The Democratic National Committee ruled that the New Hampshire election effectively won’t count and the winner won't amass New Hampshire's 23 delegates in the march to the party's nomination.

Some New Hampshire Democrats are definitely upset.

In 2020, Biden finished a disappointing fifth in a crowded Democratic primary that saw some 300,000 votes cast. State officials expect less than 100,000 votes this year.

This time around, the grifters are telling their suckers that Hillary Clinton and the round-earthers have cooked up a diabolical pathogen called "Disease X" to rid the planet of "excess population," "install a corporate world government," and "enslave humanity." If you don't want your body to get covered in festering boils and carbuncles the size of chicken eggs, you need to buy a "medical contagion kit" with vials of life-saving ivermectin manufactured right here in God's most favorite country in the whole universe.

(AP) - Police cleared the ousted chair of the Florida Republican Party of rape allegations on Friday, but said they have asked prosecutors to charge him with illegally video recording the sexual encounter he had with a female acquaintance.

The Sarasota Police Department said in a statement that a review of a cellphone video Christian Ziegler made of the Oct. 2 encounter showed that it was “likely consensual,” making it impossible to charge him with rape. However, police said the woman told investigators that she never consented to be video recorded and was unaware it had occurred.

District Judge Lewis Kaplan has said it multiple times: Donald Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in 1996. Kaplan wrote it in May 2023, when he presided over one of the trials against Trump. And he reminded jurors of the rape this week, during the latest proceedings in the multi-layered, winding rape and defamation cases brought against Trump by Carroll.

Donald Trump Jr. recently claimed that his father, Donald Trump, was eyeing Tucker Carlson as a possible 2024 vice president pick, RadarOnline.com has learned.

In a surprising development to come after ex-President Trump won the Iowa Caucus in a landslide victory on Monday night, Don Jr. appeared on Newsmax to discuss potential running mates for his father for the general election later this year.

Yes, I know this is a POS news source. It does seem to be on-brand for the entire trump family, though.

NEW YORK – Dozens of protestors gathered in below freezing temperatures last night in mid-town behind NYPD-erected barricades in front of the Bohemian National Hall demonstrating against extremist group Moms for Liberty’s townhall event being held inside.

When the event was announced earlier this month it drew an angered response in opposition from the Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský, U.S. Representative Jerry Nadler, a Democrat whose congressional district includes the Upper West Side, openly gay New York state Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal as well as countless hundreds of others.

Foreign Minister Lipavský, said: “I do not agree with the event, the activities of this organization do not correspond to the interests of Czech foreign policy, and if it were up to me, it would never have taken place on the grounds of the Czech national building.”

In a statement Rep. Nadler said: “Despite their catchy name, Moms for Liberty is nothing more than an alt-right hate group vilifying the LGBTQ+ community. There is no place for hatred or bigotry in New York, which is why I’m deeply troubled by their planned event on the Upper East Side. We cannot allow this fringe group to dictate what books are in our libraries or the version of our nation’s history that fits their preferred narrative.”

By William Melhado | NEW ORLEANS. La. – The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked the Texas Education Agency on Wednesday from enforcing a state law requiring booksellers to rate the explicitness and relevance of sexual references in materials they sell to schools.

The appellate court, one of the most conservative in the nation, sided with booksellers who sued the state after claiming House Bill 900 violated their First Amendment rights. The court affirmed a lower court’s decision to prevent TEA Commissioner Mike Morath from enforcing the 2023 law.

Wednesday’s decision was somewhat surprising since the appellate court blocked the lower court’s ruling in November. Addressing the reversal, Judge Don Willett with the 5th Circuit wrote that a “different panel of this court” had granted the state’s appeal to block that ruling.

Matt Walsh, told his 2.6 million followers on X, “This is totally indistinguishable from far left DEI racial politics. Extremely embarrassing for Matt Gaetz.”

Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., declared in an interview that long-time Donald Trump confidante and adviser Roger Stone should "absolutely" be prosecuted after he was apparently caught on tape discussing the assassination of Swalwell and Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

Stone was allegedly captured on the tape talking of the murder of the Democratic lawmakers.

"Either Swalwell or Nadler has to die before the election. They need to get the message," Stone allegedly told ex New York cop Sal Greco at a restaurant in Florida on the tape weeks before the 2020 election.

When Trump-loving youth group Turning Point USA hosted a four-day extravaganza last month featuring right-wing media’s leading lights, it did so with cash from two groups the feds say bilked millions from elderly Republicans and anti-communist émigrés from China.

When Claudine Gay resigned as Harvard University president in early January, pundits credited her departure to a successful removal campaign led by conservative activists.

The strategy behind Gay’s ousting wasn’t new, and has been used to advance conservative agendas, influence school curriculum and demonize Black people throughout history. What was different this time was the quick efficacy of the takedown, which, according to some political scientists, historians and lawyers, emboldened conservative activists and could have dangerous implications for the future of education.

...

Sustained and coordinated pressure through media coverage helped kick off the campaign against Gay. Critics, mainly conservative activists, used social media and news outlets to claim that she responded inadequately to congressional questioning about antisemitism on campus. Soon thereafter, they levied allegations that she plagiarized some of her work.

Weeks prior to Gay’s resignation, the rightwing activist Christopher Rufo publicized the plan to remove her from office: “We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze.” In an interview with Politico after Gay vacated her post, Rufo described his successful strategy as a three-pronged approach of “narrative, financial and political pressure”.

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, an associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, noted the effectiveness of the plan, and warned of what it could portend considering that these actors have “seen the impact that they can have when they are able to marshal pressure from the media, donors and others”.

He pointed to similar strategies employed in the conservative movement to reshape state legislatures, where activists and lobbyists leverage understaffed and under-resourced statehouses by providing them with research and advice for bills in order to sway them. In his book State Capture, Hertel-Fernandez wrote about how the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council drafts and disseminates bills to apply political pressure. “They can have an outsized impact by diagnosing the weak spot in the institution and going after that,” said Hertel-Fernandez. “Just as they did in the case with Harvard.”

New Speaker Mike Johnson finds himself leading House Republicans with a majority in name only.

Unable to unite his unruly right flank and commanding one of the slimmest House majorities in history, Johnson is being forced to rely on Democrats for the basics of governing, including the latest bill to prevent a federal shutdown.

Approaching his first 100 days on the job, Johnson faces daunting choices ahead. He can try to corral conservatives, who are pushing rightward in endless hours of closed-door meetings, to work together as a team. Or he can keep reaching out to Democrats for a bipartisan coalition to pass compromise legislation.

So far, rather than the speaker of a dysfunctional GOP majority, Johnson, R-La., has shown he is willing to compile a rare, large supermajority of Democrats and Republicans to get things done with Democratic President Joe Biden.

This past fall, in a small southern foundry, Robert E. Lee’s face was placed on a furnace that reached a temperature of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. As the heat mounted, a haunting orange-red glow appeared across Lee’s severed visage, and the cracks that split his bronze cheeks began to look like streams of dark tears beneath his eyes. Lee’s face was once part of a larger statue of the Confederate general that stood in Charlottesville, Virginia, and was at the center of protests and counterprotests during the infamous “Unite the Right” rally there in 2017. The city had taken the statue down in 2021 and given it to a local Black-history museum. Once melted, the statue’s bronze would be repurposed into a new work of public art.

As I contemplated Lee’s metal face glowing like a small sun in the dark universe of the workshop, I thought of the statement issued by former President Donald Trump when the statue had come down. “Robert E. Lee is considered by many Generals to be the greatest strategist of them all,” Trump had written, reaffirming his past praise for the Confederate leader. Trump was implicitly telling his base: They came for Lee, and next they will come for you. It’s not hard to see why the metalworkers who melted down the statue of Lee did so at an undisclosed location; they reportedly feared for their safety.

The claim that Lee was a brilliant strategist is a bit of Lost Cause mythology that historians have largely debunked. Still, it’s worth pausing to consider why Trump has made a point, on several occasions, of commending a man who led an army that fought a war predicated on maintaining and expanding the institution of chattel slavery. Lee himself was a slave owner who tortured those he enslaved; one man said Lee was “not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, [he] then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine.” Lee also argued that slavery benefited African Americans, deeming it “necessary for their instruction as a race.”

Trump is not a student of history, military or otherwise. But he knows very well what defending Lee signals to his supporters, many of whom see the general as a paragon of white, male, southern Christianity. Nostalgia for a past in which white Christian men possessed the nation’s political power has always been at the core of Trump’s appeal; his most enduring slogan, “Make America great again,” is an unsubtle pledge to restore just such an order.

Non-paywall link

The latest stopgap funding bill gave lawmakers an early-March deadline, but now their schedules call for a light workload in February

Once the House on Thursday finished kicking the can on government funding until early March, lawmakers did what almost comes naturally at this point.

They left town for a 10-day break, not returning until the night of Jan. 29.

Exempting half-days that are scheduled for traveling into or out of Washington, the House has only five full legislative days on its calendar before lawmakers leave Feb. 16 for what is slated to be an almost two-week break from the Capitol.

...

Instead, House Republicans have set themselves up with at least seven more weeks of haggling over these agency budgets. Now two weeks since agreeing to stick with the original $1.66 trillion outline, congressional leaders and top members of the Appropriations committees have yet to agree on slicing up that pie, which is the only way for Congress to then approve the 12 bills covering all the agencies.

Non-paywall link

His immunity defense isn’t merely a legal argument. He’s priming his base to back wanton lawbreaking if he wins back the White House.

Following his trial for defamation of the families of the children and school staff killed in the Sandy Hook massacre, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones is using Valve Corp.’s Steam, the world’s largest digital distribution platform for PC games, to sell an Infowars-themed video game. Jones claims to have earned hundreds of thousands in revenue from the video game, yet he has refused to pay the Sandy Hook families. Alex Jones: NWO Wars also mirrors and cartoonishly repackages the conspiracy theorist’s regularly violent, hateful rhetoric despite the platform’s policies against hate speech.

Democrats are looking to repeat what abortion politics did for them in the 2022 midterms by appealing to a large swath of voters who think overturning Roe v. Wade went too far.

President Biden’s party achieved better-than-expected results in the midterms in large part because voters came out to elect Democrats to restore federal reproductive rights. They hope it’s still an issue that’s top of mind for voters.

“Democrats will keep it as a core part of their messaging heading into the fall because it’s such a clear contrast to the Republican position, which is out of step with where the American people are on this issue,” said Democratic communications strategist Katie Grant Drew.

Donald Trump used his social media platform Friday to mock Nikki Haley ‘s birth name, the latest example of the former president keying on race and ethnicity to attack people of color, especially his political rivals.

In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump repeatedly referred to Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, as “Nimbra.” Haley, the former South Carolina governor, was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has always gone by her middle name, “Nikki.” She took the surname “Haley” upon her marriage in 1996.

Trump, himself the son, grandson and twice the husband of immigrants, called Haley “Nimbra” three times in the post and said she “doesn’t have what it takes.”

When one asks what’s killing the GOP’s ability to advance their immigration agenda, it’s clear the call is coming from inside the House

Republican lawmakers in the House are once again at each other’s throats, this time over their efforts to secure hardline border and immigration reform.

On Friday, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) skewered former President Donald Trump — and members of his own party — for failing to secure the border during his own time in office during an interview on Fox Business.

“President Trump failed, along with Republicans … they failed in 2018 to actually move a border security bill to tighten this so that we weren’t dealing with this crisis right now, they failed to build the wall,” Roy said, “this stuff matters, it adds up.”

During a heated floor debate on Thursday, Roy also expressed his frustrations with his caucus. “It doesn’t matter who is sitting in the speaker’s seat or who has the majority. We keep doing the same stupid stuff,” he said, lambasting a proposed resolution that would extend government funding through early March. The bill passed and was signed by President Biden on Friday.