Headlines for Monday, May 1, 2023
🗽A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson
🗽A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson
ABC News: E. Jean Carroll, under cross-examination, denies rape claim against Trump came from 'Law & Order' episode: Former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, testifying Monday under cross-examination in her civil defamation and battery case against former President Donald Trump, denied that she borrowed her rape claim from an episode of the TV crime drama "Law & Order." Carroll, who brought the lawsuit in November, alleges that Trump defamed her in a 2022 Truth Social post by calling her allegations "a Hoax and a lie" and saying "This woman is not my type!" when he denied her claim that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in the 1990s. She added a charge of battery under a recently adopted New York law that allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their alleged attacker regardless of the statute of limitations. Trump has denied all allegations that he raped Carroll or defamed her.
The New Republic: E. Jean Carroll Could Win Her Defamation Suit Against Trump. Will the GOP Even Care?: This is still entirely hypothetical, I realize, but it seems to me that it’s about time for someone to start asking Republican elected officials: If this jury in New York finds in favor of E. Jean Carroll, are you going to be OK with having a sexual assaulter as your presidential candidate? Before I get into the meat of this, a few factual points. This is not a criminal trial—the state, county, or city of New York did not file criminal rape charges against Donald Trump. This is a federal civil defamation suit brought by Carroll against Trump. She alleges that Trump’s denials and insults have damaged her reputation and career. But interestingly, she also added a battery claim under a recent New York law that allows survivors of sexual violence to sue for attacks committed against them long ago, outside previously existing statutes of limitations.
The Atlantic Journal-Constitution: Fulton judge extends deadline for DA to reply to Trump motion to kill probe: A Fulton County judge is giving District Attorney Fani Willis additional time to respond to a motion by Donald Trump’s legal team that argued she should be disqualified from investigating the former president’s alleged interference in Georgia’s 2020 election. The extension comes after Cathy Latham, a South Georgia-based “alternate” elector, filed a motion on Friday which echoed Trump’s claims.
The Guardian: Dominion wants ‘accountability’ over Fox News election lies, co-founder says: Dominion Voting Systems, which last month reached a $787.5m settlement of its $1.6bn defamation case against Fox News, is seeking wider accountability for the broadcast of Donald Trump’s election fraud lies and will “not … stop until we get it”, a co-founder said. A Dominion lawyer, meanwhile, said he hoped messages redacted in court filings but reportedly linked to the dramatic firing of Tucker Carlson would soon be revealed.
The New York Times: A Hostile, Under-the-Radar Primary Splinters Republicans: As he spoke to about a dozen voters in a dimly lit Mexican restaurant on the outskirts of Louisville, Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s popular attorney general, explained how he viewed the tightening battle for the Republican nomination for governor. “Some folks in this race have been running on ads, and I’ve been running on a record,” said Mr. Cameron, who has long been seen as a rising Republican political talent and is a close ally of Senator Mitch McConnell. He was taking a clear swipe at his top rival, Kelly Craft, a former ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration who is married to a coal billionaire and has pumped more than $4.2 million into TV advertising.
Wisconsin State Journal: Wisconsin's abortion lawsuit comes before a judge this week. Here's what you need to know: The lawsuit challenging Wisconsin's near-complete abortion ban is coming before a Dane County judge on Thursday as one of the defendants seeks to dismiss the case. Filed days after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, the lawsuit will see its first oral arguments this week.
Wisconsin Public Radio: The Senate holds its Supreme Court ethics hearing this week — with no justices: The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Supreme Court ethics reform on Tuesday, as questions continue to swirl about the business dealings of several justices. And it will proceed even without participation from U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who declined to testify. "Regardless of whether the chief justice shows up or not, the committee will go forward with our hearings with ethical experts to point out why it's important for the Supreme Court to have such a code," Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii tells Morning Edition.
Business Insider: Millions of student-loan borrowers could find out in the next 2 months if they will get Biden's debt relief. Here's what's at stake — beyond a reduction to balances.: A critical Supreme Court decision for millions of student-loan borrowers could come by the end of next month. There's a lot at stake. On February 28, the nation's highest court heard oral arguments in two cases that paused the implementation of President Joe Biden's plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for federal borrowers making under $125,000 a year. The relief was halted in November due to two conservative backed lawsuits: one was filed by two student-loan borrowers who sued because they did not qualify for the full $20,000 amount of relief, and the other was filed by six Republican-led states who argued the relief would hurt their states' tax revenues, along with the revenue of student-loan company MOHELA.
The Hill: More than 30 percent of LGBTQ youth attribute poor mental health to anti-LGBTQ laws: Close to a third of LGBTQ youth say laws and policies that target LGBTQ people have had a substantial and negative impact on their mental health over the past year, according to an annual report published Monday by The Trevor Project, a national LGBTQ youth suicide prevention group. Nearly one in three LGBTQ young people said their mental health is poor either “most of the time” or “always” because of policies and legislation that takes aim at their sexual orientation or gender identity, according to Monday’s report, which analyzed survey responses from more than 28,000 LGBTQ young people ages 13 to 24 across the U.S.
Knox News: Tennessee House Republicans pile on unforced error after unforced error: About when one thought the House GOP could not handle any more scandals or politically dumb decisions, reporters revealed the House Ethics Committee had investigated state Rep. Scotty Campbell from Mountain City (the northeastern tip of Tennessee) for alleged sexual harassment of legislative employees. He was vice chair of the House GOP caucus and serving his third term. It seems the findings were finalized more than a month ago, March 29, and submitted to Speaker Cameron Sexton. House Majority Leader William Lamberth serves on this committee.
The Hill: Zephyr sues Montana over censure: State Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) is suing the state of Montana, state House Speaker Matt Reiger (R) and state House Sergeant at Arms Bradley Murfitt regarding her censure. The House voted last week to censure Zephyr, one of the state’s first openly transgender lawmakers, limiting her participation to voting on bills remotely. Zephyr’s lawsuit says, “Representatives also are elected to use of the floor of the House to pursue their constituents’ interests and views—using the platform provided by the People’s House to educate and persuade their colleagues and the public through speech, debate, and lobbying.”
MSNBC: Opinion: The North Carolina Supreme Court just took a hatchet to democracy: In three rulings handed down Friday by the North Carolina Supreme Court, extremists who have worked to consolidate power in Republican hands effectively achieved a political coup — at least temporarily. The court’s decisions give Republicans free rein to draw voting maps that favor their candidates in future elections, create a new and unnecessary barrier for voters through a restrictive ID requirement and disenfranchise 55,000 formerly incarcerated citizens.
The Washington Post: The first arrests from DeSantis’s election police take extensive toll: The fallout came fast when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s new election police unit charged Peter Washington with voter fraud last summer as part of a crackdown against felons who’d allegedly broken the law by casting a ballot. The Orlando resident lost his job supervising irrigation projects, and along with it, his family’s health insurance. His wife dropped her virtual classes at Florida International University to help pay their rent. Future plans went out the window.
Newsweek: Trump's Lawyers Gift Jack Smith 'Roadmap' to Defense: Former Prosecutor: Donald Trump's lawyers handed special counsel Jack Smith a "roadmap" to their Mar-a-Lago defense strategy amid the former president's classified documents case, according to former prosecutor Charles Coleman Jr. on Sunday. Trump has been accused of improperly removing dozens of classified documents from the White House before leaving office in 2021. Last August, the FBI, at the direction of U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, seized the documents from Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Florida, estate, turning the Department of Justice's (DOJ) investigation public. However, many details remain limited and Trump has maintained his innocence in the case.
USA Today: How many legal cases does Donald Trump face? 2 DOJ investigations, a Georgia grand jury, NY charges and a lawsuit: Former Vice President Mike Pence's testimony before a federal grand jury is only one of the high-profile developments in the investigations of former President Donald Trump this week. Pence, as president of the Senate, was key to Trump’s strategy to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He testified Thursday before the grand jury in Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s role in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Washington Post: DOJ challenges Tennessee over ban on gender-affirming care for minors: The Justice Department filed a motion Wednesday to join a lawsuit three Tennessee families filed against their state last week alleging a new law banning care for transgender minors is unconstitutional. In the lawsuit, the families said they saw their children go from depressed before receiving gender-affirming care to thriving afterward — only to now grapple with losing access to that treatment. They’re now considering moving out of Tennessee, according to the suit, filed April 20 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee by advocacy groups Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as the D.C.-based law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.
Axios: Exclusive: Dominion Voting Systems tells its Fox News lawsuit story: Fox News, one of America's most powerful media companies, earlier this month agreed to pay $787.5 million to settle a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, related to false statements made about Dominion on Fox's air.
The Washington Post: The rise of the state-level supermajority: Two legislators removed — however temporarily — from their positions in Tennessee. A legislator in Montana ordered to remain outside the chamber. In Missouri, a proposal that would make it easier for Republicans to amend the state constitution and harder for Democrats to do so. In states across the country, an embrace of legislation reflecting partisan dominance instead of compromise. There’s an obvious reason for this pattern. Over the past 15 years, the number of state legislative bodies dominated by one party or the other has increased dramatically. And with that increase, there’s less need to reach across the aisle.
Roll Call: Supreme Court, done with arguments, turns to decisions: The Supreme Court has dozens of cases to decide in the next two months that could reshape American law on race in elections and education, religious protections in the workplace and other areas. The justices already have weighed in on high-profile issues since the beginning of the term in October. They kept a commonly used medication abortion drug on the market, and rebuffed former President Donald Trump’s effort to intervene in the Justice Department’s investigation that found classified documents at his private club.
The New York Times: The Hard Question of Affirmative Action and Slavery: During oral arguments for the biggest Supreme Court cases, the justices’ questions are often pointed, meant to advance their own view of the case. Conservative justices ask friendly questions of lawyers on the conservative side and burrow into the logical weaknesses of the liberal side. Liberal justices do the opposite. The five hours of oral arguments on two affirmative action cases in October mostly fit this pattern. But, about three hours into the session, Justice Brett Kavanaugh asked a less typical question. It involved slavery, and it raised an inconvenient issue for Kavanaugh’s fellow conservatives.
NBC News: N.C.'s new GOP-controlled high court reverses itself on gerrymandering and voter ID: The North Carolina Supreme Court reversed itself Friday on whether partisan gerrymandering and a strict voter ID law violate the state Constitution, in a pair rulings with implications far outside the state. The court — which flipped to GOP control in January — said in February that it would break with tradition and revisit two high-profile voting rights rulings not long after the previous Democratic-controlled court had ruled against the Republican-controlled state Legislature in the cases.
The New York Times: North Carolina Gerrymander Ruling Reflects Politicization of Judiciary Nationally: Last year, Democratic justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that maps of the state’s legislative and congressional districts drawn to give Republicans lopsided majorities were illegal gerrymanders. On Friday, the same court led by a newly elected Republican majority looked at the same facts, reversed itself and said it had no authority to act. The practical effect is to enable the Republican-controlled General Assembly to scrap the court-ordered State House, Senate and congressional district boundaries that were used in elections last November, and draw new maps skewed in Republicans’ favor for elections in 2024. The 5-to-2 ruling fell along party lines, reflecting the takeover of the court by Republican justices in partisan elections last November.
CNBC News: Abortion pill mifepristone is banned or restricted in some states despite Supreme Court ruling: The abortion pill mifepristone is either banned or restricted to varying degrees in 27 states despite a Supreme Court decision that — for now — maintains Food and Drug Administration regulations allowing easy access to the medication. The Supreme Court, acting on an emergency basis, last week blocked lower federal court orders that had imposed severe restrictions on mifepristone even in some states where abortion remains legal.
Insider: Florida is trying to oust an elected school superintendent who publicly criticized DeSantis: Florida is threatening to remove an elected school superintendent who has been critical of Gov. Ron DeSantis. Leon County Schools Superintendent Rocky Hanna publicly criticized DeSantis for the governor's ban on mask mandates at schools during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. And at the beginning of the fall semester, Hanna sent an email to school staff telling them to ignore political pressure in the state and "continue to teach the standards just as you have always done."
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