Nicole Malliotakis
Nicole Malliotakis

"Like, this is serious. This is the United States Congress,” said Staten Island/Brooklyn Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis after Ohio right-winger Jim Jordan went down in flames on the second vote to elect him Speaker of the House.

She’s got to be kidding. Malliotakis, who represents a Republican district that is not exactly MAGA country, voted twice in support of the election-denying insurrectionist Jordan. [I live in the Brooklyn part of her district.]

If elevated to the Speaker chair, Jordan would increase the vitriol in the House, preside over the shutdown of the government and pull the plug on supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russia.

Former House Speaker John Boehner once said of Jordan: “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart—never building anything, never putting anything together.”

Malliotakis scolded her fellow Republicans who switched their initial vote for Jordan and voted against him in the second tally as acting “very childish.”

But she’s the one who is stomping her feet in protest because her guy isn’t going to be elected to serve as the second-in-line for the US presidency.

Good riddance. In comparison to Jordan, VP Kamala Harris is the reincarnation of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt all rolled into one fine president-in-waiting.

Israel calls in the PR reserves. Israel Defense Forces spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said hundreds of reservists have been called up to help with the public diplomacy efforts.

“We presented the truth to the whole world, and following the reliable and accurate reporting, the US president has adopted our position,” he said during a briefing.

Hagari said the IDF had intercepted intelligence of “communications between terrorists discussing rockets misfiring, which included mention of the hospital,” in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed.

He said the IDF is sharing its evidence with others in the spirit of “maximum transparency.”

Stamping out hate on social media. New York attorney general Letitia James wants to know what actions social media have taken to “address the possibility that their platforms may be used to plan, encourage or disseminate acts of violence.”

She sent a list of questions to Google, X, Meta, TikTok, Reddit and Rumble about how they are dealing with calls of violence against Jewish and Muslim people in the wake of the terror attacks in Israel.

James wants to find out about how content moderation policies and terms of service are being used to limit hate-based threats and reduce the likelihood that the platforms are used to plan acts of violence.