Headlines for Wednesday, May 24, 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 MAY 24, 2023
New York Times: DeSantis Allies’ $200 Million Plan for Beating Trump: A key political group supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential run is preparing a $100 million voter-outreach push so big it plans to knock on the door of every possible DeSantis voter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina — and five times in the kickoff Iowa caucuses. The effort is part of an on-the-ground organizing operation that intends to hire more than 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day, an extraordinary number of people for even the best-funded campaigns. Top officials with the pro-DeSantis group, a super PAC called Never Back Down, provided their most detailed account yet of their battle plan to aid Mr. DeSantis, whom they believe they can sell as the only candidate to take on — and win — the cultural fights that are definitional for the Republican Party in 2024.
The Atlantic: Four Forces Bind Trump’s Supporters More Tightly Than Ever: During a CNN town hall earlier this month, Donald Trump acted as expected. He used the phrase “wack job” to describe E. Jean Carroll, who was awarded $5 million in damages because a jury unanimously concluded that Trump had sexually abused and defamed her. His statement elicited applause and laughter from the mostly pro-Trump crowd. He also described the January 6 insurrection as a “beautiful day” and declared that, if reelected president in 2024, he would pardon a “large portion” of the rioters. Those statements, too, brought applause from the raucous audience. There was more. Trump called the Black police officer who had shot and killed one of the rioters storming the Capitol a “thug,” falsely claiming that the officer had bragged about the incident. Trump defended taking top-secret documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate. He wouldn’t say whether he hoped that Ukraine would win the war against Russia. And he spewed lie after lie after lie about the 2020 election and virtually every other topic that came up.
New York Times: Trump Lawyers Seek Meeting With Garland Over Special Counsel Inquiries: Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump sent a letter on Tuesday requesting a meeting with Attorney General Merrick B. Garland related to the special counsel investigations into Mr. Trump’s conduct. The letter cited no specifics but asserted that Mr. Trump was being treated unfairly by the Justice Department through the investigations led by the special counsel, Jack Smith. Mr. Smith is scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s handling of classified material that was discovered at his private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, after his presidency, as well as his efforts to retain power after he lost the 2020 election. There are indications that Mr. Smith is approaching the stage of the investigation where he could start making decisions about whether to seek indictments of Mr. Trump and others in the documents case. The status of his other line of inquiry, into Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his election loss and how they contributed to the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by his supporters, is less clear.
MSNBC: Why Team Trump is suddenly pleading for a meeting with AG Garland: Special counsel Jack Smith and his team have spent months scrutinizing Donald Trump’s classified documents scandal, and the good news for the former president is that the investigatory phase appears to be nearing its end. The bad news for the Republican is that it might very well be followed by a prosecutorial phase. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Smith “has all but finished obtaining testimony and other evidence in his criminal investigation,” and the recent flurry of grand jury interviews appeared to be part of an effort to “tie up loose ends.” The article added that Trump’s close associates are “bracing for his indictment.”
Washington Post: The deepening radicalization of Donald J. Trump: In the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, 2021, President Donald Trump stayed mostly silent, and when he finally delivered his farewell address to the nation, he disavowed the attack on the U.S. Capitol as something that “all Americans were horrified by” and “can never be tolerated.” Now, as Trump seeks to return to the White House, he speaks of Jan. 6 as “a beautiful day.” He says there was no reason for police to shoot the rioter attempting to break into the House chamber, and he denies there was any danger to his vice president, Mike Pence, who was hiding from a pro-Trump mob chanting for him to be hanged. He has promised to pardon many rioters if he becomes president again.
Associated Press: Trump’s freewheeling, stream-of-consciousness speaking style draws legal attention amid probes: Donald Trump speaks about his legal woes in a way that would make most defense attorneys wince. A recent sampling: In a March interview on Fox News Channel, the Republican former president said he had “the right to take” classified documents with him to his Florida resort and wouldn’t say he hadn’t looked at the records since leaving office. During a CNN town hall this month, he said he told a Georgia elections official “you owe me” votes in the 2020 election. At the same town hall on May 10 he insulted a female writer as a “wack job” — only a day after that same woman, E. Jean Carroll, won a $5 million judgment against him in a civil suit alleging defamation and sexual assault. On Monday, Carroll amended a lawsuit to hold him liable for the town hall remarks.
Politico: Trump’s latest liability: Refusing to remain silent: Donald Trump’s next big legal test is whether the famously loud-mouthed former president can keep quiet. In recent days, he has subjected himself to new legal troubles by repeatedly vilifying the writer E. Jean Carroll even after a jury found that he defamed her. And in his criminal case involving hush money payments to a porn star, Trump is under a judge’s strict order to avoid talking publicly about certain evidence. If he violates that order, he could be held in contempt. “He was put on notice that if he engages in his usual behavior, that could result in a violation,” Catherine A. Christian, a former Manhattan prosecutor, said of a Tuesday court appearance in which the judge spoke to Trump by videoconference and admonished him not to breach the disclosure restrictions the judge has imposed in the case.
Vox: Make America Florida: Ron DeSantis’s pitch to beat Trump in 2024: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to announce Wednesday on Twitter that he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 with a plan to make his state a national blueprint, following months of speculation about whether he can beat former President Donald Trump in the GOP primary. DeSantis is seen as the most viable primary challenger to the twice-impeached and indicted former president, who is currently enjoying a historically large lead in the polls. The governor won reelection by nearly 20 points and helped usher a red wave into the once-swing state of Florida last year, even though Republican candidates underperformed practically everywhere else in the midterms. Since those victories, however, DeSantis has had a tough few months marked by policy stumbles and social blunders. And that’s left some in his party doubting whether he’s ready for the national stage.
Wall Street Journal: Special Counsel Is Wrapping Up Trump Mar-a-Lago Probe: Special counsel Jack Smith has all but finished obtaining testimony and other evidence in his criminal investigation into whether former President Donald Trump mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of Trump’s close associates are bracing for his indictment and anticipate being able to fundraise off a prosecution, people in the former president’s circle said, as clashes within the Trump legal team have led to the departure of a key lawyer. In recent weeks prosecutors working for Smith have completed interviews with nearly every employee at Trump’s Florida home, from top political aides to maids and maintenance staff, the people said. Prosecutors have pressed witnesses—some in multiple rounds of testimony—on questions that appeared to home in on specific elements Smith’s team would need to show to prove a crime, including those that speak to Trump’s intentions, and questions aimed at undermining potential defenses Trump could raise, they said.
USA Today: She stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6. Then Gov. Ron DeSantis made her a state regulator: It was Jan. 6, 2021, and a group of die-hard Republicans from Okaloosa County, Florida, had traveled 15 hours north to Washington, for a rally where President Donald Trump urged his followers to try to stop the certification of the election. After the rally, as a crowd marched toward the Capitol, some of the Florida contingent peeled off. But Sandra Atkinson – who had just been elected chair of the county's Republican Party – kept marching. The walk would put her in the middle of an insurrection, and eventually, of the dilemma now facing likely presidential contender Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Politico: Ron DeSantis Has a Problem. It’s Florida.: Ron DeSantis is set to join the 2024 campaign amid high Republican hopes that he’s precisely the kind of conservative who can knock off President Joe Biden. But the odds are stacked against him. The problem isn’t really Biden, or even former President Donald Trump, who leads the Florida governor in early GOP polls. It’s his state and the weight of history. No Florida politician has ever been elected president. A half-dozen have run in the last 50 years — essentially the period in which the state evolved from political backwater to electoral powerhouse — but all have ended up in the same place, dead in the water long before the nominating convention. Most never even made it past New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.
New York Times: DeSantis’s Big Event Underscores a Rightward Move for Twitter: Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to finally announce his presidential campaign on Wednesday night — but not on a stalwart of conservative media, like Fox News. Instead, the Republican star will do so live on Twitter, in a conversation with Elon Musk. The move underscores both that Twitter, under its billionaire owner, has moved to embrace the political right and that Mr. DeSantis’s top business supporters so far are tech-industry libertarians, rather than traditional Republican moguls. Twitter is becoming a conservative media hot spot in the Musk era. That started last year, when the company lifted bans on thousands of accounts, including ones that had spread misinformation about the pandemic and the 2020 elections.
Politico: DeSantis sees a path to the White House — 280 characters at a time: Most politicians will tell you that Twitter isn’t actually real life. Ron DeSantis is making a big bet that it is. On every red-meat, internet-fueled controversy of the day — from Bud Light to Critical Race Theory to gas stoves — few Republican politicians have ever been as plugged in online. If he announces his run for president in a Twitter Spaces session with Elon Musk on Wednesday as planned, he is indicating his 2024 campaign will be waged as much there as in the town halls of Iowa or on cable TV.
Vanity Fair: Report: Donald Trump’s Pals Think He’s About to be Indicted...Again: Last April, Donald Trump made history when he became the first former US president ever to be charged with a crime after leaving office. Now, he may make history again, with a fresh indictment courtesy of the federal government. And what an absolute travesty that would be! The Wall Street Journal reports that special counsel Jack Smith “has all but finished obtaining testimony and other evidence in his criminal investigation into whether former President Donald Trump mishandled classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort,” according to sources familiar with the matter. While the Journal could not determine if Smith had made a decision to charge the ex-president, or if he’d made a recommendation to Attorney General Merrick Garland—who gets the final say—some of Trump's close allies are said to be “bracing for his indictment.” (Naturally, Team Trump plans to fundraise off of any potential prosecution, as it did following charges from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.)
New York Times: Trump Criminal Trial Scheduled for March 2024: The trial of Donald J. Trump has been scheduled for March 25, 2024, the judge presiding over his Manhattan criminal case said at a hearing on Tuesday. Mr. Trump attended the hearing remotely, making his first courtroom appearance since 34 felony charges were unveiled against him last month. He appeared to react angrily when the trial date was announced by Justice Juan Merchan, though his microphone was muted and it was unclear what he was saying to the lawyer seated next to him, Todd Blanche. The trial is set for three weeks after Super Tuesday, one of the most important days on the Republican presidential primary calendar. And the disclosure of the date came just a day before Mr. Trump’s chief rival for the Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, was set to announce his own run, highlighting the way that Mr. Trump’s legal entanglements could complicate his third campaign for the White House.
Washington Post: Roberts says Supreme Court will address ethics issues: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said Tuesday night that he was “confident” the Supreme Court will convince the public that it “adheres to the highest standards of conduct.” Accepting an award at the American Law Institute, Roberts did not directly comment on the controversies that have surrounded the court’s members and their financial disclosures or the mounting congressional pressure for a specific code of conduct for the Supreme Court. But he said that disturbances outside the court have not affected the nine justices: “Inside the court, there is cause for optimism,” he said. Then he added: “I want to assure people that I’m committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct. We are continuing to look at things we can do to give practical effect to that commitment. And I am confident that there are ways to do that consistent with our status as an independent branch of government and the Constitution’s separation of powers.”
Washington Post: Takeaways from Kari Lake’s failed legal challenge to the election results: Six months after losing her campaign for Arizona governor, Republican Kari Lake failed to persuade a trial judge to set aside the results of the election. Lake, a former television news personality and prominent election denier backed by former president Donald Trump, has refused to concede and mounted a legal challenge late last year, claiming that the results could not be trusted because they were tainted by fraud or mistakes. Courts rejected most of Lake’s claims, and her attorneys were sanctioned $2,000 for making “false factual statements,” but one part was allowed to go to trial: Lake’s accusation that election workers in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and most of the state’s voters, did not properly follow a signature-verification process for early ballots.
To connect with People Power United, follow us at:
Website: https://www.peoplepowerunited.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peoplepowerunited
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PeoplePowerUni
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/peoplepoweruni/
If you love the work we do and want to support, please consider pledging a future subscription. It’s only $5 a month and you won’t be charged unless we enable payments. People Power United champions progressive values, putting people over profits, and is a grassroots group committed to increasing voter registration and participation.
Join us! As a subscriber to the People Power United you will be notified of current issues, upcoming events, and calls to action. Please note we do not share data with anyone. We use the sign-up information to share current issues, events and calls-to-actions only.