Maybe there was one day a few years ago around the time of the 2020 election and its aftermath when you had some fantasy that maybe the scourge of Trumpism was over, there would be no more MAGA bullshit and you could look forward to not giving a fuck about politics anymore. That like when the Allies repelled the German Nazis’ final offensive in the Ardennes in 1945 was the last gasp before their destruction, so too was democracy repelling the American Nazis’ final offensive on the United States Capitol in January 2021 the final gasp before MAGA’s destruction.

That was a fun few weeks before the reality of Red America’s continued (and accelerated) commitment to unreality sank in and now, over two years later, we’re stuck once again in this fucking time loop, forever fighting the red-hatted forces of darkness, hatred, and corruption.

Fat former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and fat former US President Donald Trump dined together this week so Johnson could try, likely unsuccessfully, to talk the orange degenerate into supporting Ukraine’s defense against Trump’s owner Vladimir Putin, Politico EU reports.

“Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP met President Donald J Trump to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the vital importance of Ukrainian victory,” a Johnson spokesperson said, without elaborating on whether Trump said literally anything affirmatively agreeing with the importance of Kyiv winning.

Jessica Watkins, a top lieutenant of Oath Keepers founder Stewie Rhodes, was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison on Friday following her conviction on a charge of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding for her role in the group’s January 6th Capitol coup attempt, CBS’s Rob Legare reports.

Watkins was acquitted on the seditious conspiracy count that saw her fellow terrorists Rhodes and Kelly Meggs sent away for longer bids on Thursday. Also note that Watkins is a trans woman formerly named Jeremy Watkins until she transitioned in 2004 shortly after going AWOL from the army following deployments to Afghanistan. So for all the fucking freakouts over Bud Light and Target, never forget that one of MAGA World’s greatest heroes is trans. She’s not the only one either, as Portland-area QAnon fan Lilith Saer aka Drakken Saer was sentenced last month to a fine and probation on a misdemeanor plea deal for entering the Capitol during the insurrection.

Super badass anti-Deep State special counsel John Durham will testify to House Intelligence Committee next month in a closed hearing, News Nation reports. It’s probably really bad news for Hillary because if they’re doing it behind closed doors rather than in public surely means that the evidence against her is so unbelievably damning and she is so fucked that they can’t show it on live TV yet because they need to get all the chess pieces in place and then it’s checkmate libs because this was Trump and Durham’s plan all along to make her feel safe and complacent before th-

A Cambodian crocodile farmer fed his livestock on Friday, providing several of the vicious aquatic reptiles with the fresh meat they crave to keep them happy and healthy, CBS news reports.

Neighbors however weren’t exactly happy with the kind of meat 72 year-old Luan Nam, president of a local croc farmers’ association, had fed to the animals, with police chief Mey Savry telling the AFP he had to pull what was left of Nam out of the enclosure. “While [Nam] was chasing a croc out of an egg-laying cage, the crocodile attacked the stick, causing him to fall into the enclosure,” Sevry said, adding “Then other crocodiles pounced, attacking him until he was dead.” Sevry was pretty sure a croc swallowed one of Nam’s arms, but did not otherwise comment on the state of his remains.

When they say stuff like this, they mean they want to go after conservatives.

Their tactics are straight out of the USSR's playbook. https://t.co/bnICe9b6zO

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) May 25, 2023

Republican Wisconsin state Representative Rob Brooks says his townie gin mill, the Railroad Station, in rural Saukville, isn’t the kind of place where dealers can get away with selling cocaine laced with fatal amounts of fentanyl despite evidence to the contrary, the AP reports.

Addressing questions about the death of 28 year-old patron Nick Hamilton and overdoses of three of his friends after snorting the sugar sold by an unscrupulous entrepreneur at the “Don’t Stop Believing” on loop from the jukebox smells like Miller High Life puke shithole, Brooks on Thursday said “It was a tragedy what happened, no doubt, and we’ll do everything within our power to ensure nothing like this happens again… We’re not running a bad establishment.”

The record says otherwise, with the AP’s report describing the Railroad Station as the subject of multiple calls to police in recent years, including an investigation spurred by an informant’s tip that a patron was regularly moving drugs at the location. Last year a regular patron beat the shit out of the former owner’s son for, probably accurately, calling Brooks a racist. A 2014 incident in which an off-duty employee dragged a drunken patron out and left him on the front steps to nearly freeze to death reached the state Supreme Court for some reason. When asked to address the problems at the place he’s owned since 2007, Brooks said “We’re a bar, and there is alcohol served.”

An internal polling memo obtained by Roll Call from a West Virginia resort following a Senate GOP staff retreat held there reveals why it was supposed to stay internal, saying “there has been a 6 point swing in the last year on the Generic Senate ballot from R+3 to D+3. This movement is [led] overwhelmingly by Independent and NEW voters that identify abortion as one of their top issues.”

The “National Issue Study” by GOP-aligned pollster co/efficient last month also says “There has been a 10 point swing in the last year on the Generic House Ballot from R+6 to D+4. This movement is [led] overwhelmingly by Independent and NEW voters that identify abortion as one of their top issues… Reproductive Freedom is the #1 issue among those that DID NOT vote in 2020.”

“In March of 2022, Independent voters were breaking 3 to 1 for the Generic Republican. Today, Ind’s are breaking for the Generic Republican by only a few points. Nearly tied,” read a slide on the memo.

“Remember, don’t leave behind something you don’t want to see in Roll Call,” concludes Roll Call’s resident election data egghead Nathan Gonzales in the article. What a cheeky bastard.

Kids need to be kids in America, said Orlando cab driver troubled by the trans agenda https://t.co/WT1ymnVM2n

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 26, 2023

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton might finally face a measure of justice when the state legislature takes up 20 articles of impeachment against him as early as Friday.  But as the Texas Tribune points out in a handy “Texas Impeachment Primer,” the scheduled May 29th end of the legislative session and the fact that the Texas legislature meets only every two years bring some potential complications.

A simple majority in the state house would impeach Paxton, and thanks to Texas’s legislative rules that give the Speaker virtually unlimited power to bring anything to the floor when he wants, it’s possible Speaker Dade Phelan could introduce the 20 articles from the House General Investigating Committee and ask for a vote immediately.  More likely, however, they will take some time to read some evidence into the record.  With the end of the session just three days away, don’t expect an extensive grand jury presentation.  An impeachment would mean an automatic suspension for Paxton from undertaking any official duties, allowing the governor to make a “provisional” appointment.

Donald Trump already stated he would pardon most of the people convicted of crimes related to the Republican-led January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress attempting to keep him in power.  His current main challenger for the GOP nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the same during a radio interview Thursday morning, saying he would compare them to how protestors from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, which he claims “didn’t get prosecuted at all,” according to the Washington Post, and he would issue pardons to make sure justice was meted out equally.  (Put aside the fact that the protests would’ve broken largely local, not federal, laws; contemporaneous estimates put the number of people arrested in the first two weeks of BLM protests at 14,000 to 17,000, so Ron’s lying.)

Don’t miss the dog whistle: Pledging to pardon anyone convicted in connection with the various plots and actions to overturn the results of the 2020 election is telling your army that the GOP’s got their back:  break as many laws as you want to keep us in power; you’ll never be held responsible.  And a President who would pardon the convicted criminals from the previous election will pardon the presumptive criminals from not just this, but from every future election that goes his way.  The last act of a future outgoing Republican president could be signing a pardon that wipes the slate clean for himself and, well, literally anyone–one so loosely worded it would take a decade of court challenges to determine its legality, long past the statute of limitations for most applicable crimes and impeding investigations along the way.

The New York Times reports the White House and House Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy are close to a two-year deal on the debt ceiling, which would take the issue off the shelf for the 2024 election cycle.  Reportedly, the teams of negotiators are working on draft legislation language while others are still ironing out details where they’re far apart.

While the two sides may come to a working agreement, staving off economic suicide depends on one of two things:  all Republicans in the House must vote to support the bill, or McCarthy must gain some Democratic help to balance renegade nihilists like Matt Gaetz and Andy Biggs.

The American flag-painted face of the January 6th MAGA insurrection made his Twitter debut immediately upon release from the halfway house and the end of his prison sentence on Thursday, recreating the ending of Joaquin Phoenix’s 2019 Joker in all its glorious madness.

FREEDOM!!! pic.twitter.com/ecqpzjo69d

— Jake Angeli-Chansley (@AmericaShaman) May 25, 2023

Jacob “QAnon Shaman” Chansley will begin his media tour on Friday with an exclusive interview with OANN maniac Alison Steinberg. We eagerly anticipate Chansley’s debut on the Trump rally circuit.

Noting how he performed in the last election among Hispanic voters, short-circuited Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis knows he’s not for everyone’s palate, but he’s trying.  “But that shows it can be done, an- and Eric, you’ve seen what we’ve done.  Y’know, I wasn’t exactly a pale pastel.  I’ve been bold colors.  Uh, I’ve stood strong for what we believe in.  Ah, I never wilted under pressure.”

Ron’s going to have to work hard to shake off the “Decorator DeSaster” tag that surely will come from stubby thumbs at Mar-a-Lago (or perhaps a courthouse, depending on his schedule).

Bald QAnon freak and 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial loser Doug Mastriano on Thursday announced he will not be running in the 2024 Republican Senate primary, clearing the way for more formidable and just barely second-place 2022 Senate primary finisher and Glenn Youngkin-vest type plutocrat dickhead David McCormick to run. Moscow Mitch can sleep marginally easier although it’ll still be a tall order for McCormick to unseat three-term incumbent Dem Bob Casey.

Hey @IngrahamAngle you can send my graduation present to:https://t.co/8BYfCVcTz0 pic.twitter.com/ICyBvBOjLw

— David Hogg 🟧 (@davidhogg111) May 25, 2023

On the anniversary of the slaughter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a survivor of an earlier mass shooting celebrated a life achievement.  David Hogg–a survivor of the 2018 school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida who became a leading gun control advocate–graduated from Harvard University, and he used the opportunity to troll Fox hostess and Trump advisor Laura Ingraham who had to issue an apology after taunting Hogg for reportedly failing to get accepted by four colleges including UCLA.  Apparently, the classless Ingraham has failed to recognize the achievement.

“I think about what I notice most about this whole failure to launch was, without the visuals, ’cause it’s an audio-only program, you realize just how sort of nasally and effeminate his voice is,” Donald Trump, Jr. says while gesticulating wildly on the video feed of his podcast.  “I, like [scoff] I dunno, I [huff] I-I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to get rid uh that thought now that it’s been sorta isolated.”

Junior’s lack of self-awareness would’ve only been worse if he mocked Hunter Biden for his drug addictio– oh, he’s done that, too?  What about if he mocked sexual assault victims like the women assaulted by his father?  No shit, that too?

Cue conservative cries of “foreign interference, libs!”  Mexican President and man who, in fact, did not pay for the wall Andrés Manuel López Obrador urged American voters of Mexican ancestry to not support Republican presidential candidate and newly initiated Dalek minion Relon DeSantis because of his anti-immigrant policies targeting Mexicans and other Latinos, NBC News reports.

“All of his playing politics with migrants was because he wanted to be the Republican party candidate,” López Obrador said during a press conference. “I hope the Hispanics of Florida wake up and don’t give him a single vote.”  DeSantis has used migrants as political props, shipping them around the nation at taxpayer expense in his attempt to raise in intraparty profile by “owning the libs.”

When Republicans turn on each other, they go all in.  Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, already under a years-old state indictment for financial fraud, will likely face an impeachment vote on the floor of the state house after a House committee referred articles, the Texas Tribune reports.

The move comes amid allegations of frequent abuse of power in the Attorney General’s office, including Paxton using his office to benefit his friends and enrich himself financially.  Four former lawyers in Paxton’s office testified during a three-hour hearing, telling committee members about “a yearslong pattern of misconduct and questionable actions by Paxton, which included criminal charges for securities fraud and allegations by his former top deputies that Paxton used his office to benefit a friend and political donor,” per the Tribune.

The allegations described in the hearing were widely known and previously reported, but the extensive airing of the claims illustrates how deep the effort to expel Paxton is.  The GOP infighting explains why Paxton called for state house Speaker Dade Phelan to step down after he led a legislative session apparently intoxicated.

Oath Keeper Kelly Meggs, one of the leaders of the group convicted of seditious conspiracy among other charges, was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison Thursday, the third longest sentence for a January 6th defendant to date, NBC’s Ryan Reilly reports.  The group’s leader Stewie Rhodes was sentenced to 17 years earlier Thursday.  The second longest:  Peter Schwartz from Kentucky.