Headlines for Thursday, June 1, 2023
🗽There is no greater power than a community discovering the truth and working together to make sure an injustice is not repeated
🗽A well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny. - Thomas Jefferson
🗽There is no greater power than a community discovering the truth and working together to make sure an injustice is not repeated
NEWS HEADLINES FOR June 1, 2023
New York Times: Prosecutors Scrutinize Handling of Security Footage by Trump Aides in Documents Case: For the past six months, prosecutors working for the special counsel Jack Smith have sought to determine whether former President Donald J. Trump obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove of classified documents he took from the White House. More recently, investigators also appear to be pursuing a related question: whether Mr. Trump and some of his aides sought to interfere with the government’s attempt to obtain security camera footage from Mar-a-Lago that could shed light on how those documents were stored and who had access to them. The search for answers on this second issue has taken investigators deep into the bowels of Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, as they pose questions to an expanding cast of low-level workers at the compound, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the workers played a role in either securing boxes of material in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago or maintaining video footage from a security camera that was mounted outside the room.
NBC News: Trump attorneys seek recusal of judge in New York criminal case: Attorneys for Donald Trump have filed a motion seeking to have a judge recuse himself from the Manhattan criminal case against the former president. Trump’s campaign website posted a statement from his lawyers Wednesday evening that accused Judge Juan Merchan of having conflicts, which the statement says are detailed in the motion. The motion seeks to have Merchan, who presided over Trump’s arraignment on 34 counts of falsifying business records in Manhattan, step aside in the case, Trump's lawyers said. The motion is not yet public and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office was making redactions, lawyers involved in the process said.
The Guardian: Months of distrust inside Trump legal team led to top lawyer’s departure: Donald Trump’s legal team for months has weathered deep distrust and interpersonal conflict that could undermine its defense of the former president as the criminal investigation into his handling of classified documents and obstruction of justice at Mar-a-Lago nears its conclusion. The turmoil inside the legal team only exploded into public view when one of the top lawyers, Tim Parlatore, abruptly resigned two weeks’ ago from the representation citing irreconcilable differences with Trump’s senior adviser and in-house counsel Boris Epshteyn. In one instance, the clashes became so acute that some of the lawyers agreed to a so-called “murder-suicide” pact where if one got fired, others would resign in solidarity. And as some of the lawyers tried to exclude Epshteyn, they withheld information from co-counsel who they suspected might brief him.
Axios: Trump-DeSantis feud turns vicious: A ruthless war between the Trump and DeSantis campaigns is unfolding in increasingly personal terms, sucking in top surrogates and raising new skepticism about the likelihood of post-primary reconciliation. Why it matters: Former President Trump doesn't just want to defeat Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — he's out to destroy DeSantis' political career and that of anyone who has expressed even a hint of support for his candidacy. For Trump, loyalty is paramount — and a one-way street. The fact that so many former Trump administration officials and supporters have defected to team DeSantis has made the feud intensely personal for the ex-president.
Mother Jones: All Floridians Should Be Worried About DeSantis’ New Anti-Immigration Law: On May 10, when DeSantis signed Senate Bill 1718 into law, he claimed to be “fighting back against reckless federal government policies and ensuring the Florida taxpayers are not footing the bill for illegal immigration.” The sweeping legislation mandates that private employers with more than 25 employees use the federal E-Verify system to check the immigration status of new hires; failure to comply could risk penalties that include the revocation of licenses that are required for businesses to operate. Under the new legislation, local governments will be prohibited from providing funds to issue identification documents for undocumented immigrants and immigrants will be barred from using legally issued driver licenses from other states. (Currently, 18 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico allow undocumented immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.) Hospitals that accept Medicaid now will be required to collect immigration data on their admission or registration forms and report costs associated with any treatment of patients. The transportation of undocumented immigrants across state lines into Florida becomes a felony—punishable by up to 15 years in prison if the immigrant is a minor. Meanwhile, $12 million will be allocated to the governor’s so-called “Unauthorized Alien Transport Program” to move migrants to other states as a way to criticize the Biden administration’s supposedly “open border” policies.
Orlando Sentinel: Battle of constitutions looms in Florida redistricting case: When Florida voters in 2010 passed a constitutional amendment setting rules for congressional redistricting, they barred the drawing of lines that would “diminish” the ability of minorities to elect representatives of their choice. Now, more than a decade later, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration and the Legislature are trying to fend off a lawsuit by arguing the U.S. Constitution trumps that part of the state amendment. A Leon County circuit judge will hold a hearing soon on whether attorneys for Secretary of State Cord Byrd and the Legislature should be able to make the argument in a lawsuit challenging a redistricting plan that DeSantis pushed through last year. The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of voting-rights groups and individual plaintiffs, focuses heavily on Congressional District 5, which in the past sprawled across North Florida and helped elect Black Democrat Al Lawson. But under the DeSantis-backed plan that lawmakers passed in April 2022, the district was dramatically redrawn — ultimately leading to white Republicans winning all the North Florida congressional seats in November.
Washington Post: Texas governor appoints Trump ally as interim attorney general: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Wednesday appointed former secretary of state John Scott, an ally of Donald Trump, to temporarily replace embattled Attorney General Ken Paxton, who was impeached and suspended last weekend for alleged criminal misconduct. Scott was a safe choice for Abbott, who has faced criticism from Trump and other Paxton supporters for not defending him in recent days. “MISSING IN ACTION! Where is the Governor of Texas on his Attorney General’s Impeachment?” Trump posted after the Texas House’s impeachment vote on Saturday. Paxton’s backers have since protested in the Dallas suburb of Collin County that he calls home, castigating not only Republicans who voted for impeachment but those, like Abbott, who failed to stand up for the conservative legal firebrand.
USA Today: Jan. 6 Capitol riot's most serious offenders are sentenced. What that means for 2024: More than two years after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, rioters who stormed the building that day are facing consequences for their actions. A D.C. federal judge on Thursday began sentencing members of the right-wing militia Oath Keepers who were tried — and in large, convicted — for seditious conspiracy, including the group's leader, Stewart Rhodes. Rhodes will serve 18 years in prison for his role in a plot to stop the peaceful transfer of power from then-President Donald Trump to Joe Biden. His lieutenants will serve lesser, albeit still significant, sentences. Experts in extremism told USA TODAY the legal consequences Jan. 6 defendants are facing do act as a deterrent for other politically-motivated bad actors. But the underlying ideologies that spurred the riot continue to fester.
ProPublica: Supreme Risk: Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion established 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, raising concerns about the future of other rights rooted in Supreme Court rulings. Although most rights are secured by statutes and regulations, others are guarantees extrapolated by the court from the often abstract language of the Constitution. Some of these are recent rights, like the right to carry a handgun in public. But many are longstanding, like the right to be read a Miranda warning by police before being interrogated, and trace their origins to the liberal majorities that presided on the court from the 1950s through the 1970s, an era often called the “rights revolution.” Because these rights were established by the court, the court alone gets to decide whether to preserve, shrink or unmake them. To get a better sense of which rights may be at risk — in whole or in part — ProPublica scoured judicial opinions, academic articles and public remarks by sitting justices.
The Hill: Why Supreme Court recusals are attracting newfound attention: Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan became the first to adopt a new ethics principle that indicates justices may explain why they are recusing themselves from a case. But her conservative colleague on the bench, Justice Samuel Alito, opted not to share why he was stepping aside from a separate case, raising questions about whether the court can reach a consensus on its ethics standards, which has been under heavy scrutiny. The different approaches by Kagan and Alito have now become a subject of conversation for court watchers who think there should be a standard for justices to explain to the public the reasons behind a recusal.
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