Wed: It's Not That They Like Nikki; they Don't Like Prev Guy

QANON Ron Strikes Again

The Senate GOP is breaking down into finger-pointing and "shouting matches" as tensions flare between the leadership and hardliners about passing a border and foreign aid deal, reported Punchbowl News on Wednesday.

"Private Senate GOP meetings have devolved into testy exchanges over immigration, Donald Trump and Ukraine, including Tuesday’s closed policy lunch," said the report. In particular, a handful of Senate Republicans revolted against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), "questioning whether the Kentucky Republican is using a tentative immigration and border security package as an end run with Democrats to help push through more money for Ukraine."

Punchbowl's founder Jake Sherman tweeted: "Their meetings are devolving into shouting matches. There's sniping at the leadership, accusation hurling, motivation questioning."

At the lunch on Tuesday, McConnell reportedly defended the push to get Ukraine aid through, noting that Republicans spent years talking about the urgency of defeating Russian aggression — but he is increasingly meeting resistance from members who don't agree with the mission, which comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sounds the alarm about the risk that Trump could capitulate to Vladimir Putin.

One of McConnell's sharpest critics is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who argued that Republicans "haven't really talked about" supporting Ukraine at all and has said the GOP Leader "couldn't negotiate his way out of a paper bag."

Save the Rhinos!  I Don't Really Care About the RINOs.

A fertility breakthrough has offered hope for saving the northern white rhino from extinction - there are only two of the animals left on the planet.

Scientists have achieved the world's first IVF rhino pregnancy, successfully transferring a lab-created rhino embryo into a surrogate mother.

The procedure was carried out with southern white rhinos, a closely related sub-species of northern whites.

The next step is to repeat this with northern white embryos.

"To achieve the first successful embryo transfer in a rhino is a huge step," said Susanne Holtze, a scientist at Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany, which is part of the Biorescue project, an international consortium trying to save this species.

"But now I think with this achievement, we are very confident that we will be able to create northern white rhinos in the same manner and that we will be able to save the species."

Jan Zwilling Embryo transfer in southern white rhinoJan Zwilling

The embryo transfer was carried out using a surrogate southern white rhino mother

Northern white rhinos were once found across central Africa, but illegal poaching, fuelled by the demand for rhino horn, wiped out the wild population.

Now only two rhinos remain: two females, Najin and her daughter Fatu. Both of the former zoo animals are kept under tight security at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

Unable to reproduce, the species is technically extinct. But now the Biorescue team has turned to radical fertility science to bring these animals back from the brink.

They started their work using southern white rhinos. This close cousin of the northern whites has a population of thousands - and is considered a conservation success story although it's still threatened by illegal hunting.

The project has taken years and has had to overcome many challenges: from working out how to collect eggs from the two-tonne animals, to creating the first-ever rhino embryos in a lab and trying to establish how - and when - to implant them.

World's first IVF rhino pregnancy 'could save species'

He's Back!!

Comedian Jon Stewart is rewinding the clock, returning to “The Daily Show” as a weekly host and executive producing through the 2024 U.S. elections cycle.

Comedy Central on Wednesday said Stewart will host the topical TV show, the perch he ruled for 16 years starting in 1999, every Monday starting Feb. 12. A rotating line-up of show regulars are on tap for the rest of the week.

Out of Excuses

It’s Nunziata’s bio that makes this an interesting thread: President Rock Spring Public Policy. Philadelphia lawyer. Former staffer to Sen. Marco Rubio, Senate Republican Policy Committee (Sen. John Thune) & Senate Judiciary (Chairman Arlen Specter).

The Cost of Helping Previous Guy

Donald Trump’s Co-Defendants Are Buried In Legal Fees. Trump Is Not Helping.

Georgia’s state Republican Party is helping out Trump’s co-defendants, using finite resources on legal defense instead of campaigns.

Republican Georgia state Sen. Shawn Still, charged in the sweeping racketeering and conspiracy case in Georgia, sold property to cover his legal expenses, according to two people who know him. Still sold a commercial warehouse he owned for $1.9 million in November, according to local property records. He has kept his seat in the legislature — and owns a pool construction business and an outdoor adventure company offering guided whitewater rafting trips on the side — but the costs of being a named co-conspirator alongside Trump are apparently adding up.

John Eastman, the former law professor who allegedly helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election results, said that he needed to raise $1 million by February to continue mounting his defense in Georgia — an effort he estimated would cost him as much as $3.5 million in total. Eastman is simultaneously a defendant in the Georgia racketeering case, an unindicted co-conspirator in one of the federal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith, and the subject of an ethics complaint before the California state bar about his actions in 2020.

“I’m trying very hard not to completely deplete my wife’s retirement fund,” Eastman said recently on the podcast “Happy Hour with Julie & Liz”. His lawyer told NOTUS that he had received no assistance from the legal defense fund set up by Trump. Still did not respond to a request for comment.

Still and Eastman are just two of the many co-defendants and potential witnesses in Trump’s legal cases struggling to pay their legal bills. Their reality isn’t just a personal difficulty. It’s also a liability for Trump and his legal team, as they hope to keep as many associates as possible away from plea deals or cooperation agreements that could ricochet incriminating testimony or evidence back onto the former president.

Expect More of Them to Flip