With record-breaking temperatures reported not just in the United States but around the world, the report of a location in Iran having a heat index reaching 152 degrees Fahrenheit has scientists and medical researchers wondering if humans can tolerate anything higher, CNN reports.

Researchers have calculated the top threshold for environmental temperatures that humans can tolerate would be 160°F for any extended period.  Should the climate continue to heat up, humans may find some areas physically too hot to handle for more than an hour or two a day.

Asked by Jake Tapper if Donald Trump should be charged if Jack Smith presents evidence of a crime, Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis says it’s all water under the bridge and should be overlooked:  “I don’t think it serves us good to have a presidential election focused on what happened four years ago, uh, in January,” a wide-eyed DeSantis asserts even though the crimes happened two years ago and continue on through today.  “And so I want to focus on looking forward.  I don’t want to look back.  I do not want to see him, I hope he doesn’t get charged.  I don’t think it’ll be good for the country, but at the same time, I’ve got to focus on looking forward and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Clearly someone who didn’t take the right lessons away from her gradeschool history classes, Georgia’s Missing Link, Republican Congresswoman and women who literally can’t stop shoving her sporkfoot in her mouth Marjorie Taylor Greene now apparently thinks apartheid wasn’t all that bad as she “air quotes” the evil out of it.  “There’s a lot of countries that rely on walls.  I have one article here that, um, that comes from earlier this month [Editor’s note:  it’s from 2015.], um that says, talkin’ ’bout 65 countries have erected fences on their borders, um, also talkin’ about walls, talkin’ about security fears, widespread refusal to help refugees have fueled a new spate of wall building around the world.  They include Israel’s aparthe– ‘Apartheid Wall,” India’s 2,500 miles fence around Bangladesh and Morocco’s huge sand berm.”

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Tuesday announced her office has indicted all 16 fake Trump 2020 electors in her state on forgery-related crimes, CNN reports. Charged are former state GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock and other fake electors Kathy Berden, Rose Rook, Mayra Rodriguez, Hank Choate, Mari-Ann Henry, John Haggard, Cliff Frost, Kent Vanderwood, Stanley Grot, Marian Sheridan, Tim King, James Renner, Michele Lundgren, Amy Facchinello, and Ken Thompson.

The criminal complaint against Berden, who served as the Michigan RNC National Committeewoman during the coup attempt, lists eight total counts: conspiracy to commit forgery, two counts of forgery, conspiracy to commit utter and publishing, uttering and publishing, conspiracy to commit election law forgery, and two counts of election law forgery with a maximum total penalty of fucking 85 years in prison and $32,000 in fines. Berden is a close ally of RNC National Chair and fellow Michigander Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel and the person whom Ronna had in mind when she famously wrote that people were being victimized by “Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” from the House January 6th Committee investigation.

Yes, Ronna did open herself up to completely valid criticism as her lack of specificity made it sound like she meant the Capitol rioters with that stupid shit. But she reportedly had really meant to refer to Berden and other “legitimate political” actors who were subpoenaed by the committee.

In a Tuesday hearing in the case against fat former President Trump over his theft of classified documents from the White House, MAGA federal Judge Aileen Cannon was disinclined to rule for Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s target December trial date but also seemed skeptical of Trump’s bid to delay it until after the 2024 election, Lawfare’s Anna Bower reports.

Democratic House members plan to bring another motion to censure Republican conman and New York Congressman George Santos to the floor for a vote, but unlike their May attempt, they expect a number of GOP colleagues to join them in this effort, Politico reports.

Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy was able to fend off the last effort to oust a valuable ally to McCarthy’s speakership by moving the complaint to the House Ethics Committee after New York Republicans pushed to expel Santos, who has been an ongoing embarrassment to New York Republicans.

The New York delegation set a 60-day timeframe to revisit the issue, during which time the Ethics Committee launched an extensive investigation into the various alleged illegal and unethical acts by Santos.  The Committee has issued more than 30 subpoenas and received information from 40 different sources from which it had requested information.

Fascist MAGA lawyer John Eastman, whose conscience was guilty enough that he literally asked for a presidential pardon in the weeks after his efforts to help keep disgraced then-President Trump in power had ended in disaster and bloodshed, has not yet received a target letter from Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s office, his attorney said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Our client has received no target letter,” said Eastman lawyer Charles Burnham. The statement was longer but it was all bullshit about how his client is innocent so we just copied the relevant part.

Now assuming Burnham’s telling the truth about this, and setting aside the possibility that Eastman simply didn’t get a target letter yet, the statement raises the all-important question of what the hell’s going on here. The FBI seized Eastman’s phone pursuant to a criminal investigation last June – months before Jack Smith was even appointed, so it’s more likely than not that he’s still in trouble. Unlike with Rudy and Mark Meadows we’ve seen no reporting indicating Eastman might also flip on Trump, but the guy is a fucking weasel who wouldn’t survive an hour in prison so we might have to go ahead rate that as the (marginally) likeliest possibility in absence of further reporting.

A set of ancient oil lamps and other artifacts that had been in the keep of the Israeli Antiquities Authority and lost amid the COVID shitshow after they were loaned to the White House in 2019 for display at a Trump-hosted Hanukkah Party have been tracked down at Mar-a-Lago, Haaretz reports.

The Netanyahu Regime found out about this a few months ago, but kept quiet as to not disturb the unholy Orange Baal, trying to use Trump’s former Ambassador David Friedman as a conduit to politely ask the pieces be returned, an effort that has thus far proved unsuccessful. Sources tell Haaretz the Israeli government isn’t sure if Trump is definitely aware that he still has the lamps, but let’s be fucking honest: He knows and he’s ignoring them on purpose. One Israeli official involved in the effort said he wouldn’t be surprised if the artifacts are “in some bathroom” at Mar-a-Lago.

Crunching the numbers for the RNC’s debate qualification requirements, Politico have determined that chunky former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie – along with former South Carolina Governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley, weirdo millennial Vivek Ramaswamy, and Senator Tim Scott have met the polling and fundraising thresholds to attack Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in person since soon-to-be thrice-indicted former President Trump almost certainly won’t be there at the first 2024 GOP primary showdown in Milwaukee next month, especially now to avoid Chris Christie.

Mike Pence has met the minimum polling requirement but hasn’t hit the 40,000 individual donor requirement yet to make it to the big stage. Would be a damn shame if his last ever nationally televised debate would be the one when the fly landed on his head and sat there for a minute.

Jack Smith is a lousy attorney.

His career is filled with mistrials, overturned cases, and judicial rebukes.

He only targets Republicans because he’s a weak little bitch for the Democrats.

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) July 18, 2023

A South Carolina MAGA white nationalist who last month pleaded guilty to burning objects with intent to intimidate – literally a Virginia criminal statute – after marching with a tiki torch in the infamous August 11, 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally was arrested Monday on charges of assault, obstruction, parading, and other felony counts over his violently enthusiastic participation in the similarly-themed January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, NBC News reports.

Tyler Dykes, 25, a former Marine, is accused of stealing “a riot shield from law enforcement and raised it over his head to establish sole possession of the item,” during the mayhem.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer Robert Costello tells CNN’s Paula Reid that his alcoholic shitbrain client has not received a target letter from Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s team and does not expect him to be charged in their investigation of the Trump Regime’s post-2020 election coup attempt. Costello did not say why, but the implication is pretty obvious given recent reporting on Captain 9/11’s interactions with prosecutors.

The guy who screamed “THEY’RE TRYING TO FUCKING KILL ME!” during a phone call with then-President Trump as his marauders rampaged through the Capitol believes that Jack Smith is getting a grand jury to indict Donald because his “poll numbers are up” lately. Interesting.

“WOW! On Sunday night, while I was with my family, having just arrived from the Turning Point event in Florida, where I won the Straw Poll against all other Republican candidates with 85.7%, with all polls showing me leading in the Republican Primary by very substantial numbers, almost everyone predicting that I will be the Republican Nominee for President, and as I am leading Democrat Joe Biden in the polls by a lot, HORRIFYING NEWS for our Country was given to me by my attorneys. Deranged Jack Smith, the prosecutor with Joe Biden’s DOJ, sent a letter (again, it was Sunday night!) stating that I am a TARGET of the January 6th Grand Jury investigation, and giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury, which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment.”

“…But on top of all of that, they have now effectively indicted me three times (the DOJ staffed and runs the DA’s Office in Manhattan), with a probable fourth coming from Atlanta, where the DOJ are in strict, and possibly illegal, coordination with the District Attorney, whose record on murder and other violent crime is abysmal. THIS WITCH HUNT IS ALL ABOUT ELECTION INTERFERENCE AND A COMPLETE AND TOTAL POLITICAL WEAPONIZATION OF LAW ENFORCEMENT! It is a very sad and dark period for our Nation!” says the disgraced loser in the first half of a statement.

As if there was any doubt, in the second half Trump confirmed what’s happening: “This has been a neverending fight from the day I came down the escalator in Trump Tower, many years ago. So interesting that in this case the information was delivered to me on a Sunday night, less than 24 hours after I suggested during a major speech that the Federal Government ASSUME CONTROL of a filthy, unsanitary, neglected, and crime-ridden Washington, DC, where murder and violent crime are rampant and people no longer want to go to our Nation’s Capital… and yet, that is where Biden’s DOJ actually wants my trial to take place, all because they think, especially after my strong words of a Federal takeover at the speech, a DC jury will do whatever they want. VERY UNFAIR!”

A new Suffolk University/USA Today survey of Ohio voters finds incumbent Democrat US Senator Sherrod Brown ahead of two of his three likeliest 2024 Republican challengers – 48 to 41 percent versus businessman Bernie Moreno, 46 to 43 percent versus Cleveland Guardians ownership family member Matt Dolan, and tied at 45 percent each with Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

As for the GOP primary itself, LaRose leads among Republican voters at 19 percent to Dolan’s 14 percent and Moreno’s 9 percent, with 57 percent undecided, so whatever lead the Secretary of State has now is probably more due to name recognition thing than anything else. Per Politico, Moreno is considered tightest with the Orange God Emperor, who publicly encouraged him to jump in, although an “official” endorsement hasn’t come yet. Bernie is also bros with amoral nihilist Senator JD Vance, who has endorsed him. LaRose meanwhile might be vulnerable among MAGA voters for insufficient faith in the cult of “election integrity,” as well being caught on tape badmouthing Trump. Dolan is also likely on Donald’s naughty list over past comments.

Even with this drama, the 2024 Ohio GOP Senate primary is still unlikely to be anything remotely as ugly as the historic shitshow Buckeyes were treated to in 2022, mostly surrounding the flaming out of utterly deranged former State Treasurer Josh Mandel, a 30-something Marine vet, who very nearly beat the shit out a 70-something rival Mike Gibbons on stage during a debate.

An unidentified US national on a tour of a South Korean border village adjacent to the DMZ walked into North Korea without authorization and was immediately arrested on Tuesday, the AP reports.

It’s not clear if the American was crazy and knew what they were doing or was stupid enough to somehow get lost and enter the totalitarian communist shithole, but either way the UN Command is working with the Kim Regime to try to negotiate the release of the hapless moron. Or their corpse.

Temperatures are expected to hit only 123 degrees Fahrenheit in southern California’s Death Valley on Tuesday according to a National Weather Service forecast, putting the famously inhospitable, mortality-themed desert region tantalizingly short of the all time worldwide daytime high record of 134 degrees hit at Furnace Creek, located within the valley, in July of 1913.

Economists at oligarchic investment bank Goldman Sachs on Monday lowered the chances of the US entering a recession in the next 12 months from 25 percent to 20 percent, citing a slew of recent positive economic data indicating a “soft landing” for the Federal Reserve, CNBC reports.

“The main reason for our cut is that the recent data have reinforced our confidence that bringing inflation down to an acceptable level will not require a recession,” wrote Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius. “But the easing in financial conditions, the rebound in the housing market, and the ongoing boom in factory building all suggest that the US economy will continue to grow, albeit at a below-trend pace.” Hatzius said the bank expects another rate increase from the Fed next week, but it will be the last one for a while as it appears domestic inflation has been tamed.

Losing Maryland gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox was so certain he wasn’t the person who filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission announcing his candidacy for a Congressional seat in 2024, he asked the FEC to open an investigation into it.

Once described by former Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan as “not mentally stable,” Cox was kinda telling the truth.  Cox himself didn’t file the paperwork, the Daily Beast reports; the man appointed to be treasurer of his campaign did.  Turns out Cox advisor Ryan McShane had been working with professional campaign accountant Tom Datwyler to put the financial backing together for Cox’s run, even discussing how they should not file FEC paperwork until after July 1st to avoid second-quarter reporting requirements.

It seems Cox had authorized all of that with McShane, but then reportedly had an authentic change of heart about running for office so soon after his utter defeat to Democrat Wes Moore in 2022.  Unfortunately, he didn’t tell either McShane or Datwyler, who had already filed the papers July 3rd.  So when it comes to reliability on his decision-making for seeking office, you could say Cox sucks.

A Russian Su-35 fighter in Syria buzzed and harassed a US MC-12 turboprop surveillance plane, causing it to fly through severe turbulence, putting the four-person crew in danger, Politico reports.  The latest in a string of unprofessional and dangerous interactions between US and Russian aircraft patrolling over the civil war, it joins a string of rather routine harassment of unmanned Reaper drones.

Gleened from the Politico report is the fact that such harassment on another occasion interfered with a US Special Operations mission to assassinate an ISIS leader, who was eliminated at a later date.  Also, the US and Russians have a “de-escalation phone” on which the two sides are supposed to try to calm each other down in real-time as these events unfold, but it apparently rapidly devolves into blame-assigning and name-calling.