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US Monthly Headline News April 2023 - Page 4
Story by Kaila Philo

You’ll remember that, in the waning days of the Trump presidency, a crew of conspiracy-theorizing loyalists pushed the president to use the federal government to seize voting machines and investigate his bogus claims of fraud. Those plans never became reality, but Trump supporters did take matters into their own hands, breaching voting machines in locations around the country to try to substantiate Trump’s big lie. Here’s what’s new: It turns out Trump was at a meeting where those nascent, unlawful efforts were also discussed — back in December 2020. Trump was present as allies discussed a plot to unlawfully access voting machine software in Michigan and Georgia, according to testimony heard by the Jan. 6 committee.

The advocacy group Free Speech for People sent a letter to top DOJ and FBI officials, including special counsel Jack Smith, highlighting part of testimony delivered to the House Jan. 6 committee about the now-infamous, wild Dec. 18, 2020 strategy session at the White House. That meeting, as detailed by various Trump allies, involved hours of screaming and insults as conspiracy theorists held forth and White House lawyers attempted to keep them at bay. It also, the group noted, included early references to a plot to break into voting machines.
Story by Alice Cattley

How Frederick Trump changed the course of America
Donald Trump might seem as all-American as it’s possible to be, but just over 150 years ago the Trump clan lived modestly in the German state of Bavaria.

The family real estate empire was kickstarted by the former US president’s paternal grandfather Frederick, who emigrated to America aged 16. From running a brothel to succumbing to one of the world’s deadliest pandemics, read on to discover the incredible story of the man who bulit the foundations of the Trump business empire. All dollar values in US dollars.
Story by Maggie Harrison
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You know that supposed Musk family-owned emerald mine that Elon has recently been saying is just a rumor, despite previously saying on record that the mine definitely existed? "I will pay a million Dogecoin for proof of this mine's existence!" Musk tweeted earlier this month, similarly complaining back in January that "the fake emerald mine thing is so annoying (sigh)."
Well, according to Errol Musk, the unsurprisingly eccentric — and in one major way, extremely creepy — father of Elon, the mine definitely exists. And come to think of it, he'll take that Dogecoin, thanks!

"When I read that, I wondered, 'Can I enter, because I can prove it existed," Errol told The Sun in a new interview, referring to his son's Dogecoin tweet. "Elon knows it's true. All the kids know about it." "Elon saw them (the emeralds) at our house," he added. "He knew I was selling them." The emerald mine is a particularly strange piece of Muskian lore — not strange due to the mine's existence per se, but because of Elon's more recent decision to suddenly and completely backtrack on his previous claims.
Story by Theresa Clift, The Sacramento Bee

Five Sacramento firefighters violated city protocols and training when they stood by as police officers held a Black man face down in a dangerous position that led to his death, according to new city documents. The city in June fired a Capt. Jeffrey Scott Klein, who was in charge of responding to the medical call, according to a March 2021 disciplinary letter former Deputy Fire Chief Niko King sent Klein. The Sacramento Bee obtained the letter through a California Public Records Act request.

But before Klein was fired, during the investigation, he received over $138,849 while on paid leave. Depending on the outcome of arbitration next month, Klein may get his job back. The remaining four other firefighters and three police officers kept their jobs. Firefighters responded to the February 2020 call when Reginald “Reggie” Payne’s mother requested a glucose shot for her son, who was suffering a diabetic emergency. When the firefighters arrived they reported that Payne was flailing, acting irrationally and exposed himself to them. They called police to restrain him so they could administer the shot.
Story by Travis Gettys

Hunter Biden's legal team fired shots Monday morning at two of his chief Republican antagonists. Attorney Abbe Lowell sent letters asking the Treasury Department's inspector general to investigate how former Donald Trump loyalists obtained reports of Biden's alleged "suspicious activity" and seeking a congressional ethics review of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's public attacks against President Joe Biden's family, reported Politico's Playbook.

"We write to request the Office of Congressional Ethics initiate a review of and take appropriate action as a result of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA 14th C.D.) suspected violations of House Ethics rules and standards of official conduct," Lowell wrote. "Representative Greene’s unethical conduct arises from her continuous verbal attacks, defamatory statements, publication of personal photos and data, and promotion of conspiracy theories about and against Robert Hunter Biden. None of these could possibly be deemed to be part of any legitimate legislative activity, as is clear from both the content of her statements and actions, and the forums she uses to spew her often unhinged rhetoric."
Opinion by Robert Reich

The most obvious question in American politics today should be: why is the guy who committed treason just over two years ago allowed to run for president?

Answer: he shouldn’t be.
Remember? Donald Trump lost re-election but refused to concede and instead claimed without basis that the election was stolen from him, then pushed state officials to change their tallies, hatched a plot to name fake electors, tried to persuade the vice-president to refuse to certify electoral college votes, sought access to voting-machine data and software, got his allies in Congress to agree to question the electoral votes and thereby shift the decision to the House of Representatives, and summoned his supporters to Washington on the day electoral votes were to be counted and urged them to march on the US Capitol, where they rioted.

This, my friends, is treason.
But Trump is running for re-election, despite the explicit language of section three of the 14th amendment to the constitution, which prohibits anyone who has held public office and who has engaged in insurrection against the United States from ever again serving in public office.
Jury will hear writer E Jean Carroll’s civil claim that Trump assaulted her in 1990s – could this case finally bring a reckoning?
Chris McGreal in New York

Donald Trump won’t be there to see it, but the former US president’s deeply tarnished reputation may be about to take another serious hit as a New York jury decides whether he is a rapist. E Jean Carroll, a former advice columnist and author, will finally get her day in court this week, nearly three decades after she alleges that Trump pinned her against the wall of a New York department store and sexually assaulted her.

Carroll is suing Trump for damages under a recent New York state law opening a one-year window for adult victims of sexual assault to file civil cases after the statute of limitations has expired. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in a Manhattan court on Tuesday.
Story by Brandon Gage

Earlier this month, right-wing Daily Wire commentator Charlie Kirk proclaimed that the United States was founded as a "Christian country" right before expressing his aversion to democracy. But on Saturday, Senator Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) – a potential 2024 presidential contender – took an even greater leap than Kirk during a conversation with Iowa Republican Party Chairman Jeff Kaufmann.


"What should the, what should the next president do? What is the most immediate actions that the next president can do to stand for religious liberty?" Kaufmann asked Scott. "We must tell the story of our Constitution that the First Amendment was written to protect the church from the state, not the state, from the church," Scott replied.
Story by Cass Anderson

On April 12th, Twitter CEO Elon Musk put a ‘million Dogecoin’ bounty on anyone being able to provide proof that an emerald mine existed that fueled his family’s wealth.

Rumors have swirled since at least 2018, according to fact-checking website Snopes, that Elon Musk was raised on a South African emerald mine fortune. The fact-checker wrote in 2022 that the emerald mine claims “evolved into a larger rumor that had no evidence to support its central claim.”

In an attempt to dispel the emerald mine fortune rumors once and for all, Elon Musk issued the ‘one million Dogecoin‘ bounty for proof only it appears to have already backfired after Elon’s own father claims the mine exists and has photos of the emeralds from the mine. Here is Elon’s bounty tweet:
Story by Tom Boggioni

Reacting to a CNN report that Trump operatives were making plans to use breached voting data to not only undercut the 2020 presidential election results but also to give the GOP control of the Senate, one legal analyst stated the former president's legal woes have just grown exponentially worse. Speaking with host Fredricka Whitfield, former prosecutor Michael Zeldin claimed multiple laws at the state and federal level may have been broken.

As CNN reported on Friday, "The plot to breach voting systems in Coffee County, coordinated by members of Trump’s legal team including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, is part of a broader criminal investigation into 2020 election interference led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis," before adding, "Willis’ office is weighing a potential racketeering case against multiple defendants and is actively deciding who to bring charges against, sources tell CNN. Willis has subpoenaed a number of individuals involved in the Coffee County breach, including the two men who carried it out who were in touch with [Jim] Penrose and [Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug] Logan."
Story by Stephen M. Lepore For Dailymail.Com and Reuters

The FBI is closing in on over two dozen potential suspects who were involved in Jack Teixeira's Discord page, where he allegedly leaked security secrets. It comes as it was revealed Teixeira, the US Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified documents to a small group of gamers, had been posting sensitive information months earlier than previously known and to a much larger chat group.

In February 2022, soon after the invasion of Ukraine, a user profile matching that of Airman Jack Teixeira began posting secret intelligence on the Russian war effort. Teixeira was using a previously undisclosed chat group on social platform Discord, the newspaper reported, adding the group had about 600 members, according to the New York Times, citing online postings reviewed by the newspaper. The FBI has been interviewing friends of Teixeira from the infamously named 'Thug Shaker Central' Discord service.
Story by Adam Mintzer

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — In the final hours of the 113th General Assembly, Tennessee Republicans passed two bills that target the transgender community and put the state at risk of losing billions in federal funding.

One of the bills would allow teachers and public school employees to not use a student’s preferred pronouns, which could violate the U.S. Department of Education’s 2022 rules on gender identity, sexuality and sex-based discrimination. The other bill would define the word “sex” in Tennessee Code as, “a person’s immutable biological sex as determined by anatomy and genetics existing at the time of birth.”

According to the fiscal notes provided by the Tennessee General Assembly Fiscal Review Committee, the state could lose more than $2 billion in federal funding this upcoming fiscal year as a result of the bills being in violation of federal requirements.
Opinion by Mary Anne Franks

Stalking is so closely correlated with lethal violence that experts refer to it as “slow motion homicide”: More than half of all female homicide victims in the U.S. were stalked before they were killed. Despite the terrifying and dangerous consequences, many victims of stalking do not report the abuse to law enforcement for fear they will not be taken seriously.

The reasonableness of that fear was vividly illustrated by the Supreme Court oral arguments in Counterman v. Colorado on Wednesday morning, as members of the highest court of the land joked about messages sent by a stalker to his victim, bemoaned the increasing “hypersensitivity” of society, and brushed aside consideration of the actual harm of stalking to focus on the potential harm of stalking laws.
Story by Richie Whitt

Up-to-the-minute updates of NFL free agency signings, rumors and transactions, along with the latest information on the New England Patriots' 14 unrestricted free agents. APRIL 21 BROWN PROBLEMS Antonio Brown, TMZ Sports has learned, is to be arrested by Florida law enforcement as ordered by a judge due to unpaid child support.

Brown had apparently failed to make payments to his ex, Wiltrice Jackson, with whom he shares a daughter. The former Patriots receiver Brown can be released from custody if he pays $30,000, TMZ says - with the Florida judge ruling that that money will be applied to his unpaid child support.
Story by Maya Boddie, Alternet

During an appearance on MSNBC's "The Katie Phang Show," former GOP Rep. Dave Jolly (FL) was asked about Gov. Ron DeSantis' war on Disney and proceeded to make the case that the Florida governor should be charged with "public corruption."

Speaking with the host, Jolly -- who served in the House with DeSantis -- said the controversial governor is making a big mistake in battling with the state's biggest employer and it will come back to haunt him if he does indeed make a run to be the GOP's 2024 presidential nominee. 'How else would you categorize this tit-for-ta war that he has commenced with Disney?" host Phang prompted.
Story by Gideon Rubin

A Georgia prosecutor investigating Donald Trump over allegations of election interference in 2020 has filed a motion that signals the case against those behind the fake electors and the former president himself is accelerating.

That’s according to legal analyst Norman Eisen, who writes in a column for MSNBC that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ recent motion to remove an attorney representing the fake electors “appear ominous for the defense lawyers involved — and signal accelerating accountability for fake elector ringleaders.”

Willis in a court filing Tuesday alleged that attorney Kimberly Bourroughs Debrow represents an elector who violated Georgia election law. Willis’ office reached that determination after interviewing some of the electors last week.

"The motion’s claims appear ominous for the defense lawyers involved — and signal accelerating accountability for fake elector ringleaders," Eisen writes in a column published under the headline “A new clue in the Fani Willis investigation.”
Story by Tom Boggioni

An Arizona sheriff who made a name for himself by refusing to enforce Covid-19 protocols is throwing his hat in the ring for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) by moving even farther to the right and embracing QAnon conspiracy theories.

Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County has been hitting the QAnon podcast shows circuit as he attempts to elevate his profile for a run at the seat that may see him running against failed Republican gubernatorial governor candidate Kari Lake who is already catering to the conspiracy-minded fringe.

According to a report from Salon's Areeba Shah, Lamb "has appeared on at least five QAnon-friendly shows, including the podcasts 'X22 Report' and 'Uncensored Abe' as well as shows hosted by John Michael Chambers and Sean Morgan, both prominent figures in the QAnon movement who have pushed a variety of conspiracy theories to their audiences." During one appearance Lamb boasted "I follow the show, so this is a treat for me."
Story by Connor Surmonte

The former chief of the CIA recently admitted to “helping” Joe Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential election by organizing more than 50 spies to discredit damning emails found on Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell,” RadarOnline.com has learned.

In a sudden development to come as House Republicans investigate President Biden regarding his alleged involvement in his son’s overseas business dealings, ex-CIA Chief Mike Morell claimed he organized 51 spies to write a letter in October 2020 discrediting the emails found on Hunter’s laptop as Russian disinformation.

According to sworn testimony Morell recently gave to the House Judiciary Committee, the alleged scheme started “on or before” October 17, 2020, when current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken – who was serving as a senior official in Biden’s campaign at the time – reached out to Morell about the New York Post’s bombshell story connecting then-candidate Biden to Ukraine.

Blinken then allegedly emailed Morell an article published by USA Today reporting that the FBI was investigating whether the Hunter laptop story was part of a possible Russian “disinformation campaign.”

In a Beat exclusive, MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber reports on a secret recording of Senator Ted Cruz talking with Fox host Maria Bartiromo from November 2020. In this never-before-heard tape Cruz privately doubts Trump on election lies and warns Fox about needing “actual facts” amidst coup talk. It comes as Bloomberg reports the Fox whistelblower’s secret records helped Dominion win a record-breaking penalty.
By Paula Reid, Kara Scannell, Alayna Treene and Sara Murray, CNN

CNN — Lawyers for Hunter Biden are scheduled to meet next week with US attorney David Weiss and at least one senior career official from Justice Department headquarters to discuss the long-running investigation into the president’s son, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

The Hunter Biden legal team had reached out to Justice officials in recent weeks, asking for an update on the case. As is routine when lawyers request a status update, they were invited to meet next week, according to one source familiar with the meeting. Weiss, the US Attorney in Delaware who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, is overseeing an ongoing criminal case into President Joe Biden’s son.

After prosecutors narrowed down the possible charges Hunter Biden could face last year, there haven’t been any public developments. According to sources familiar with the investigation, prosecutors are still weighing whether to bring two misdemeanor charges for failure to file taxes, one count of felony tax evasion related to the overreporting of expenses, and a false statement charge regarding a gun purchase.
Story by David McAfee

A California vice principal is reportedly on leave after being caught on video during a confrontation with three Black teenage girls.

Fred Veenendaal, vice principal at Sunnyside High School in Fresno, is seen on the video talking on his cell phone to what appears to be police. Veenendaal then says he has "three Section 8 people here, ghetto girls." It is unclear how the confrontation started.

The news was picked up by FOX26, which reported that the girls were Kyra Schrubb, 17, Bri'janae Lewis, 17, and a friend. They say they were just walking through the gated community to cut their walk in half.
Republican-backed culture warrior candidates fare poorly in Illinois and Wisconsin, offering hope to the left
Adam Gabbatt

Scores of rightwing US extremists were defeated in school-board elections in April, in a victory for the left and what Democrats hope could be effective for running against Republicans in the year ahead.

In Illinois, Democrats said more than 70% of school-board candidates it had endorsed won their races, often defeating the kinds of anti-LGBTQ+ culture-warrior candidates who have taken control of school boards across the country.

Republican-backed candidates in Wisconsin also fared poorly. Moms for Liberty, a rightwing group linked to wealthy Republican donors which has been behind book-banning campaigns in the US, said only eight of its endorsed candidates won election to school boards, and other conservative groups also reported disappointing performances.
Story by Brandon Gage

Former President Donald Trump released a new video on Thursday in which he attempted to downplay an exclusive Daily Beast report that a massive tax deduction that he received on one of his vacant properties may have been obtained fraudulently.

Trump is currently facing a $250 million civil fraud lawsuit in New York, which is just one of the many legal predicaments that are shadowing his run for the presidency in 2024. But what The Daily Beast uncovered about his Seven Springs estate could further deepen his woes.

The Daily Beast's Jose Pagliery revealed:
According to Trump's latest financial disclosures, the tax deduction Trump got from reserving the property for conservation—which investigators say reduced his tax bill by more than $3.5 million—still far outweighs the paltry income it keeps bringing him every year. And the whole situation may play right into the hands of the New York attorney general who is going after Trump for inflating his company's portfolio and using the tax code to bail out failed investments.
Story by Gerrard Kaonga

Twitter CEO Elon Musk has sparked concern the social media platform could see an increase in misinformation and propaganda after the company stopped tagging some accounts as "government-funded" media or China or Russia "state-affiliated" media.

Last November, after acquiring Twitter, Musk tweeted that Twitter needed to become "by far the most accurate source of information about the world".

The platform soon introduced context tabs for some tweets. These tabs would give a deeper explanation of a topic related to the tweet and in some cases identify false information.

One feature that was introduced that received both condemnation and praise was the Twitter information tags on profiles. This would identify profiles that were government-funded, or considered state-affiliated so Twitter users understood the wider context of the views they expressed.
Story by Mark Joseph Stern

Richard Glossip is almost certainly an innocent man. In the years since police first accused him of murder in 1997, the entire case against Glossip has completely fallen apart. His first trial was tainted by so much prosecutorial misconduct and procedural errors that the state judiciary threw out his conviction. His second trial was equally marred by false testimony and mishandled evidence. Republican state legislators have demanded clemency for Glossip, convinced he is innocent. His execution has been scheduled and called off seven times. Earlier this month, Oklahoma’s Republican attorney general, Gentner Drummond, even took the extraordinary step of asking the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to vacate his conviction and death sentence, admitting that his second trial was “unfair and unreliable.”

On Thursday, the court refused. In a unanimous opinion, the court waved away overwhelming evidence of innocence and decided that, actually, Glossip is guilty—and must be put to death on May 18. The decision makes a sadistic mockery of the judiciary’s supposed role as a guardian of individual liberties. It favors vengeance over justice. Sadly, it aligns with the current U.S. Supreme Court’s merciless enthusiasm for the swift execution of people who are probably innocent.
Story by Tatyana Tandanpolie

Republican Rep. Scotty Campbell of Tennessee, was recently found guilty of sexually harassing at least one legislative intern by a Tennessee House ethics subcommittee, according to a report from NewsChannel5 Nashville. The GOP leader resigned from the Tennessee General Assembly on Thursday around 6 hours after the local news organization questioned him about the sexual harassment allegations.

"I had consensual, adult conversations with two adults off-property," Campbell said, referencing a previously unknown second intern who filed a complaint against the representative. "I think conversations are consensual once that is verbally agreed to. If I choose to talk to any intern in the future, it will be recorded," he added.

The subcommitee, comprised of two Democrats and two Republicans, however, found that "Representative Campbell violated the Policy" against workplace harassment and discrimination, according to a March 29 memorandum sent to House Speaker Cameron Sexton.
Story by Josh Marcus

According to his followers, David Koresh, a poor student who struggled with dyslexia, had a way of taking the many fractured, at-times opaque texts of the Old and New Testament of the Bible and knitting them into one coherent, apocalyptic story about the state of things.

The end was near. A final battle was coming. And Koresh’s Branch Davidians religious sect, an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists based in a compound near Waco, Texas, would be right at the centre of it.

“To make heads or tails of the Bible in terms of how I should live my life is an enormous puzzle, and someone who can provide compelling answers to that, as he did, for his followers, that’s something that something people seek their whole lives for,” Kevin Cook, author of the new book Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America’s Modern Militias, told The Independent.
Story by By Kyle Cheney

AJan. 6 defendant wanted on misdemeanor charges opened fire at sheriff’s deputies last week as they checked on him ahead of his expected arrest, triggering a lengthy standoff, according to newly unsealed court filings. Deputies from the Dallas-area Hunt County Sheriff’s Office indicated that they were dispatched to the home of Nathan Pelham on April 12 for a “wellness check” after his father warned he was a suicide risk and possessed a gun. After trying to coax Pelham to stand down for hours, sheriff’s deputies and the FBI were unable to arrest him that day. He was instead arrested on Tuesday.

Prior to the standoff, Pelham faced charges for his role in the Jan.6 breach of the Capitol. Charging documents in that matter depict Pelham wearing goggles and a neck gaiter before entering the Capitol for about seven minutes on Jan. 6, 2021. Two months later, he was stopped at the Canadian border in Michigan and admitted to authorities that he had been in the Capitol. Now, Pelham is facing a felony charge that could result in years of jail time for allegedly firing a 9mm pistol in the direction of deputies.
Republicans are blackmailers and extortionist

Story by Kate Riga

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) unveiled his long-previewed ransom note to free the debt ceiling hostage Wednesday, a maximal list of far-right proposals that he knows are nonstarters with Democrats. His aim in cobbling together a 320-page packet of Republicans’ darkest impulses is obvious: He gets to say, and many news outlets will faithfully repeat, that now Republicans’ refusal to help raise or suspend the debt ceiling is President Joe Biden’s fault for not giving them what they want in return. McCarthy has been trying to make this argument without actually naming the concessions he wants from the administration for months, due to his intensely fractured caucus and small margins.

Biden would have to dismantle some of his signature legislation and executive actions, stomach punitive cuts to programs that help low-income people, sign off on a boondoggle for fossil fuel companies and hobble his agencies — but hey, in return, he’d get a debt ceiling lift or suspension for … less than one year from now! And it’s set to expire just as the 2024 presidential campaign is heating up, all the better for Republicans to demand more concessions then. We now have the document that represents the heart and soul of the House Republican caucus. Here’s what made their fantasy football checklist.
Story by Travis Gettys

The latest financial disclosures filed by Donald Trump raise new questions about a large tax break he got on a Batman-like estate north of New York City. The former president reduced his tax bill on the land listed as Seven Springs LLC by more than $3.5 million in 2015, when he first entered politics, and new filings show the property earned him less than $2,500 in the form of a vaguely labeled "rebate," although he valued the land at $50 million, reported The Daily Beast.

“There has been an enormous amount of valuation abuse," said Nancy Assaf McLaughlin, a national expert on conservation easements, who was speaking generally because she did not know the details of Trump's property. "People will come up with a ‘before value’ that exceeds anything a willing buyer would pay, using ‘subdivision development analysis’ and coming up with a hypothetical subdivision of lots." “It has no relation to what somebody would actually pay you for that property on the open market," added McLaughlin, a law professor at the University of Utah. “Income tax deduction is inappropriately lucrative in those cases."
By Dominic Patten, Anthony D'Alessandro

EXCLUSIVE, updated with Baldwin lawyer statement: Less than two weeks before a mini-trial is scheduled to begin in New Mexico over the October 2021 killing of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, all charges are going to be dropped against Alec Baldwin, for now.

Recently appointed special prosecutors Kari Morrissey and Jason Lewis are expected to file paperwork soon, perhaps even today, to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter claims against the multi-Emmy-winning actor without prejudice, we hear. That means, as they are set to investigate further into what actually went down that terrible day on the Bonanza Creek Ranch set near Santa Fe, this case could be resurrected in the future.
Story by By STEVE KARNOWSKI, Associated Press

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — An arbitration panel has ordered MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell to pay $5 million to a software engineer for breach of contract in a dispute over data that Lindell claims proves that China interfered in the U.S. 2020 elections and tipped the outcome to Joe Biden. But Lindell told The Associated Press on Thursday that he has no intention of paying and that he expects the dispute to land in court.

Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the 2020 presidential election, launched his “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge," as part of the “Cyber Symposium” he staged in South Falls, South Dakota, in August 2021, to further his theories. Lindell offered through one of his companies a $5 million reward for anyone who could prove that “packet captures” and other data he released there were not valid data “from the November 2020 election.”

Robert Zeidman entered the challenge with a 15-page report that concluded the data from Lindell did not “contain packet data of any kind and do not contain any information related to the November 2020 election.” A panel of contest judges that included a Lindell attorney declined to declare Zeidman a winner. So Zeidman filed for arbitration under the contest rules.
Story by Tatyana Tandanpolie

Afederal appeals court judge on Thursday halted House Republicans, at least for now, from questioning a former prosecutor in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, in the latest round of a battle between Bragg and the GOP over the criminal investigation of Donald Trump.

Bragg has filed suit against House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, alleging a "brazen and unconstitutional attack" on his prosecutorial powers of Trump. As previously reported by Salon, Bragg's lawyers have moved to stave off the enforcement of subpoenas by Jordan, including one sent to former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz — who at one time helped lead the Manhattan investigation into Trump — shortly after prosecutors revealed the 34 felony counts brought against the ex-president.

On Thursday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals approved Bragg's request for a temporary restraining order to prevent Pomerantz from appearing before the Judiciary Committee. His deposition had been scheduled for Thursday at 10 a.m., according to USA Today.
AP

SpaceX’s giant new rocket blasted off on its first test flight Thursday but failed minutes after rising from the launch pad.
Story by Zeleb.es

Here's what we know
Chinese officials gave the go-ahead to provide Russia with lethal aid earlier this year according to intercepted Russian intelligence reported on by The Washington Post.

Military equipment disguised as civilian products
China planned to secretly aid Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine by providing the Russian government with military equipment that was disguised as civilian products according to The Washington Post.
Story by By Luc Cohen

NEW YORK (Reuters) -A U.S. judge said on Wednesday she would allow Congress to subpoena a former prosecutor who once led the Manhattan district attorney's criminal investigation into former U.S. President Donald Trump.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, last week sued Republican Representative Jim Jordan to block a subpoena for testimony from Mark Pomerantz, a former prosecutor who once led the office's multiyear investigation of Trump.

The subpoena came from the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, which Jordan chairs. Pomerantz's deposition is scheduled for Thursday.

After hearing arguments in federal court in Manhattan on whether to block the subpoena, U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil issued a written ruling approving the subpoena but encouraging the parties to reach a compromise as to how the subpoena of Pomerantz would proceed.
Story by Marquise Francis

In the span of a single week, three separate shootings that occurred after victims mistakenly approached the wrong home or vehicle are raising questions about the proliferation of guns in American society. Last Thursday, Andrew Lester, an 84-year-old white man allegedly shot Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old Black teen, after Yarl rang Lester’s doorbell in Kansas City, Mo., thinking his two younger siblings were inside. Yarl had the wrong address, and Lester, who told police he feared for his safety, opened fire.

Two days later, in upstate New York, Kaylin Gillis, a 20-year-old white woman, was allegedly shot and killed by Kevin Monahan, a 65-year-old white homeowner, while driving in a car that mistakenly turned into the wrong driveway. Monahan was not cooperative with police, who, after booking him into Warren County Jail, said he had no reason to feel threatened.

On Tuesday, two members of an elite competitive cheerleading team in Austin, Texas, were shot by Pedro Tello Rodriguez Jr., 25, after one of the teens reportedly mistakenly tried to get into the wrong car after practice. One of the victims, 18-year-old Payton Washington, who was shot in the leg and back, was flown to a nearby hospital in critical condition and remains in the ICU from the gunshot wounds from the shooting.
Story by Dylan Scott

The House Republican majority has released its demands for major government spending cuts in exchange for increasing the federal debt limit. And they include a familiar target for conservatives: Medicaid.

It’s a gambit that may be more than a decade out of a date and could pose a political risk to the party. For years, Republicans have believed that Medicaid, which primarily serves low-income Americans, is less politically potent than Medicare or Social Security, two of the other core features of the US social safety net, and therefore a safer target for proposed cuts.
Story by Peter Suciu

It is easy to see why America First has a real appeal to many Americans. And it should. It suggests that we need to think about our roads, our schools, our future, and our place in the world in the 21st century. For too long, it may seem that we've put off caring about our interests while sending billions in aid to the "developing world."

It is also true that we continue to aid nations that sometimes aren't always that friendly to our interests. However, an America First policy also fails to accept that we are part of a global community, part of a global economy, and that we're a nation of immigrants who came to these lands in search of a better life.
Story by By Jack Queen

(Reuters) - Fox News on Tuesday disposed of one legal threat with its $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, but the network still faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from another voting technology company over its coverage of debunked election-rigging claims.

Dominion accused Fox and its parent company Fox Corp of ruining its business by airing claims that its machines were used to rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden and against then-president Donald Trump, a Republican.

Fox and its parent company Fox Corp averted a six-week trial in Delaware Superior Court with the deal, which is half of the $1.6 billion Dominion sought but still by far the largest ever defamation settlement publicly announced by an American media company, according to legal experts.
Story by By MIKE SCHNEIDER, Associated Press

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' appointees on Wednesday began trying to reshape Disney World's governing body with proposals to eliminate a planning board and prohibit mask mandates and COVID-19 vaccine requirements in an evolving showdown between the Republican governor and the world's best-known entertainment company.

The five new board members of the governing body, which had been controlled by Disney up until February, had on their meeting agenda rules prohibiting anyone from being barred from its offices for not wearing a face mask or not having the COVID-19 vaccine. Also, the agenda includes a resolution asserting the board's “superior authority” over the district that covers Disney World's 27,000 acres (10,926 hectares), including two miniscule cities.
Story by Anders Anglesey

A Tennessee pastor allegedly used his own church's internet to upload child porn, according to police. Police in Williamson County, south of Nashville, apprehended Daryl Hayes, 50, after being alerted to allegations. Officers started to investigate Hayes after receiving a CyberTip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children concerning the alleged upload of child sex abuse material.

During the investigation, police learned Hayes allegedly uploaded it from the internet connection at a local church, where he was the pastor. A Williamson County Sheriff's Office (WCSO) Facebook post shared on April 18 stated: "The investigation led to a search warrant being executed at the church and Hayes' residence. Neither Hayes' family, nor the church, were aware of Hayes' activities.
Trump lawyer tries to bypass judge’s anonymous jury ruling — and get access to juror identities
Story by Gabriella Ferrigine

Trump attorney Joe Tacopina sought to gain access to the jury room after the judge overseeing E. Jean Carroll's civil rape and defamation trial against former President Donald Trump ruled that the jury would be anonymous over the risk of harassment and retaliation. Tacopina on Friday spoke out against U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan's decision to keep juror identities anonymous over concerns about the risk to their privacy and safety.

Kaplan last month "said the need for juror anonymity reflected the 'unprecedented circumstances in which this trial will take place, including the extensive pretrial publicity and a very strong risk that jurors will fear harassment, unwanted invasions of their privacy, and retaliation,'" according to Reuters.
Police called to Michigan GOP meeting as physical fight breaks out among attendees
Story by Brad Reed

Police late last week were called in after a physical fight broke out among attendees at the Michigan Republican Party's new state central committee meeting. Bridge MI reports that a fight erupted on Friday night at the Doherty Hotel in Clare, Michigan between allies of current Michigan GOP Chairman Kristina Karamo and ally-turned-rival Matthew DePerno.

"A video recording obtained by Bridge Michigan shows a confrontation between Kalamazoo Republican Party Chair Kelly Sackett and Macomb County GOP Secretary Melissa Pehlis," the publication writes. "After they exchanged words, Sackett appeared to knock a cigarette and phone from the hand of Pehlis, who responded by thrusting an open hand at Sackett's head."

In an interview with Bridge MI, Sackett revealed that she filed a police complaint against Pehlis over the incident, which was apparently a dispute about DePerno's moves to purportedly purge people loyal to Karamo from the Kalamazoo Republican Party.

Story by David McAfee

Allegations that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas violated federal ethics laws in his dealings with Republican donor and Dallas business executive Harlan Crow have been sent to a judicial committee, according to the Washington Post.

The Post reported that the Judicial Conference of the U.S., a committee of federal judges responsible for “addressing allegations of errors or omissions in the filing of financial disclosure reports,” had received requests to investigate by Democrats. The news comes after columnist Jamelle Bouie for The New York Times said the scandal proved that the law was just a suggestion for certain people.

Following ethics complaints by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Henry C. “Hank” Johnson (D-GA), the judicial committee gave a short nod that didn't go into the details or acknowledge whether the committee will proceed:
Story by By Jack Queen

(Reuters) - Fox News on Tuesday disposed of one legal threat with its $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, but the network still faces a $2.7 billion lawsuit from another voting technology company over its coverage of debunked election-rigging claims.

Dominion accused Fox and its parent company Fox Corp of ruining its business by airing claims that its machines were used to rig the 2020 U.S. presidential election in favor of Democrat Joe Biden and against then-president Donald Trump, a Republican.

Fox and its parent company Fox Corp averted a six-week trial in Delaware Superior Court with the deal, which is half of the $1.6 billion Dominion sought but still by far the largest ever defamation settlement publicly announced by an American media company, according to legal experts.

Wilmington, Delaware - Fox News avoided one of the highest-profile defamation trials in history by reaching a $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems on Tuesday. The extraordinary settlement – one of the largest ever in a defamation case – came on the same day the trial began in Delaware Superior Court.

The jury would have determined whether Fox News acted with malice by deliberately airing false statements about the voting machine maker. Dominion was seeking $1.6 billion in damages. In addition to the monetary damages, the network in a statement also conceded that it aired falsehoods about the Denver-based company after the 2020 presidential election. "We acknowledge the Court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false," Fox News said in the statement.
Story by Sarah K. Burris

Charlotte Cisneros came of age in Oklahoma City in the wake of the bombing that killed 168 people on April 19, 1995. So, when she turned on the new Netflix documentary about Waco last month, it hit her hard. The next day, she watched as the latest school shooting unfolded on her TV screen, this time in Nashville. Among the six dead were three 9-year-olds. Her son is 8.

Most of the friends and family I grew up with in Oklahoma didn't feel unsafe, even after the state was a target of the domestic terrorist attack that left over 500 injured. Radical right, anti-government views were not the norm in the state and, if they existed, they were discussed in hushed voices and only among racist membership groups most people wouldn’t admit to being part of.

This year is the 30th anniversary of Waco, and Oklahoma City’s bombing was 28 years ago. The Columbine shooting, which happened on April 20, was 24 years ago.
Sarah K. Burris

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) was in New York on Monday, claiming that he sought to get to the bottom of violent crime in New York City. However, New York isn't the place with the highest violent crime in the U.S. — it's one of just two counties in America where the district attorney is conducting an investigation that could cost Donald Trump a lot in the end.

Speaking to MSNBC's Joy Reid, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen explained that when Jordan announced his so-called "weaponization in government" panel, he was hopeful he would see a reckoning for some of the unethical and possibly even illegal things that happened to him at the hands of Trump's Justice Department. Instead, Cohen said, it's been a joke.

"I think it's a waste of time. A waste of New York taxpayer dollars," Cohen said about the "field hearing" in NYC, paid for at tax-payer expense. "It's a political stunt designed in order for Jim Jordan to show his 'supreme leader' that he is still loyal, still in the camp, and he's going to do his bidding," Cohen continued.
Agreement reached after the jury was sworn in on Tuesday morning after lengthy delay to start of opening statements
Sam Levine and Kira Lerner in Wilmington, Delaware

Fox and the voting equipment company Dominion reached a $787.5m settlement in a closely watched defamation lawsuit, ending a dispute over whether the network and its parent company knowingly broadcast false and outlandish allegations that Dominion was involved in a plot to steal the 2020 election. The settlement comes after the jury was sworn in on Tuesday morning and after a lengthy, unexpected delay to the start of opening statements.

“The parties have resolved their case,” Judge Eric Davis told jurors on Tuesday afternoon before excusing them from the courtroom. Opening statements were scheduled to start on Tuesday after a lunch break, but the judge and jurors did not return to the room until close to 4pm. During the more than two-hour delay, attorneys huddled and left the courtroom to convene in adjacent meeting rooms.
Story by Daniel Marans

When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal right to abortion last June, triggering a Texas law that makes the procedure a felony, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) tweeted that his legislative chamber would “double down on maternal health care and resources for women, children, and families.” Those resources apparently do not include paid parental leave for the nearly three-quarters of Texas workers who currently lack paid family leave of any kind.

Last Thursday, Texas Rep. Angie Chen Button (R), chair of the state House International Relations and Economic Development Committee, informed Texas Rep. Penny Morales Shaw (D), the chief sponsor of a bipartisan paid parental leave bill, that the bill will not get a hearing and is thus effectively dead, according to a Democratic Texas House staffer involved in advancing the legislation.

Chen Button decided against holding a committee hearing, a prerequisite for a committee vote and a potential vote on the House floor, after two business groups — the Texas Association for Business and the National Federation of Independent Business — objected to the idea of the hearing, according to the Democratic staffer, who had knowledge of the conversation and requested anonymity to speak freely.
Story by Marisa Sarnoff

The governor of Oklahoma is calling for the resignation of county officials who were reportedly caught on tape complaining that law enforcement can no longer “take a damn Black guy and whoop their ass” and comparing the burned body of a fire victim to “barbecue.”

Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) says that McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy, county Commissioner Mark Jennings, sheriff’s investigator Alicia Manning, and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix must step down after the recordings, taken by longtime local journalist Bruce Wellingham, were published, The Associated Press reported. A transcript of the recordings, which includes links to the audio files, provided to the AP purportedly revealed the disturbing conversations between county officials after a county commissioner’s meeting had closed to the public on March 6.

The officials are apparently heard complaining that they can’t commit violence against Black people without repercussions.
Story by Jose Pagliery

The fake GOP electors in Georgia that former President Donald Trump recruited as part of his failed attempt to stay in power are starting to point fingers at each other, court documents revealed on Tuesday. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, the Atlanta-area prosecutor who’s investigating Trump’s effort to upend American democracy there, laid out the details in a legal memo to a state judge—one that hints at criminal indictments to come.

According to the memo, prosecutors in July last year dangled immunity deals for “alternate electors” who were willing to cooperate with the investigation—but their defense lawyer is now accused of never telling them about the potential deal. Following a special purpose grand jury recommendation in December that the DA seek indictments against some people involved in the fraudulent scheme, investigators have turned up the pressure.
Story by Sarah K. Burris

Acounty in southeast Oklahoma was exposed over the weekend for breaking the state's open meetings laws after a leaked recording revealed a local sheriff and several McCurtain County commissioners discussing hiring hitmen to murder local newspaper reporters. County officials also discussed lynching people and beating them up.

As local KJRH reported Monday evening, the McCurtain Gazette's publisher Bruce Willingham was told that he and his family should flee town for their own safety. The publisher's son, Chris Willingman "has written at least 30 articles alleging corruption involving the McCurtain County Sheriff’s Office over the last few years," KJRH reported. A short excerpt from the transcript reads:
Story by Marina Pitofsky, USA TODAY

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took aim at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, saying he doesn’t think the Florida leader is a conservative in light of his ongoing conflict with Disney.  

“I’m a conservative, and I believe as a conservative, the job of government is...to stay out of the business of business. I don’t think we should be heavily regulating business. I don’t think we should be telling business what to do, what to say, how to think,” Christie told Semafor on Tuesday.  

“I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a conservative based on his actions towards Disney,” he added.
Kevin Breuninger, Lillian Rizzo

WILMINGTON, Del. — Opening arguments are beginning Tuesday in the Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit accusing Fox News of spreading the damaging falsehood that the company rigged the 2020 election. The civil trial in Delaware Superior Court arrives more than two years after Dominion, which sells voting machines and election software, first accused Fox of knowingly airing lies about the company in order to boost its ratings.

The network “intentionally and falsely” blamed Dominion for former President Donald Trump’s loss to President Joe Biden by broadcasting unsubstantiated claims about the company, including that it meddled with vote tallies, Dominion alleged. Fox has maintained that the statements made about Dominion on its air are protected by the First Amendment, which shields the freedoms of speech and press. The network also argued that Dominion’s suit does not establish that the claims were aired with “actual malice,” a requirement to meet the legal standard for defamation.

Jury selection in the case wrapped up late Tuesday morning, but not without its fireworks. Just as the 12-member jury and 12 alternates were set and about to receive instructions, an alternate juror interrupted. “Sir, I can’t do this. I’ve been up all night. I can’t do this,” the alternate juror said, shaking his head.
Story by Connor Surmonte

Fired Fox News producer Abby Grossberg recently claimed she found additional evidence relevant to Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the embattled news network, RadarOnline.com has learned.

In a striking development to come on the same day the Fox-Dominion trial kicked off in Wilmington, Delaware on Tuesday, Grossberg revealed she discovered a cellphone with at least two “secret recordings” from the time of the 2020 presidential election.

According to NBC News, which reviewed the recordings found on Grossberg’s phone, one recording contains a November 7, 2020 phone interview Fox News host Maria Bartiromo had with Senator Ted Cruz while another contains a November 13, 2020 interview with two sources claiming to have evidence of Dominion voter fraud.

“Abby Grossberg stands ready to do her part to ensure that justice is done; that those who are licensed and obligated to tell the truth, and guide others to the truth, do just that,” Grossberg’s lawyer, Gerry Filippatos, said in a statement Tuesday.
Story by Travis Gettys

Afederal grand jury charged four U.S. citizens and three Russian nationals with working with Kremlin intelligence services to conduct a multiyear political influence campaign. The superseding indictment alleges that Russian national Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, founder of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia (AGMR), used his organization under the direction of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and three Moscow-based intelligence officers to recruit, fund and direct pro-Kremlin propaganda within the U.S. with the help of four Florida-based activists.

Ionov recruited four St. Petersburg members of the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, which have been active in civil rights for decades in Florida, and another political group in California to generate support for Russia's annexation of Ukraine and other Kremlin priorities.

Washington DC - Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was hit with new financial disclosure allegations as reports Monday said he plans to resubmit previous forms that omitted property sales to a GOP mega donor. In the latest ethics blow for the conservative jurist, Thomas reportedly has claimed that he was paid between $50,000 and $100,000 annually by a Nebraska real estate company set up by his controversial wife, Ginni Thomas.

But the company went out of business in 2006, the Washington Post reported. It was replaced by a new company that took over its land-leasing business, but Clarence Thomas continued to report income from the previous company. The new allegation came as Thomas reportedly has told associates he will file amended disclosure forms to cover blockbuster revelations in recent days about his financial ties to billionaire Republican mega donor Harlan Crow, CNN reported Monday.

Thomas failed to report sales of three properties, including his elderly mother's home in Savannah, Georgia, to Crow a decade ago. As previously revealed, the judge also failed to report that Crow paid for the Thomases' lavish vacations, including a $500,000 private plane-and-yacht junket to Indonesia.
Story by Washington Post Staff

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wants to “make America Florida.” As the Republican gears up for a likely presidential run, we created this guide to current legislative proposals in the Sunshine State that offer a lens into his vision for the country.

The bills cover topics such as permitting gunowners to carry a concealed weapon without a license and eliminating funding for diversity and equity initiatives in state universities. The speed with which the state legislature has already passed several DeSantis-backed proposals shows how he has consolidated power in Florida’s Capitol.

The FBI has arrested two men accused of setting up a secret and illegal police station in Manhattan on behalf of the Chinese government. NBC’s Peter Alexander reports for TODAY.
Story by LGBTQNation • 1h ago

The Donald Trump-appointed judge who overturned the FDA’s approval of abortion pills removed his name from a Texas law journal article and replaced it with two different authors’ names just before his Senate confirmation hearing, according to sources familiar with the change.

Writing as a lawyer for a conservative legal group, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, 46, criticized the Obama administration in the draft article for disregarding religious physicians who “cannot use their scalpels to make female what God created male” and “cannot use their pens to prescribe or dispense abortifacient drugs designed to kill unborn children.”

The Washington Post reports the journal’s editor received an unusual email prior to the article’s publication. Citing “reasons I may discuss at a later date,” Kacsmaryk said he was taking his name off the piece and replacing it with two colleagues’ names from the anti-LGBTQ+ First Liberty Institute.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is escalating his feud with Disney after floating the idea of building a state prison next to Disney World. NBC’s Gabe Gutierrez reports for TODAY
By Phil Helsel

Farmington, New Mexico, police officers discussed whether they were at the right house moments before the door opened and they fatally shot an armed homeowner, body camera video released Friday appears to show.

The officers were at the wrong address in the April 5 incident that left the homeowner, 52-year-old Robert Dotson, dead, Police Chief Steve Hebbe has said.

Farmington police on Friday released six videos from the encounter — one from each of the three officers who responded as well as slow-motion videos from each — and one video on Facebook with parts of the three. Each video from the officers is around 20 minutes long.

“Once again, we wish to express our condolences to the Dotson family and as your chief of police, I wish to convey how very sorry I am that this tragedy occurred,” Hebbe said in a statement Friday night.
Story by Cheyanne M. Daniels

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) has called for the McCurtain County sheriff and multiple county officials to resign after leaked audio showed the county leaders discussing killing local reporters and lynching Black people.

Sheriff Kevin Clardy, his investigator Alicia Manning, Commissioners Mark Jennings and Robert Beck, commissioners’ secretary Heather Carter and jail administrator Larry Hendrix were speaking with one other after the March 6 meeting of the county Board of Commissioners, according to the McCurtain Gazette-News.

“There is simply no place for such hateful rhetoric in the state of Oklahoma, especially by those that serve to represent the community through their respective office,” said Stitt. “I will not stand idly by while this takes place.
Story by Io Dodds

Authorities in Kansas City, Missouri have confirmed that there was a "racial component" to the shooting of Black teenager Ralph Yarl. The 16-year-old's family have said he was simply trying to pick up his younger twin brothers when he rang the wrong doorbell by mistake and was shot by the white homeowner. On Monday, county prosecutor Zachary Thompson said that there had been "a racial component" to the shooting.
Story by Jon Jackson

A new report on Sunday identified the person behind a pro-Russian social media account that shared leaked classified documents as a former U.S. Navy officer from New Jersey. The Wall Street Journal wrote that Sarah Bils, a former U.S. enlisted aviation electronics technician, has been posting online as a Russian blogger known as Donbass Devushka. Bils hosts podcasts under the name of Donbass Devushka and runs several social media accounts, which is where she reportedly shared files that included at least four classified U.S. intelligence documents about the war in Ukraine.

Last week, Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard's intelligence wing, was arrested after he was identified by U.S. officials as the suspect in the documents leak. The classified files that were leaked included details about NATO military support for Kyiv and evaluations of Ukraine's forces. The investigation that led to Teixeira's arrest came after the documents were shared across various social media ahead of Easter weekend, including on sites associated with Donbass Devushka.
Story by Rachel Sharp

Ralph Yarl is currently lying in a hospital bed with gunshot wounds to the head and body. Harrowing photos show the Black teenager with tubes coming out of him and his head and right arm wrapped up in bandages. He is alive but his family says he has a long road to recovery ahead – a recovery that threatens to derail his dreams of going off to college to pursue a career in engineering. So how did he end up here?

He went to pick up his younger brothers from a friend’s house, accidentally rang the doorbell at the wrong address and was shot twice by a white homeowner. Now, that homeowner is walking free after Kansas City police released him without charge. It’s a horror case that has led protesters to take to the streets, civil rights attorneys to rally behind the 16-year-old’s family, and Hollywood celebrities use their platform to amplify the case – all demanding justice for the Black teenager and for the white homeowner to be arrested on criminal charges. Here’s what we know so far about the case:
Story by Gideon Rubin

The expected pardon of a man convicted in the 2020 fatal shooting of a Black Lives Matters protester has confounded several Texas legal experts, ABC News reports. Gov. Greg Abbott has already announced that he will pardon Daniel Perry once a request from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles approves the request. The Board, which Abbott appointed, is expected to approve the request.

Perry was convicted of murder in the shooting death of 28-year-old Garrett Foster, who was legally carrying an AK-47 during an Austin BLM protest. Abbott announced that he would pardon Perry under pressure from right-wing media. Former Travis County Criminal Court Judge David Wahlberg called notion of the governor reversing a jury’s verdict in a murder case “outrageous.”
By Robin Abcarian

I am shocked, shocked to find that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ commitment to originalism — that is, the belief that legal texts should be interpreted as they were understood when they were adopted — comes to a screeching halt the minute he slides off the bench.

When Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act in 1978, which requires government officials to report gifts, I’m pretty sure legislators had in mind exactly the sort of relationship Thomas has with the Republican megadonor and Nazi memorabilia collector Harlan Crow.

I mean, maybe nothing can stop a venal Supreme Court justice from being lavished with gifts by a conservative billionaire (the rules are lax compared to other public servants), but Congress most certainly requires the grabby justice to disclose the billionaire’s generosity.

Thanks to spectacular reporting last week by the nonprofit investigative outfit ProPublica, we now know that for at least two decades, Crow has served as Clarence and Ginni Thomas’ patron, benefactor, sponsor and, let’s face it, fairy godfather. He has showered them with gifts, trips and all sorts of unseemly favors.
Brandon Gage

On Sunday's edition of his show, MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tore into right-wing Republicans over their recent embrace of convicted murderer Daniel Perry, a now-former United States Army sergeant who proudly bragged about being a "racist" before he gunned down a Black Lives Matter protester Garrett Foster in 2020.
Elon Musk is a spoiled brat

Alex Henderson

On Wednesday, April 12, National Public Radio (NPR) announced that it was leaving Twitter because the social media giant had labeled it "state-affiliated media" — a label it later changed to "government-funded media." NPR emphasized that the label was "inaccurate and misleading," as it is a "private nonprofit company" that "receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting."

"State-affiliated media," NPR's David Folkenflik noted, is a label that Twitter applies to government-operated "propaganda outlets" in "autocratic countries" such as Russia and the People's Republic of China — which is radically different from what NPR does in the United States. Full disclosure: this journalist has been a guest on many NPR broadcasts.
Story by Lindsay Kornick • 3h ago

MSNBC personality and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart suggested that the Declaration of Independence "rings hollow" in the wake of Republican legislation against the will of the people. Capehart introduced "The Saturday Show" by quoting the founding document and contrasting it with the actions of the GOP.

"’We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’ The Declaration of Independence certainly rings hollow today as the Republican Party continues to push legislation that is not only wildly unpopular and dangerous, but also strips these unalienable rights from Americans," Capehart said.

Although his claim was about the Republican Party, Capehart initially began this attack by focusing on the Supreme Court’s upcoming ruling regarding access to mifepristone.
Story by Shiyin Chen

(Bloomberg) -- Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reported income from a real estate firm founded by his wife and her family, even after the company ceased to exist, the Washington Post said. The Nebraska real estate firm, Ginger Ltd. Partnership, was founded in the 1980s and was shut down in 2006, the newspaper reported, citing state incorporation records. A separate firm, Ginger Holdings LLC, was created to assume control of the shuttered company’s land-leasing business, according to the report.

Thomas has continued to report income from the defunct company without mentioning the newer firm on forms, including between $50,000 and $100,000 annually in recent years, the Post said. The misstatement follows reports by ProPublica this month that Thomas and his wife, Virginia, accepted vacations and flights for years from Harlan Crow, a wealthy real estate developer and Republican donor. The media outlet also reported that the justice and his relatives sold three Georgia properties that include Thomas’s boyhood home to Crow in 2014.
Story by hgetahun@insider.com (Hannah Getahun)

In February, a high-altitude balloon with surveillance capabilities connected to China flew over the continental US before being shot down over the Atlantic. At the time, much about the balloon wasn't known publicly, but a new trove of Pentagon documents leaked on Discord show it — and up to four other previously unknown spy balloons like it — could have had a feature known as "synthetic aperture radar" that can see through certain objects, the Washington Post reported.

Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old US National Guard airman, was arrested Thursday in connection to the leaks. US intelligence agencies believed this because the balloon, which officials named Killeen-23 in an apparent reference to 1940s mobster Donald Killeen, was equipped with the ability to generate up to 10,000 watts of solar power — enough to power a typical home — which could support such abilities. "The amount of solar power generated by the panels on the Chinese stratospheric balloon that NSA named Killeen-23 is excessive for a weather balloon," the document reads.
Story by Peter Wade

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has for more than a decade claimed on mandatory financial disclosure forms that he received significant income from a defunct real estate firm, Ginger, Ltd., Partnership, that has been shuttered since 2006.

This news comes only 10 days after ProPublica reported that the justice has received — but failed to disclose — hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifted vacations from conservative billionaire and Nazi enthusiast Harlan Crow. The billionaire also owns the home where Thomas’ mother lives, which Crow purchased from Thomas and members of his family before embarking on major renovations to the property. Thomas failed to disclose the sale of the home on financial forms, leaving blank the field for reporting the identity of a buyer in any private transactions above $1,000, including real estate. The revelations have led some to question whether Thomas was intentionally hiding his financial relationship with Crow.

On Sunday, The Washington Post revealed that in addition to not disclosing luxurious vacations and the real estate deal involving Crow, Thomas also erroneously reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in rental income from property that his wife Ginni Thomas’ parents developed in Nebraska. In financial disclosures, Thomas reported the rental income as coming from a real estate firm called “Ginger, Ltd., Partnership.” But that firm has not existed since March 2006 when it was dissolved and its leases for upwards of 200 residential lots were transferred to Ginger Holdings, LLC. Ginni Thomas’ sister, Joanne K. Elliot, is listed as manager of the Ginger Holdings, LLC, but Ginni is not listed in the LLC’s state incorporation records.
Story by Matthew Chapman

An ongoing investigation into 17 police officers in Antioch, California revealed a series of new racist text messages, reported SFGATE on Friday. "The new report by the DA’s office, first covered by the East Bay Times and obtained by SFGATE, outlines a pattern of racism and celebration of violence in messages sent by officers during and after the investigation and arrests of Terryon Pugh and Trent Allen, two Black men who were later charged with attempted murder," reported Alec Regimbal.

This comes after a previous report revealing other disturbing messages from the officers, including the celebration of violence against Black suspects and a mock offer to buy dinner for whoever would shoot the city's Black mayor with non-lethal bullets.
Opinion by Robin Abcarian

Iam shocked, shocked to find that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ commitment to originalism — that is, the belief that legal texts should be interpreted as they were understood when they were adopted — comes to a screeching halt the minute he slides off the bench. When Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act in 1978, which requires government officials to report gifts, I’m pretty sure legislators had in mind exactly the sort of relationship Thomas has with the Republican megadonor and Nazi memorabilia collector Harlan Crow.

I mean, maybe nothing can stop a venal Supreme Court justice from being lavished with gifts by a conservative billionaire (the rules are lax compared to other public servants), but Congress most certainly requires the grabby justice to disclose the billionaire’s generosity. Thanks to spectacular reporting last week by the nonprofit investigative outfit ProPublica, we now know that for at least two decades, Crow has served as Clarence and Ginni Thomas’ patron, benefactor, sponsor and, let’s face it, fairy godfather. He has showered them with gifts, trips and all sorts of unseemly favors.

And on Thursday, came a second damning ProPublica investigation: In 2014, one of Crow’s companies purchased a home owned by Thomas and his relatives in Savannah, Ga., and immediately began thousands of dollars of upgrades. The home is the longtime residence of Thomas’ mother. “The transaction marks the first known instance of money flowing from the Republican megadonor to the Supreme Court justice,” reported ProPublica. Thomas did not report the real estate transaction, as required by federal disclosure law.
Story by Marisa Sarnoff

Police body-worn camera footage shows then-Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of John Pope. Chauvin was convicted in April 2021 for murdering George Floyd in May 2020 by putting his knee on his neck for more than nine minutes. The city of Minneapolis has agreed to pay Pope $7.5 million. (Image via Robins Kaplan LLP.) The city of Minneapolis has agreed to settle the longstanding lawsuits of two people, including a 14-year-old, who were brutalized by former police officer Derek Chauvin, the convicted murderer of George Floyd.

John Pope and Zoya Code sued Chauvin separately in 2022 for injuries stemming from encounters with the disgraced officer several years prior. In those confrontations, Chauvin exhibited the same behavior as he had on May 25, 2020, when he was filmed pinning his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes. Video of the incident showed bystanders pleading for Chauvin to stop as Floyd’s pleas grew quiet. His death sparked months of protests worldwide demanding accountability for police brutality against Black people. Chauvin was convicted of murder in state court and pleaded guilty to two federal charges for violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced to decades behind bars.

Now, the city where Chauvin once served as a police officer has agreed to settle Pope’s and Code’s civil cases against him for a total of nearly $9 million. The plaintiffs in both cases, like Floyd, are Black and were unarmed when Chauvin, who is white, pinned them down by pressing his knee on their necks.
Story by Paul Brandus

I presume Donald Trump is innocent of the 34 felony charges that have been leveled against him by New York authorities. I say this not because I like the former president — I don’t. I say it because in America, every person accused of a crime (or 34 of them) is entitled to the presumption of innocence. That’s how our system works. It isn’t up to Trump to prove his innocence. It’s up to prosecutors to prove his guilt. If they have the goods on him, then I say bring it, and let the chips fall where they may.

That Trump seems stunned by these charges isn’t surprising. The felonies he’s accused of — falsifying business records — are white-collar crimes, which in his mind are not real crimes. Or at least not crimes that are given much priority by the U.S. legal system. In the U.S. white-collar criminals not always but generally get away with everything from tax evasion, bribery, money laundering, dabbling with mobsters and more. Trump himself has been accused of each of these violations over the years, but never formally indicted on anything.

Note that I said white-collar criminals generally get away with their scams. Of course there have been high-profile cases that sent crooks like Ponzi-scammer Bernie Madoff, junk-bond fraudster Michael Milken and Enron felons Kenneth Lay and Jefrey Skilling to the slammer. But for every sleaze like these, undoubtedly many more get away with it. In fact, prosecution of white-collar crime in the U.S. has been sliding for years. Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) project reports that corporate- and white-collar prosecutions at the federal level hit an all-time low in 2022.
Story by Brad Reed

One of Tennessee's most influential gun lobbyists has told News Channel 5 Nashville that citizens have the "right" to violently overthrow their government.

During the interview, journalist Phil Williams asked gun rights activist John Harris, who regularly lobbies state lawmakers against enacting any gun restrictions, about incendiary memes he had posted on Facebook, including one that suggested conservatives give up on voting and instead "take a road trip to Nashville" to fix problems with the Tennessee state government.

"You think that Tennesseans may one day need to take up arms and come to the state Capitol and overthrow state government?" Williams asked him. "Well, the state constitution specifically says that is their right," he said. Harris also posted a meme that encouraged a "rebellion" against former President Barack Obama, which Harris hastened to note that "I don't say that I am for it or against" such a rebellion.
Story by By JESSE BEDAYN, Associated Press/Report for America

DENVER (AP) — Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis is scheduled to sign a set of health care bills Friday afternoon to enshrine access to abortion and gender-affirming procedures and medications, as the Democrat-led state tries to make itself a safe haven for its neighbors, whose Republican leaders are restricting care.

The goal of the legislation is to ensure people in surrounding states and beyond can go to Colorado to have an abortion, begin puberty blockers or receive gender-affirming surgery. Bordering states of Wyoming and Oklahoma have passed abortion bans and Utah has prohibited transgender care for minors.

With the new laws, Colorado joins Illinois as a progressive bastion for reproductive rights surrounded mostly by conservatives states. Illinois abortion clinics now serve people living in a 1800-mile (2900-kilometer) stretch of 11 Southern states that have largely banned abortion. California and New York are considering similar bills after the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down Roe. v. Wade, putting abortion laws in the hands of state legislatures.
Story by asheffey@businessinsider.com (Ayelet Sheffey)

The Supreme Court just handed thousands of student-loan borrowers a victory. On Thursday, the nation's highest court ruled that $6 billion in student debt relief for 200,000 borrowers — a result of a settlement from a years-long lawsuit now known as Sweet vs. Cardona. The lawsuit was first filed in 2019 under former President Donald Trump on behalf of borrowers with stalled borrower defense claims, or claims borrowers can file if they believe they were defrauded by the school they attended. If approved, their debt would be wiped out.

President Joe Biden's Education Department agreed to a settlement last summer, and a federal judge signed off on the relief in November. However, shortly after, three schools named in the settlement appealed the decision and requested a lower court pause the relief as the legal process plays out. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the request, and now, the Supreme Court came to the same conclusion.
Opinion by Ed Kilgore

For a while now, many political observers have had April 14 circled on their calendars as the day when Florida governor and proto-presidential candidate Ron DeSantis would be speaking at Liberty University. The huge school in Lynchburg, Virginia, is associated with the late Jerry Falwell Sr., who turned the small Baptist college into a conservative Evangelical powerhouse. For decades, Republican politicians (and a few Democrats) have shown the flag at the school’s regular student assemblies (known as Convocations) to indicate their understanding of — and in many cases their solidarity with — the agenda of the Christian right.
Is Tucker Carlson working for Putin or just a useful idiot?

Story by Connor Surmonte

Tucker Carlson directly contradicted Fox News this week by falsely claiming American soldiers are currently fighting Russian troops in Ukraine, RadarOnline.com has learned. Carlson made the claims on Thursday night shortly after the FBI arrested a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified intelligence documents connected to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But while part of the leaked classified material indicated U.S. service members are present in Ukraine amid the ongoing war, White House spokesman John Kirby released a statement clarifying that the U.S. service members are only there as part of an “embassy defense attaché.” “US troops are not fighting in Ukraine,” wrote Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich following a press conference held by Kirby.
Is Tucker Carlson working for Putin or just a useful idiot?

Story by nmusumeci@insider.com (Natalie Musumeci)

Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Thursday rattled off seemingly made-up casualty figures from "leaked intelligence" to argue that Ukraine is losing the war with Russia. But the actual leaked classified United States documents show that more than twice as many Russian soldiers as Ukrainian troops have been killed.

During his "Tucker Carlson Tonight" broadcast, the Fox News star said that the leaked documents show "Ukraine is in fact losing the war." "Seven Ukrainians are being killed for every Russian," Carlson claimed, without citing his direct source. A recently leaked US intelligence document paints a very different picture of the casualties in the war.
Story by Chris Pandolfo

Billionaire Elon Musk stirred the pot on Twitter Friday morning with his unfiltered thoughts on what should happen to parents and doctors who put children through transgender medical treatments. "Any parent or doctor who sterilizes a child before they are a consenting adult should go to prison for life," Musk tweeted.

His declaration came in reply to libertarian commentator Josie Glabach, a.k.a. The Redheaded Libertarian, who had shared an MSNBC op-ed that criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis and Republicans across the nation are pushing for legislation that would ban transgender medical treatments for minors, including puberty blockers and sex-reassignment surgeries.

Musk's comments were cheered by Republican lawmakers who oppose permitting gender dysphoric children to undergo transgender medical procedures, which is considered best practice by major medical groups, including the American Medical Association, the Children's Hospital Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Story by Rafi Schwartz

Fox News is having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week
Fox News sits largely comfortably atop the crowd of cable news outlets when it comes to the sheer number of eyeballs aimed at television screens on any given day. That it has become an influencer of conservative sentiment perhaps even surpassing its role as a chronicler of conservative news is a sign of just how uniquely powerful Fox is within right-leaning media.

Nevertheless, Fox has been struggling of late — not in viewership, but under the looming shadow of a potentially seismic ruling for Dominion Voting Systems in that company's defamation lawsuit against the network over having aired false "stolen election" conspiracy theories in 2020. Beyond the monetary threat that suit represents, Dominion's case against Fox has opened the door for a host of separate but interrelated dangers to the network. And this week, several of those threads converged to deliver Fox one of its most existentially challenging stretches in recent memory.

The lawsuit is coming from inside the house.
On Tuesday, Fox Corp. shareholder Robert Schwarz filed a derivative action lawsuit in Delaware against network owner Rupert Murdoch, his son Lachlan, and several other members of the Fox Corp. board. In it, Schwarz claimed that by broadcasting former President Donald Trump's various 2020 election lies, Fox News had "exposed the Company to public ridicule and negatively impacted the credibility of Fox News as a media organization that is supposed to accurately report newsworthy events," according to the text of the suit obtained by NBC News.
Story by Maya Boddie

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to soon announce a 2024 bid against former President Donald Trump, visited Ohio Thursday while Fort Lauderdale faces severe and historic flooding. As a result, the Republican leader is facing an abundance of backlash. The City of Fort Lauderdale's Twitter account wrote Thursday night, "FLOOD EMERGENCY UPDATE: April 13, 2023, 7:45 p.m.. An additional round of rain has caused more flooding throughout the City. Roads that were passable earlier today are flooded again. We strongly urge everyone to stay off the roads.
Story by Jennifer Bowers Bahneyo

A man whose television was continuously tuned to Fox News, and who knew “next to nothing” about the 2020 election, has been sentenced to seven years in federal prison for his part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Patrick McCaughey III participated in “some of the worst violence inside the lower west tunnel,” crushing an officer with a police shield, NBC News reported Friday. The prosecutor had asked for a hefty 15-year sentence, which would have been the longest term given to a Capitol rioter. The judge in the case, Trevor McFadden, is a Trump appointee.

McCaughey’s sister wrote a letter to the court explaining that her brother had been “radicalized” by their father, who only played “Fox News and Turner Classic Movies” in their home. She wrote that McCaughey’s “entire livelihood depended on having a good relationship with my father.” “I believe my father’s dedication to ignoring all issues that did not interest him, and his tendency to cut out those who disagreed with him forced my brother to adapt to his interests once again and therefore, radicalize himself too,” she wrote.
Story by Kalyn Womack

A Travis County judge unsealed court documents that revealed a series of racist social posts and messages shared by Daniel Perry, the man convicted in fatally shooting a Black Lives Matter protester, according to Austin American-Statesman. Perry’s conviction was recently challenged by Gov. Greg Abbott who sought to pardon him.

Perry issued a number of anti-BLM messages ahead of the shooting that seem to support his guilty conviction way more than the governor’s notion that he killed the demonstrator in simple self-defense. “Black Lives Matter is racist to white people...It is official I am racist because I do not agree with people acting like monkeys,” he wrote in one post.

In other posts, he slammed the BLM movement for promoting a “victim mentality,” he argued that George Floyd wasn’t a martyr and made threats against BLM demonstrators believing they’d attack him because he is Jewish. He even made a post saying if people believe the Confederate flag represents racism, then so does the NAACP logo. Yes, you read that correctly. All these red flags and desperate attempts to justify his own racism sound more like he was looking for a problem July 26, 2020.
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