Ryan, who rose to prominence as Mitt Romney's running mate, leaves with his reputation tied closely to Trump—a man he vowed not to defend, and then proceeded to defend tirelessly.
MSNBC's Kasie Hunt put together a series of clips where Ryan defended Trump from the same type of allegations that led him to turn on Roy Moore, and where he refused to name the president while criticizing his comments after Charlottesville.
"When Donald Trump won the White House, against all odds, Republicans who were left without a country hoped Ryan would be the voice of reason, of decency when there seems to be no decency left," Hunt said. "And Paul Ryan let them all down."
Watch the lowlight reel of Ryan defending and equivocating below.
The group's former leader, Mike Dunn, has been fighting in Ukraine already, but he says at least ten new members are headed to the front to "help." Ukrainians on the ground have seen American "soldiers" waving tropical-looking flags, assuming they're coming as far away as Hawaii, but that isn't the case.
The term "boogaloo" came from memes that encourage a violent uprising against the American government and the start of a second civil war. Aside from Jan. 6, a violent uprising never happened. So, the group has taken their fetish for war to the war in Ukraine.
"I’ve met a couple of Americans here that are active Boogaloo Bois, and I have more Boogaloo Bois that will be arriving here,” Dunn, who was recovering in a hospital until recently, told VICE News.
“They’ll be going through background checks and processing into whatever unit picks them,” Dunn said. “Whenever a unit takes them, they’ll process into and start fighting, to either get experience or to reignite some type of passion in their lives, for the excitement, I guess.”
“Whenever a unit takes them, they’ll process into and start fighting, to either get experience or to reignite some type of passion in their lives, for the excitement, I guess," he said.
Dunn, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps before being discharged for a medical reason, said that he was part of a combat support unit of foreign fighters connected to Ukrainian fighters.
"In his telling, a Russian advance pierced the lines of the 79th in the Donetsk region, and his unit was dispatched to stem it but was ambushed in the process," the report said about Dunn's experience.
There has been a concern for years that war in Ukraine could lead to a training ground for far-right terrorists.
"Azov Battalion, an ultranationalist unit within the Ukrainian military, is dogged by its connections to neo-Nazism and the global far-right," said the report.
But thus far there's no evidence that shows that's happening. The Ukraine government is aware of the concern, however. Even as far back as 2019, Vice explained that Ukraine deported two foreign fighters back to the U.S. because they were engaged in far-right terrorist activities.
The report names two other men, one from Ohio, henry Hoefit, who even spoke to the media about his deployment. He was back after two weeks claiming that foreign fighters were being used as cannon fodder and being forced to fight in conflict zones like Kyiv without gear.
The lack of equipment has been a common complaint by foreign fighters who never fully understood the degree to which Ukraine was fighting the war alone. Finally, over the past several months, foreign governments have sent resources and equipment that could better help. Defense contractors have sent helmets and other equipment but more continues to be needed.
Video footage shows Florida sheriffs giving a security briefing to an armed right-wing group that was heading to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the Daily Dot reports.
The videos show the Homeland Security Division of the Flagler County, Florida Sheriff’s Office meeting with the The Flagler Liberty Coalition (FLC) and other pro-Trump protestors who were about to leave for Washington, D.C.
"The Flagler Liberty Coalition (FLC) recommended its members pack body armor, mace, and knives—which they said were for protection—and were working with Flagler County Commissioner Joe Mullins to bring crowds to D.C. that day. Mullins has faced criticism from his fellow local politicians for attending the protests that turned into the Capitol insurrection," the Dot's report stated. "Together, the group brought three buses of people to Washington on Jan. 6."
The Daily Dot's Eric Levai contends that the video is the best evidence yet of links between pro-Trump politicians, law enforcement, and right-wing groups in the lead up to the Capitol riot. The videos have since been deleted from YouTube.
The video was recorded by independent journalist Tracey Eaton and shows a sheriff warning the group that antifa will be at the Capitol and plans to use "fire" as a weapon. On the group's website, the intent to go to the Capitol that day was expressed openly. One person in the group warned that the government might fry their cellphones if they stormed the Capitol.
The briefing took place one day before the Capitol riot.
Flagler County Sheriff’s deputies Mike Lutz warned people in the video to travel in groups because they might be attacked by antifa if they're alone. In another video, FLC member Mark Phillips tells protestors to bring helmets, body armor, mace, pepper spray, and knives and says that some members of the group will be in “fight mode.”
"I want everyone coming back from this trip with a win," Lutz says. "We need to take our country back and we need to show up for our president.
None of the FLC members have been arrested or charged with any crimes related to Jan. 6.
Sitting outside on a summer evening always sounds relaxing until flies and mosquitoes arrive – then the swatting begins. Despite their minuscule eyes and a brain roughly 1 million times smaller than yours, flies can evade almost every swat.
Flies can thank their fast, sophisticated eyesight and some neural quirks for their ability to escape swats with such speed and agility.
Our labinvestigates insect flight and vision, with the goal of finding out how such tiny creatures can process visual information to perform challenging behaviors, such as escaping your swatter so quickly.
Faster vision
Flies have compound eyes. Rather than collecting light through a single lens that makes the whole image – the strategy of human eyes – flies form images built from multiple facets, lots of individual lenses that focus incoming light onto clusters of photoreceptors, the light-sensing cells in their eyes. Essentially, each facet produces an individual pixel of the fly’s vision.
A fly’s world is fairly low resolution, because small heads can house only a limited number of facets – usually hundreds to thousands – and there is no easy way to sharpen their blurry vision up to the millions of pixels people effectively see. But despite this coarse resolution, flies see and process fast movements very quickly.
Tiny hexagonal ‘facets’ take in light, and the photoreceptors beneath them process it in quick flashes.
We can infer how animals perceive fast movement from how quickly their photoreceptors can process light. Humans discern a maximum of about 60 discrete flashes of light per second. Any faster usually appears as steady light. The ability to see discrete flashes depends on the lighting conditions and which part of the retina you use.
Some LED lights, for example, emit discrete flashes of light quickly enough that they appear as steady light to humans – unless you turn your head. In your peripheral vision you may notice a flicker. That’s because your peripheral vision processes light more quickly, but at a lower resolution, like fly vision.
Remarkably, some flies can see as many as 250 flashes per second, around four times more flashes per second than people can perceive.
If you took one of these flies to the cineplex, the smooth movie you watched made up of 24 frames per second would, to the fly, appear as a series of static images, like a slide show. But this fast vision allows it to react quickly to prey, obstacles, competitors and your attempts at swatting.
Our research shows that flies in dim light lose some ability to see fast movements. This might sound like a good opportunity to swat them, but humans also lose their ability to see quick, sharp features in the dark. So you may be just as handicapped your target.
When they do fly in the dark, flies and mosquitoes fly erratically, with twisty flight paths to escape swats. They can also rely on nonvisual cues, such as information from small hairs on their body that sense changes in the air currents when you move to strike.
Flight of a mosquito. Source: Intellectual Ventures.
Neural tricks
But why do flies see more slowly in the dark? You may have noticed your own vision becoming sluggish and blurry in the dark, and much less colorful. The process is similar for insects. Low light means fewer photons, and just like cameras and telescopes, eyes depend on photons to make images.
But unlike a nice camera, which allows you to switch to a larger lens and gather more photons in dark settings, animals can’t swap out the optics of their eyes. Instead, they rely on summation, a neural strategy that adds together the inputs of neighboring pixels, or increases the time they sample photons, to form an image.
Big pixels and longer exposures capture more photons, but at the cost of sharp images. Summation is equivalent to taking photographs with grainy film (higher ISO) or slow shutter speeds, which produce blurrier images, but avoid underexposing your subjects. Flies, especially small ones, can’t see quickly in the dark because, in a sense, they are waiting for enough photons to arrive until they are sure of what they are seeing.
Flight maneuverability
In addition to rapidly perceiving looming threats, flies need to be able to fly away in a split second. This requires preparation for takeoff and quick flight maneuvers. After visually detecting a looming threat, fruit flies, for example, adjust their posture in one-fifth of a second before takeoff. Predatory flies, such as killer flies, coordinate their legs, wings and halteres – dumbbell-shaped remnants of wings used for sensing in-air rotations – to quickly catch their prey midflight.
Flight of a fly. Notice how they adjust their posture before takeoff. Source: The New York Times.
How best to swat a fly
To outmaneuver a fly, you must strike faster than it can detect your approaching hand. With practice, you may improve at this, but flies have honed their escapes over hundreds millions of years. So instead of swatting, using other ways to manage flies, such as installing fly traps and cleaning backyards, is a better bet.
Escape behavior of a fly in slow motion. Source: Florian Muijres et al, 2014 Science.
You can lure certain flies into a narrow neck bottle filled with apple cider vinegar and beer. Placing a funnel in the bottle neck makes it easy for them to enter, but difficult to escape.
Apple cider vinegar and beer trap to control fruit flies in your kitchen or backyard.
As for mosquitoes, some commercial repellents may work, but removing stagnant water around the house – in some plants, pots or any open containers – will help eliminate their egg-laying sites and reduce the number of mosquitoes around from the start. Avoid insecticides, as they also harm useful insects such as bees and butterflies.