- State Sen. Harold Jones II (D-GA) doing some fun and necessary math in the Fani Willis ethics hearing

It was more of a womp-womp Tuesday, if we’re being honest.
 

• Disgraced former president Donald Trump, as expected, widened his already-massive lead over his former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who bowed out of the race on Wednesday morning. In her farewell speech, Haley did not endorse Trump, who has routinely belittled her campaign. Instead she left with a steely quasi-warning: “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that.” Now, this obviously doesn’t mean Haley won’t endorse Trump, as so many of his spineless critics in the GOP have a habit of doing. Speaking of which, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed Trump, after years of frost between the two men and Trump semi-regularly insulting McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao. Profiles! In! Courage!
   

• It will surprise absolutely no one that Trump was not a gracious winner. He immediately took to Truth Social to write: “Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record setting fashion.” But in a speech to a ballroom full of adoring fans at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday night, Trump did not mention Haley at all, and said he wanted “to have unity, and we’re going to have unity, and it’s going to happen very quickly.” It’s a completely different tone from the one he struck just a few weeks ago, when he said on Truth Social that anyone who supported Haley “will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp. We do not want them, and will not accept them…” 
   

• So Trump zipped up the nomination on the Republican side, and President Biden did the same on the Democratic side. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) suspended his ultra-long-shot campaign, but his tone toward his primary rival was much warmer in his concession remarks, and he endorsed President Biden.

Moving on to a closely-monitored state-level race. 
 

• In one of the night’s most-watched Senate primaries, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Republican/former Major League Baseball player Steve Garvey advanced to the runoff in November, which will decide who will replace the seat vacated by the late Dianne Feinstein. With less than half of the vote in the state counted at the time of this writing, Garvey has managed to carve out an early top spot in the jungle primary despite having no ads, vague political stances, and sparse press coverage. All of the Golden State’s Republicans were able to coalesce around him, whereas the state’s majority of Democratic voters were divided three ways. (Sounds like a case for ranked-choice voting if you ask me!) Schiff was the frontrunner for months, having amassed a war chest of more than $30 million in donations. The progressive vote was split between Reps. Katie Porter (D-CA) and Barbara Lee (D-CA) who are currently in third and fourth, respectively. 
   

• Ultimately, it was Schiff who likely ensured Garvey did so well on Tuesday. Look, we thank Adam Schiff for his service in the Trump impeachment inquiry, but he played dirtier than he should have in this primary, seemingly in an attempt to shut out the progressive vote completely. Garvey, as mentioned, was virtually unknown when he entered the race, but Schiff rolled out a batch of television ads in January promoting him, calling him “too conservative” for California and tying him to Trump. The goal of this move was to activate GOP voters for Garvey and shut out his main rival in the primary, Katie Porter. It worked. Porter blasted the ads as “brazenly cynical” and said in an interview last month: “There is no chance that Steve Garvey becomes the next senator. That’s why Adam Schiff is boosting him — to end campaigning, to turn off doing the hard work of democracy.”

As President Biden prepares to deliver his third State of the Union address on Thursday night, he has a long list of political problems looming over his presidency and therefore his reelection campaign. We desperately need him to right the ship before voters go to the polls in November.

Happy Women’s History Month! The Crooked Store is celebrating with a She-Commerce Pop-Up Shop featuring favorites from women of color-founded companies and authors. The shop has everything from delicious goodies to kids books to candles – all from small companies we love. It’s a great way to support women of color and your online shopping addiction at the same time. Check out what’s in stock at crooked.com/store, for this month only.

New White grievance ruling just dropped! Yet another conservative federal judge has issued a ruling that makes us ask: “Are we…seriously doing this?”  U.S. District Court Judge Mark Pittman ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency (which has been promoting minority-owned businesses for 55 years!) must open its doors to “every race” (i.e., White people). The group of White plaintiffs in the suit argued that the agency discriminates (lol) against them as White people. In his 93-page opinion (give me a fucking BREAK) the judge ruled that the agency’s presumption that businesses owned by Black, Latino, and other minorities are inherently disadvantaged violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause. Further, he permanently prohibited the agency’s business centers from extending services based on an applicant’s race. In one truly infuriating passage, Pittman wrote: “If courts mean what they say when they ascribe supreme importance to constitutional rights, the federal government may not flagrantly violate such rights with impunity. The MBDA has done so for years. Time’s up.” Rarely does diction in a judicial ruling trigger a Looney Toons-style reaction complete with steam coming out of my ears and my face turning red with rage but wow! That did it! 

This ruling is the latest in a string of judgments that have blown up federal affirmative action programs following the precedent set by the conservative-majority Supreme Court ruled against Harvard and the University of North Carolina using race-conscious admissions last June. The conservative public interest law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, who represented the White plaintiffs, was naturally ecstatic about the ruling. One of the firm’s attorneys, Dan Lennington, said, while somehow keeping a straight face: “No longer can a federal agency only cater to certain races.” This man really said “cater”! About America’s relationship to minorities! I’m going to stop writing now before I have a stroke.

Gaza Health Ministry officials reported that 16 children have died of malnutrition. 

A missile launched by Houthi militants in Yemen struck a commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden and killed three people on Wednesday, the U.S. military’s Central Command said. Four others were injured, with three in critical condition.  

Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) announced she will deploy 1,000 members of the State Police and National Guard to patrol the already-over-policed New York City subway system. The decision follows a 13 percent year-on-year rise in transit crime through March 3, despite the city’s annual $5.6 billion police budget and two years of Mayor Eric Adams (D-NY) (a former transit cop himself) flooding the subway with law enforcement, while ushering in budget cuts for many other departments and public services. It’s almost like more police doesn’t lead to greater safety! 

A Russian missile strike landed just hundreds of feet from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a meeting with the Prime Minister of Greece in the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odessa on Wednesday. Five people were killed and more were injured, a Ukrainian Navy spokesperson told CNN, although the two leaders were unharmed.

The Republican National Committee will not vote on a resolution to stop paying Trump’s legal bills on Friday. Deeply pathetic people!

The National Transportation Safety Board said on Wednesday it has not received necessary documents from Boeing crucial to its investigation of the emergency door blowout incident in January. Seems like they should get on that!

A Starbucks franchise owner that runs stores in the Middle East and North Africa announced on Tuesday that they will lay off 2,000 workers amidst calls for boycotts because of the corporation’s association with support for Israel. 

House Republican leadership is trying to tamp down on possible heckling during tomorrow night’s State of the Union address, wanting to avert a repeat of last year. So long as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is still attending, uh, good luck with that!

Finding skincare products that actually work for you is complicated. There are so many options, it’s hard to know what’s best for you.  Whether you’re dealing with breakouts, signs of aging, or acne scarring, Apostrophe will help you love the skin you’re in.  
 

• Apostrophe is an online platform that connects you with an expert dermatology team to get customized acne treatment for your unique skin. 
   

• Through Apostrophe, you can get access to oral and topical medications that use clinically proven ingredients to help clear acne. 
   

• Simply fill out an online consultation about your skin goals and medical history. Then snap a few selfies and a dermatology provider will create a customized treatment plan just for you. 
   

• Apostrophe offers access to prescription treatments for all types of acne - from hormonal acne to facial acne, and even back, chest, and butt acne. Treat breakouts from head to toe. 

Car-centric Los Angeles voted overwhelmingly to add hundreds of miles of bike and bus lanes to the city on Tuesday in an effort to make streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. 

A team at the New England Aquarium confirmed that they spotted a gray whale—a species believed to have been extinct in the Atlantic Ocean for more than two centuries—off the coast of Massachusetts last week. As one ancient aquatic species goes extinct (Mitch McConnell) another reappears. 

Sen. Tim Kaine’s (D-VA) guest at the State of the Union address tomorrow night will be Elizabeth Carr, the first baby in America conceived through in vitro fertilization, an obvious nod to the ludicrous GOP-led Alabama Supreme Court ruling effectively criminalizing the procedure.