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Former President Donald Trump pushed two far-right candidates in Arizona on his Truth Social platform as he continues to reward election deniers with his political support.
For Secretary of State, Trump pushed his "complete and total endorsement" to state Rep. Mark Finchem, who was in Washington, DC on Jan. 6.
As Trump sought to overturn the 2020 election, his campaign paid Finchem $6,037 for "legal consulting" — despite not being an attorney.
Trump's "big lie" about the election fraud is not the first time Finchem has been suckered by a conspiracy theory.
He's also shown support for QAnon, the delusional conspiracy theory that the world is run by a Satanic cult of cannibalistic child molesters that Donald Trump would remove from power.
Finchem also spread conspiracy theories — including from a former adult actress — that MAGABomber devices mailed to critics of Trump were fake. In reality, Cesar Sayoc was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the mail bomb spree.
Trump is also pushing Dave Farnsworth against Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who publicly testified against Trump before the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Jim Jordan goes off on Dems' marriage equality bill — and calls it an attempt to 'intimidate' SCOTUS www.youtube.com
Former President Donald Trump has been ramping up his attacks on potential presidential rival Ron DeSantis, but CNN fact checker Daniel Dale has found a number of egregious whoppers in his attacks on the Florida governor.
One of the most egregious instances, writes Dale, comes from Trump telling a "story that cannot possibly be true" when discussing his decision to endorse DeSantis in 2018.
Specifically, Trump claimed that he decided to give DeSantis a chance after seeing the future Florida governor on television defending him against the "impeachment hoax," and Dale notes that this claim is completely out of sync with the actual timeline of when these events occurred.
"Trump issued his official endorsement of DeSantis in June 2018 – but his first impeachment battle, over his effort to pressure Ukraine’s president to investigate Joe Biden, did not begin until the fall of 2019," writes Dale. "Trump might have been thinking of how DeSantis defended him over a special counsel investigation in 2017 into his campaign’s relationship with Russia, which he has also called a 'hoax,' but that probe did not lead to impeachment."
READ MORE: GOP probes 'seem to be flopping' as voters see them as 'revenge': analysis
This wasn't the only false or misleading claim Trump made against DeSantis, Dale finds, as Trump also quoted crime statistics about Florida without putting them into the context of population size. Additionally, Trump's criticisms of DeSantis for closing beaches at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic came when Trump's own administration was calling for a nationwide shutdown to try to contain the virus that would go on the kill more than 1 million Americans.
One of the largest black holes ever recorded has been discovered using a new technique that could spot thousands more of the insatiable celestial monsters in the coming years, according to astronomers.
The ultramassive black hole, one of just four ever observed, is more than 30 billion times the mass of the Sun, a new study said.
It is the first black hole ever observed using a phenomenon called gravitational lensing, in which light traveling towards us from a distant galaxy appears to magnify and bend inwards, giving away the presence of a dark giant.
James Nightingale, an astronomer at the UK's Durham University and the study's lead author, told AFP the process was "similar to shining light through the base of a wine glass".
He said it was "very fortuitous" that the light of a galaxy in the distant universe travelled extremely close to this black hole, which is roughly two billion light years from Earth.
It could even be the biggest black hole ever recorded, but it was difficult to say for sure given the varying techniques and uncertainties involved, he added.
Supermassive black holes sit at the centre of galaxies using their vast gravitational pull to gobble up stars like specks of dust, not even allowing light to escape.
Previous black holes of this size have been observed when their voracious devouring gives off huge amounts light at the margins -- or by measuring the orbit of stars that speed up as they pass by.
But these techniques only work for galaxies relatively close to Earth.
Gravitational lensing allows astronomers to "discover black holes in the other 99 percent of galaxies that are currently inaccessible," Nightingale said.
There are currently around 500 known gravitational lenses -- at least one of which we now know is a supermassive black hole.
But "the landscape is about to dramatically change," Nightingale said.
The European Space Agency's Euclid mission, planned to launch into space in July, will open a "big data era" for black hole hunters by creating a huge high resolution map of the universe, he said.
In the next six years Euclid could find 100,000 new gravitational lenses, which would potentially point towards thousands of previously hidden black holes, Nightingale added.
For the latest discovery, the researchers used computer simulations and images from the Hubble Space Telescope to confirm their findings, as well as eliminating other possibilities such as an overconcentration of dark matter.
The huge size is also consistent with what would be expected for a black hole at the centre of its giant host galaxy, Nightingale said.
The mass of all the stars in the galaxy, dubbed Abell 1201, is more than a trillion times that of our Sun, meaning it would be expected to have a particularly large black hole at its centre.
The study was published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Tuesday.
© 2023 AFP
A racist man from Independence, Kansas was arrested this week after leaving a seemingly endless stream of racist voicemails for a local judge in which he also hinted at having plans for violent actions.
The Kansas City Star reports that 42-year-old Michael Deblois left more than a dozen voicemails over the span of two days for a Jackson County judge in which he repeatedly said the N-word in what prosecutors describe as "hateful, angry" messages that included rants about “reverse discrimination,” “government corruption” and a “fraudulent homeowners association.”
In one message, Deblois made a thinly veiled threat of retribution against the judge.
"I’m not doing anything to a single member of your... staff that you didn’t do to me first," Deblois allegedly said. "Eye for an eye, makes you wonder what I do have planned."
READ MORE: Morning Joe profanely condemns Trump's open celebration of Jan. 6 'rioters and convicts'
Identifying Deblois as the man behind the voicemails was not difficult, as he helpfully left his name and phone number in the messages.
Police made the move to arrest Deblois shortly after the judge, who is not being publicly identified, filed for a protective order after becoming concerned that Deblois meant to commit acts of violence.
Deblois has since been charged with tampering with a judicial officer and harassment, reports the Kansas City Star.
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