’ lack of Article III standing and failure to present evidence substantiating their First Amendment claims. Accordingly, this Court should exercise its discretion to temporarily stay the preliminary injunction during the pendency of Defendants’ Fifth Circuit appeal,” write the Biden DOJ lawyers in a motion seeking a stay against that hick judge’s order blocking them from contacting social media sites regarding misinformation.

Joined @LeaderMcConnell and West Kentucky area leaders to celebrate the official opening of the fabulous new Barkley Regional Airport Building ✈️ in Paducah. The funding was secured during the Trump Administration through a joint effort with local, state and federal leaders #KY1 pic.twitter.com/dYh8vQCpRY

— James Comer (@JamesComer) July 6, 2023

Probably noticing that his Republican colleagues in Congress have been correctly heckled for promoting infrastructure projects for their constituents funded by the very spending bills they voted against, House Oversight Dumbass James Comer tried to head that off by specifying that the money for this airport “was secured during the Trump Administration.” Problem is that this is still false, as the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act allocated more than $5 million for the Barkley Regional Airport itself and another $885,000 to connect it to a sewer main. Earlier that year the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 secured $11 million for the Barkley Airport’s terminal building. Comer voted against both, and called the infrastructure package a “massive socialist spending bill – which will undoubtedly lead to more inflation and government dependency.”

It’s not more than the at least $19 million secured during the Trump Regime, but half- or roughly 60 percent -truths are still lies in this context, and yet another reason why James Comer fucking sucks.

White nationalist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was unaware she had been expelled from the House Freedom Caucasians prior to member Andy Harris telling reporters on Thursday, with Chairman Scott Perry having planned to sit down and inform her personally, NBC News reports.

It’s not totally clear if she was DEFINITELY 100 percent tossed as the vote to eject the angry divorcee from the group had a quorum as it was early on a Friday morning before the July 4th recess and not all Freedom Caucasians were in attendance, but sources tell NBC it was a done deal.

“In Congress, I serve Northwest Georgia first, and serve no group in Washington. My America First credentials, guided by my Christian faith, are forged in steel, seared into my character, and will never change… I will work with ANYONE who wants to secure our border, protect our children inside the womb and after they are born, end the forever foreign wars, and do the work to save this country. The GOP has less than two years to show America what a strong, unified Republican-led congress will do when President Trump wins the White House in 2024. This is my focus, nothing else,” said Greene in a statement that does not sound like she’s still a member.

I am admittedly a numbers geek.  As I detailed here before, my career has been based in large part on data interpretation.  To me, you can’t have an accurate overview of anything–weather, the economy, football games–unless you consider every bit of numerical data you can get your hands on.  It shouldn’t be surprising then that one of my go-to sites for economic data doesn’t use a whole lot of words to describe the current state of the US economy.  It isn’t Forbes or the WSJ; it’s the Institute of Supply Management.

“Wow,” you think.  “Glamorous.” (Insert “/s” here.)  You’re right:  it really isn’t.  It’s like poring over the box score rather than watching the game.  ISM monitors 18 separate industries, regularly polling and interviewing thousands of business people on the status of their enterprises.  It looks at everything from financial growth to incoming orders to inventory levels to supply chain flow.

These numbers point to a US business atmosphere ready to take off, with leaders in the vast majority of industries saying they’re ready to get and fill orders.  They’re confident they have the materials, financial backing and capacity but they’re being held back primarily by two things.  The first is labor; the second is a pervasive angst that the economy is teetering–an angst that doesn’t seem grounded in reality given other data.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the first drug designed to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s, the neurodegenerative disease that impacts 6.5 million Americans, rather than simply address the disease’s various symptoms, NBC News reports.

Leqembi, developed in a joint program by Japanese drugmaker Eisai and U.S.-based drugmaker Biogen, finished a Phase 3 clinical trial with nearly 1,800 patients, with the results showing the drug slowing the disease by 27%.  Noting that the drug is not a cure but instead slows down the progress of the disease, Dr. Ronald Petersen, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota said, “It’s a first step for hopefully more therapeutics in the future.”

Two former staffers for Republican Florida state Representative Fabian Basabe filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging the America First patriot had slapped one of them, age 25, on the ass in a classroom full of children during a visit to an elementary school and said “I want all of that butt,” while the other one, age 24, claims Basabe had urged him to break off his engagement to his girlfriend and “explore his sexuality by having sex with men,” CBS Miami reports.

This isn’t the first time a staffer has alleged physical assault by Basabe, as back in April the butt slapping victim, Nicholas Frevola, also publicly accused the freshman lawmaker of drunkenly smacking him in the face back in front of a crowd at a Republican fundraising event.

“I figured I’d give this a shot seeing as quite a few people on Twitter are trying to blame me for the cocaine in the White House? !? LOL, I mean I haven’t been there in almost 3 years and there’s someone with a serious problem that was apparently their but anyway. Heavily guarded, but no one knows anything I’m shocked!!! 🥳” wrote Donald Trump Jr in his first and so far only Threads post on Thursday. We would’ve embedded it but they’re being a little temperamental right now.

There’s also the possibility he might end up deleting it if he realizes that he didn’t write “LOL, I don’t do cocaine! I tried it once when I was like 25 but I thought it sucked!” instead of saying the only reason it couldn’t have been his is because he hasn’t been to the White House in three years.

Threads not exactly off to a great start. Hey Instagram, threads is verbal, so the whole skimpy bikini thing is not going to work so well if your influencers can’t actually formulate a sentence… IMHO you may want to rethink cutting off those who can. pic.twitter.com/vBKIOjg8Z8

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 6, 2023

In very much related news, Threads is (or at least was earlier on Thursday, we did not see this prompt come up ourselves) warning users to think twice before following MAGA influencers like Don Jr and notorious meathead fascist “DC_Draino” due to their histories for propagating right wing misinformation. The hilarity of a Zuckerberg production suddenly taking social media misinformation seriously aside, this raises an interesting question: Were these warnings generated algorithmically based on the garbage they and other scumbags had already posted on sister platforms Facebook and Instagram, or did the Threads team manually flag them solely on reputation as they joined? Jim Jordan is no doubt already punching holes in the wall over this while his wife downs a bottle of vodka in the backyard, so we might get something approximating an answer to that question at some point after he fires off dozens of subpoenas to Zuckerberg and his minions.

In the second sign he’s legitimately pissed at Mark Zuckerberg for siphoning attention away from his systemic and willful destruction of everything that was good about Twitter (the first being this sad tweet from new CEO Linda Yaccarino), Elon Musk on Wednesday commanded his lawyer Alex Spiro to fire a warning shot at Zuck for launching the new Threads app, Semafor reports.

“I write on behalf of X Corp, as successor in interest to Twitter, Inc (‘Twitter’). Based on recent reports regarding your recently launched ‘Threads’ app, Twitter has serious concerns that Meta Platforms (‘Meta’) has engaged in systematic, willful, and unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property… Twitter reserves all rights, including, but not limited to, the right to seek both civil remedies and injunctive relief without further notice to prevent any further retention, disclosure, or use of its intellectual property by Meta,” Spiro wrote.

Here’s where we would mention that stupid “cage match” of whatever that Zuckerberg challenged Musk to last month with the very jocular suggestion that they settle it “out of court” there.

House Freedom Caucasians member Congressman Andy Harris confirmed CNN’s Haley Talbot on Thursday that white nationalist conspiracy freak Marjorie Taylor Greene has been expelled from the far right GOP coalition over her voting in favor of the debt deal, fights with other members like Lauren Boebert and “support” for titular Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Harris specifically cited the Greene-Boebert “little bitch” incident on the House floor as “the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

There had been some doubt about her status with her fellow fascists since the secret internal vote last month and nobody on either side seemed to want to let us jackals who savor such drama know how it ended, but this would appear to be confirmation that Crazy Marjorie is such a miserable Nazi asshole behind the scenes that not even other miserable Nazi assholes want to be associated with her – making Greene the first ever member of the Freedom Caucasians to be expelled.

Pelagic adventure tourism company OceanGate Expeditions announced Thursday it would cease all operations after its formerly perfect safety record took a dive last month, ABC News reports.

It was found outside of a security checkpoint, genius pic.twitter.com/Z8O4AIvNPw

— National Zero (@NationalZeroUSA) July 5, 2023

Evidently infuriated by our account going all fact-y on him, angry pugfaced MAGA influencer Dan Bongino on Wednesday totally owned National Zero by blocking us on Twitter, joining an elite cadre of right wing dickwads like rigged pollster Rasmussen Reports, former Arizona Republican Party Chairwoman “Chemtrails Kelli” Ward, Students for Trump Reichsjugendführer Ryan Fournier, former Trump Justice Department Acting Associate Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, and irrepressible douchebag Substacker Glenn Greenwald among those who created for themselves a Twitter experience free from the abrasive heckling of this site’s profane founder. Picasso-faced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was also on this prestigious list in spring 2021, but was ordered by a court to unblock all users, Texan and non-Texan alike, a few months later. Hopefully he can block us again as a private citizen if he’s removed from office after his impeachment trial later this summer.