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US Monthly Headline News July 2023 - Page 2
The Senate Republican leader, 81, has also been using a wheelchair to navigate crowded airports, said a source familiar with his practices.
By Garrett Haake and Sahil Kapur

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tripped and fell disembarking from a plane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport this month, two sources familiar with the incident said. McConnell, 81, was not seriously hurt, and he was seen later that day at the Capitol, where he interacted with at least one reporter.

The fall, which has not been previously reported, occurred July 14 after the flight out of Washington was canceled while everyone was on board. McConnell, R-Ky., who was a passenger, had a “face plant,” someone who was on the plane at the time but did not witness the fall told NBC News. That passenger also said they spoke to another passenger who helped tend to McConnell.

McConnell has also recently been using a wheelchair as a precaution when he navigates crowded airports, said a source familiar with his practices.
A few minutes later, the Senate minority leader walked back to the news conference by himself.
By Rebecca Shabad, Liz Brown-Kaiser and Frank Thorp V

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suddenly stopped speaking during a weekly Republican leadership news conference Wednesday afternoon, appearing to freeze, and then went silent and was walked away.

McConnell, R-Ky., had been making his opening remarks about an annual defense policy bill when he stopped talking. He was silent for 19 seconds. His Republican colleagues asked whether he was OK, and a top McConnell deputy, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, a physician, escorted McConnell, 81, away from the cameras and reporters.

Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa made a hand gesture that initially appeared to resemble the sign of the cross. Her office later clarified that she was motioning for Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota.
By Melissa Quinn

Washington — Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who served as an outside lawyer to former President Donald Trump, acknowledged Wednesday that he made "false" statements when he claimed two Georgia election workers engaged in voter fraud during the 2020 election. Giuliani, who's being sued by the now former election workers for defamation, still argued he was engaging in constitutionally protected speech when he made the allegations.

Giuliani's concession came in a two-page stipulation he submitted to the federal District Court in Washington, D.C., as part of the lawsuit brought by Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss, who are mother and daughter. In the filing, the former mayor admitted that for the purposes of the litigation, "to the extent the statements were statements of fact and otherwise actionable, such actionable factual statements were false."

Giuliani also admitted that "he does not dispute for purposes of this litigation, that the statements carry meaning that is defamatory per se," and no longer contests the "factual elements of liability" raised by Freeman and Moss. But he noted that the declaration has no effect on his argument that he made constitutionally protected statements or opinions, or that his conduct caused the pair any damage.
Story by ssheth@businessinsider.com (Sonam Sheth,John L. Dorman)

Former First Lady Melania Trump started a scholarship program last year called "Fostering the Future." But there's no charity with that name registered in New York or Florida, The New York Times reported.

"Since leaving the White House, I have further dedicated my efforts to helping America's children," Trump said in a press release announcing the program in February 2022. "In fact, I have spent the past months laying the groundwork for a new project that focuses on the foster care community."

"To avoid confusion, I do not operate a 501(c)(3) charitable organization," the press release said. "In simple terms, 'Fostering the Future' is the name of my platform. Fostering the Future is a Be Best initiative."

The scope of the project was unclear. And The Times reports that there also isn't a charity with the name "Be Best" registered in Florida or New York.
Opinion by Jonathan Chait

Yesterday, as part of what it describes as a reboot — and what the campaign media describes as a breakdown — Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign fired another tranche of staffers, including speechwriter and right-wing activist Nate Hochman. The 25-year-old Hochman created a controversial social-media post that dissolves into a creepy fascistic scene with bayonet-wielding soldiers marching toward a strange rotating symbol. That symbol, a sonnenrad, is used by white supremacists as a kind of less obvious version of the swastika. It would be easy to understand this development as simply more campaign dysfunction, perhaps poor vetting, or even a symptom of the campaign being “too online.” It is better understood as the result of a fundamental strategic decision by DeSantis to actively court the far right.

DeSantis’s campaign hired Hochman from National Review after it was reported he had participated in a Twitter Spaces with Nick Fuentes, who is at least Nazi-adjacent. “We were just talking about your influence and we were saying, like, you’ve gotten a lot of kids ‘based,’ and we respect that, for sure,” Hochman told him. “I literally said, ‘I think Nick’s probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservative.’” (The comparison is instructive: The nicest and perhaps only good thing that can be said about Shapiro is that Nazis hate him.)
Jeff Cox

The U.S. economy showed few signs of recession in the second quarter, as gross domestic product grew at a faster than expected pace during the period, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. GDP, the sum of all goods and services activity, increased at a 2.4% annualized rate for the April-through-June period, better than the 2% consensus estimate from Dow Jones. GDP rose at a 2% pace in the first quarter.

Markets moved higher following the report, with stocks poised for a positive open and Treasury yields on the rise. Consumer spending powered the solid quarter, aided by increases in nonresidential fixed investment, government spending and inventory growth. Perhaps as important, inflation was held in check through the period. The personal consumption expenditures price index increased 2.6%, down from a 4.1% rise in the first quarter and well below the Dow Jones estimate for a gain of 3.2%.
Story by Areeba Shah

At least two more fake electors have been subpoenaed in special counsel Jack Smith's investigation into former President Donald Trump's attempts to challenge and overturn the 2020 election results, NBC News reported. The electors are scheduled to appear in early August before the grand jury in Washington, marking their first testimony, a source told the outlet.

These individuals were part of groups of fake electors operating in seven battleground states. Most of them signed documents falsely claiming that Trump had won in states won by President Joe Biden. Numerous witnesses have already testified before the Washington-based grand jury as part of the investigation, including two electors from Nevada who appeared before the same grand jury last month.
Las Vegas Sun

Under the leadership of its governor, Ron DeSantis, and supported by its Republican legislature, Florida is feverishly working to reestablish the numbing segregationist horror of Jim Crow America. Most Americans believe we left this forever. But DeSantis — governor today, presidential aspirant tomorrow — is the determined force behind Jim Crow 2.0.

Beneath the headlines about DeSantis’ effort to block an advanced placement high school course in African American history, his central motive has been largely lost. What Florida’s governor is trying to do is bring back approaches that constitute the foundation from which all manner of freshly bigoted government policies shall spring.
Story by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement

U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) campaigned on a platform of being a staunch supporter of the men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces and pro-veteran. His claims, including surrounding his own father’s service, are being called into question. Senator Tuberville, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a former college football coach, who goes by the nickname “Coach,” in campaign material and even on his official U.S. Senate website. Just weeks ago Tuberville, who has never served in the U.S. Armed Forces, told reporters, “There is nobody more military than me.”

Tuberville time and time again has used claims about his father’s record in World War II, which also appear on Tuberville’s campaign website, Tuberville’s official Senate website (and in this archived copy) to promote himself. “Tuberville was inspired to serve in Congress by his father, a World War II veteran and recipient of five Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart, who instilled in him the values of patriotism, work ethic, and grit,” his Senate website reads.
Story by Alex Griffing

GOP presidential candidate and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) tore into Florida’s new Black history curriculum while on the Bulwark Podcast with Charlie Sykes on Wednesday. Hutchinson likened the controversial curriculum, which was created as part of the state’s battle against “woke” education, to “the Jim Crow days.”

Sykes began the exchange by saying, “I do want to focus on on the top lines of this campaign, but other things in the news cycle that I want to give you a chance to address.” “Ron DeSantis has been going through some things,” Sykes continued, adding:
Opinion by Travis Patterson

Fierce criticism has erupted over the music video for country singer Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town.” Liberals have decried the song’s vigilante themes, especially in light of where the video was shot. The lyrics describe a variety of crimes and unpatriotic or disrespectful behavior and promise: “Well, try that in a small town, see how far ya make it down the road. Around here, we take care of our own, you cross that line, it won’t take long.” The video was filmed at the Maury County Courthouse in Tennessee — the site of the lynching of Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man accused of assaulting a White woman in 1927.

This combination smacks of celebrating vigilantism, extralegal “justice” and a deeply sinister and racist chapter of the past in which White communities committed and condoned violence against people of color as a form of political, social and economic control.
Story by Molly Bohannon, Forbes Staff

The largest historically Black fraternity in the U.S. announced Wednesday it would be moving its planned 2025 annual conference out of Orlando after the Florida Department of Education approved controversial new guidelines on African-American history, joining a number of other organizations protesting what the fraternity called Florida’s “harmful and discriminatory policies.”
Story by Dan Ladden-Hall

Elon Musk responded to an article about the cardiac arrest of Bronny James on Tuesday by irresponsibly invoking COVID vaccines. “We cannot ascribe everything to the vaccine, but, by the same token, we cannot ascribe nothing,” Musk wrote, adding: “Myocarditis is a known side-effect” of the COVID shot. A fact-check through the platform’s Community Notes feature soon appeared alongside Musk’s tweet noting that the risk of myocarditis, a rare condition characterized by inflammation of heart muscle, is much higher for patients after a COVID infection rather than after a COVID vaccine. Without explanation, the fact-checking post was deleted from Musk’s tweet, which as of Wednesday still remains on his newly rebranded X platform without any kind of qualification. It’s not clear if Bronny James—LeBron James’ son—suffers myocarditis. He reportedly collapsed during a basketball workout at the University of Southern California on Monday.
Opinion by Ahmed Baba

We were all just reminded why Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter, now rebranded X, is so poisonous to our discourse. Son of basketball legend LeBron James, 18-year-old Bronny James, suffered from cardiac arrest during a basketball workout. He was rushed to the hospital and, as of Tuesday afternoon, is in a stable condition. As we’ve come to see so commonly with sports stars and conditions like this, anti-vaccine conspiracy theories surged on social media, especially Twitter. The owner of the site couldn’t help but to join in.

Elon Musk wasted no time immediately suggesting the Covid-19 vaccine could be to blame. Musk tweeted (or xeeted?): “We cannot ascribe everything to the vaccine, but, by the same token, we cannot ascribe nothing. Myocarditis is a known side-effect. The only question is whether it is rare or common.”
Story by Robin Zlotnick

They noticed that their next door neighbor was peeking through the window at them.
They waved and smiled at the neighbor, but the guy aggressively ignored them and shut his blinds. Then, as they were about to leave, the neighbor came running out and started yelling at them to stop. "I asked him if there was a problem," OP writes. "He said, 'Yes. I don't know why y'all in our neighborhood but we don't take kindly to thieves and criminals. The police are on the way."

The neighbor ended up calling the police for no reason at all.
The outright racism is potent. But OP kept his cool in the face of wild prejudice and explained to the neighbor that they just bought the house and that they were looking around...their own house.

According to OP, the neighbor was convinced that they couldn't afford to live there.
The neighbor responded that "people like us couldn't afford houses here and that we could save our lies for the police." Holy hell. It doesn't get much more racist than that, folks. We often talk about all the subtle, insidious ways this country remains entrenched in racism, the policies designed to hurt Black people, the structures in place that leave Black populations out of the possibility of achieving success.
Opinion by Christopher R. Browning

For some years, a variety of news commentators and academics have called Donald Trump a fascist. I was one of those who resisted using that term. I thought it had long been abused by casual, imprecise applications, and as a historian of Nazi Germany, I did not think Trumpism was anywhere close to crossing the threshold of that comparison. I still deny that Trump’s presidency was fascist; but I’m concerned that if he wins another trip to the White House, he could earn the label.

Fascism was most fully exemplified by the regimes of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. These regimes combined totalitarian dictatorship, wars of imperial conquest, and outright genocide in the case of Hitler (of Jews, Slavs, Roma) or ethnic mass murder in Mussolini’s case (of Libyans, Ethiopians, Slovenes). Placing Trumpism in the same category seemed to me trivializing and misleading.
Story by By JONATHAN MATTISE, Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Vanderbilt University Medical Center is being sued by its transgender clinic patients, who accuse the hospital of violating their privacy by turning their records over to Tennessee's attorney general.

Two patients sued Monday in Nashville Chancery Court, saying they were among more than 100 people whose records were sent by Vanderbilt to Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. His office has said it is examining medical billing in a “run of the mill” fraud investigation that isn't directed at patients or their families. Vanderbilt has said it was required by law to comply.

The patients say Vanderbilt was aware that Tennessee authorities are hostile toward the rights of transgender people, and should have removed their personally identifying information before turning over the records.
Opinion by Michael Hiltzik

With the news in recent days so irremediably grim — what with the mainstreaming of antisemitic drivel by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the record heat wave traceable to global warming — I found myself looking desperately for a comic interlude to lift my mood.

That brought me inevitably to the Ron DeSantis clown show. He offers dark comedy, to be sure, but comedy nonetheless. Over the last week, it has featured a ham-fisted attempt to whitewash the horrors of slavery in America. That slavery thing is actually divided into two scenes. We'll take them in order.
Story by David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement

On the heels of Fox News hosts defending Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis‘ new education standards requiring children to be taught slavery was beneficial to slaves, one Fox News host is now saying Jews survived the Holocaust by being “useful.”

Critics are outraged. On Friday, Fox News host Jesse Watters in a segment called “Spinning History,” declared, “No one is arguing slaves benefited from slavery.”

“No one is saying that. It’s not true,” he insisted, before he then said it: “They’re teaching how Black people developed skills during slavery in some instances that could be applied for their own personal benefit.”
Story by Alex Henderson

Former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results have been the focus of two separate criminal investigations: one by special counsel Jack Smith for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the other by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis for the State of Georgia. If Trump is indicted in both cases, he will be facing four criminal prosecutions altogether; Trump's team of lawyers is already battling a 37-count federal indictment and a 34-count indictment in New York State.

All of this comes at a time when Trump is the clear frontrunner in the 2024 Republican presidential primary. Never before in U.S. history has an ex-president faced so many legal problems while seeming to be his party's most likely presidential nominee — assuming his poll numbers continue to hold up. Polls released in late July find Trump leading the second-place primary candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 43 percent (Morning Consult), 44 percent (Rasmussen) or 40 percent (Harvard University/HarrisX).
Story by Kelly Weill

Members of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign team keep sharing videos from a DeSantis fan account that adds Nazi imagery to clips of the Florida governor. This weekend, DeSantis communications staffer Nate Hochman shared a video from the Twitter account @desantiscams criticizing Donald Trump as insufficiently conservative. The video, first noted by Republican strategist Luke Thompson, depicted DeSantis as a better alternative, and concluded with an image of DeSantis standing in front of a Nazi-linked symbol called a Sonnenrad while soldiers marched past. The Sonnenrad is an ancient European icon that was co-opted by Nazis and remains popular with modern white supremacist movements.
Story by Nikki McCann Ramirez

A Sunday newsletter from the office of Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Az.) featured a link to an antisemitic website known for promoting conspiracies ranging from QAnon to Holocaust denial, according to a report from the progressive nonprofit Media Matters For America.

The newsletter included a link to USSA News, which boasts the tagline “do not let this happen to our country ☭.” Despite Gosar condemning antisemitism in the bulletin, USSA is rampant with antisemitic language, conspiracy theories about Jewish people, and reposted or re-promoted content from Neo-Nazi blogs.
Story by Lauren Kaori Gurley

UPS and the union representing 340,000 delivery drivers reached a deal Tuesday, averting a nationwide strike that could have started on Aug. 1 and hobbled the U.S. economy. The five-year contract with the Teamsters union includes major pay increases for all UPS employees, including part-timers, the eradication of a lower-paid class of worker, and an agreement to install A/C units in delivery vans.
Story by Sky Palma

New York City Council member Vickie Paladino has been outspoken against unregistered vehicles, the need for bicycle license plates and other city requirements, making her knows as a stickler for "law and order." But according to a report from StreetsBlog NYC, a luxury sports car parked in the Republican's driveway bears an Arizona temporary license plate that the Arizona Department of Transportation has deemed a fraud.

"The 90-day paper tag — the kind that drivers get when buying a car — lists the same plate number as a real temporary tag that was issued in September 2022, according to Arizona DOT spokesman Bill Lamoreaux. But that real tag expired in December, meaning the one in Paladino’s driveway, which lists an August expiration date, is 'fraudulent,' Lamoreaux said," StreetsBlog reported.
Story by Tommy Christopher

Former congressman and Republican candidate for president Will Hurd torched Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for defending controversial new Black History standards, saying “Slavery was not a jobs program!”

The Florida Board of Education voted Wednesday to approve a curriculum on Black history that includes teaching that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit” and requires teaching “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

Vice President Kamala Harris torched the new curriculum in two speeches on consecutive days, and The Tampa Bay Times published numerous examples debunking the claims of the board’s working group. But DeSantis defended the curriculum at a press conference, even as he disavowed responsibility for it.
Story by Ewan Palmer

Questions are being raised by legal experts as to whether Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, should face an investigation over her alleged support of a fake electoral plot in the wake of the 2020 election.

Ginni Thomas has long been scrutinized for messages she sent to lawmakers calling for a new slate of electors to falsely claim Donald Trump had beaten Joe Biden in states in which the Republican had lost.

Newsweek previously reported that Thomas is alleged to have sent emails to dozens of Arizona election officials and lawmakers claiming it was their "constitutional duty" to install a "clean slate of electors" who would be willing to declare Trump the winner in the Grand Canyon State in 2020.

She is said to have allegedly told the lawmakers to "stand strong in the face of political and media pressure" and falsely claimed the responsibility to choose electors was "yours and yours alone."
Story by Gideon Rubin

The Department of Justice on Monday in a letter to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) obtained by Politico urged the House Judiciary Chair to stick to the facts. The DOJ was responding to Jordan’s July 21 letter expressing interest in the investigation of Hunter Biden led by David Weiss, a U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware appointed by Donald Trump.

In its letter to Jordan, the DOJ agrees to allow Weiss to testify before Jordan’s committee after Congress returns from its August recess. “Across administrations, the Department has long recognized its obligation to protect law enforcement work from even the perception of political interference, including from Congress,” the DOJ’s letter to Jordan said.
Story by Stacey Sanderson

Duane Keith Davis, a Compton gangster better known by the nickname "Keffe D", confessed that he gave the gun that killed Tupac Shakur to his nephew as the renewed investigation into the artist's shocking 1996 murder continues. Tupac, who was affiliated with the Mob Piru Bloods, was killed on September 7, 1996, in Las Vegas, following an altercation that took place at one of the resorts on the Strip.

Per a 2009 interview obtained by RadarOnline.com, Keffe D — who was a member of The South Side Compton Crips — informed the Los Angeles Police Department that it was his nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, who shot the late rapper four times, leading to his death.

He claimed that Tupac and Death Row Records exec Suge Knight had brutally beaten Baby Lane after a Mike Tyson fight that took place at the MGM Grand. Keffe D was "livid" and gathered a group of allegedly experienced killers who were eager for a "Al Capone Valentine's Day Massacre" style execution.

Rachel Maddow looks at the schedule of trials Donald Trump is already facing before Election Day 2024, in addition to others that may be looming and points out that questions of Trump's criminality and liability and whether the law will be respected are likely to dominate the campaign, and with Alabama already acting in open defiance of the Supreme Court, the battle lines are clear.
Story by Bart Jansen, USA TODAY

Kelly Ruh, a 2020 Republican elector for then-President Donald Trump, said she was "pissed." She had scheduled a day off from her accounting job to do her political duty and help secure her state of Wisconsin for the president. But the popular vote didn't add up for him, so she didn't understand why her party insisted on dragging her to the state Capitol in an attempt to make him the winner. “I was not expecting to prevail in the courts and was obviously pissed that I would be using a personal day off to go and complete that process,” Ruh, who was then a DePere city council member, told congressional investigators.

Ruh was among several dozen Republican electors for Trump across the country who didn’t see themselves as criminals, as gleaned from thousands of pages of congressional testimony, hearings and court records. In many cases, the electors were state party leaders, lawyers and political activists. They unabashedly took pictures of themselves and tweeted out the results of their meetings – despite warnings from Trump campaign aides to avoid the press. Several participants groused about the futility of meeting, but acquiesced to keep Trump’s legal options open.
Story by Matthew Chapman

Far-right activist Ammon Bundy was slapped with 8-figure damages by a jury on Monday, in a defamation trial brought by a hospital he harassed, reported The Daily Beast on Monday.

"In March of last year, Bundy was arrested for trespassing outside of St. Luke’s Meridian Medical Center, where 10-month-old 'Baby Cyrus' was being treated. The then-gubernatorial candidate organized a week-long protest, claiming Cyrus was 'medically kidnapped' over a 'missed non-emergency doctor’s appointment,'" reported Kate Briquelet. "Two months later, St. Luke’s hospital filed a defamation suit against Bundy and Diego Rodriguez, the child’s grandpa and an activist in Bundy’s far-right People’s Rights Network (PRN). The complaint also named their companies, including Rodriguez’s Freedom Man Press, which posted Baby Cyrus 'kidnapping videos.'"

According to the report, the jury decided that Bundy, Rodriguez, and the entities they control are liable for $26.5 million in compensatory damages, and almost $26 million in punitive damages.
The lawsuit alleges that Abbott violated the law by building structures in the Rio Grande River without authorization, creating an obstruction in U.S. waters.
By Kierra Frazier and Josh Gerstein

The Department of Justice sued the state of Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday for building a floating barrier at the southern border that the state says will deter migrants but that the Biden administration calls a threat to public safety.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Austin, alleges that Abbott violated the law by building structures in the Rio Grande River without authorization, creating an obstruction in U.S. waters.

The Justice Department is seeking to require Texas officials to remove the barrier at the state’s expense. The suit claims that structures placed in the Rio Grande require approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and that Texas never sought or received such a permit.
Story by Tom Boggioni

The mayor of Erie, Pennsylvania is making an all-out effort to get Donald Trump to pay up tens of thousands of dollars he has refused to cough up for almost five years before the former president returns this weekend for another rally.

With Trump headed to Erie on Saturday as part of his campaign for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination, Mayor Joe Schember (D) told the Erie Times-News that pleas for the $35,000 owed have gone unheeded and city administrators are looking at ways to get him to pay before he hits town in less than a week.

According to the report, the $35,000 is for expenses incurred when the city hosted an Oct. 10, 2018, Make America Great Again at Erie Insurance Arena, which went to pay city workers assigned to the event, as well as police officers who worked overtime.
Story by Elura Nanos

The white mayor of a tiny Alabama town less than an hour from Selma has argued he should be immune from a civil rights lawsuit, claiming that holding a secret meeting to keep the city’s first-ever Black mayor and five Black city council members out of office is not a sufficiently clear violation of constitutional rights.

Patrick Braxton, along with James Ballard, Barbara Patrick, Janice Quarles, and Wanda Scott, sued the city of Newbern, Alabama and alleged that despite being legally entitled to take office, they were prevented from doing so when white residents “refused to accept” the results of a 2020 election. They argue that Haywood “Woody” Stokes III, Newbern’s white former mayor, conspired with his council, other government officials, and a local bank, to illegally install himself as mayor even after Braxton fairly and legally won the election.
Story by Gregory Korte

(Bloomberg) -- Will Hurd said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his rival for the Republican presidential nomination, should take responsibility for a new state curriculum that calls for teaching that slavery gave enslaved people valuable skills.

“Implying that there is an upside to slavery is absolutely wrong,” said Hurd, a former US representative running a long-shot bid for the GOP nomination, in an interview Monday with Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power.”

DeSantis criticized Vice President Kamala Harris last week for going to Florida to condemn the recently adopted social studies curriculum. The Florida governor said he wasn’t involved in drafting the document but defended the standards.
Story by Brad Reed

A retired Republican judge from Idaho is warning his party against behaving like "lemmings" by lining up to nominate former President Donald Trump as their nominee yet again in the 2024 election. Writing in The Hill, former Idaho Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones argued that there was simply no chance that Trump would succeed in his third presidential campaign, especially given that he could be a convicted felon by election day.

"The fact is that Trump simply can’t and won’t win another term," he argues. "He is wrong on the issues, he has no vision for a second term other than trying to establish an autocracy, and he will likely be convicted in one or more of the criminal cases that are currently in the works." Given all this, Jones marvels at the fact that Trump's GOP rivals aren't being more aggressive in trying to actually defeat him in the primary race.
Story by Khaleda Rahman

One of the people charged with acting as a fake elector for former president Donald Trump in Michigan has said she was "duped."

Michigan's attorney general Dana Nessel announced felony charges against 16 Republicans "for their role in the alleged false electors scheme" last week, accusing them of submitting false certificates that portrayed them as legitimate electors in the 2020 election which saw Joe Biden win the presidency.

Nessel, a Democrat, said all 16 people would face eight criminal charges, including forgery, conspiracy to commit election law forgery, and uttering and publishing. The top charges carry a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
Story by Chantal Da Silva and Mirna Alsharif and Minyvonne Burke

Twitter has officially rebranded to "X" after owner Elon Musk changed its iconic bird logo Monday, marking the latest major shift since his takeover of the social media platform. The website Twitter.com remained live and branding on the app version of the platform did not appear to change as of early Monday.

Twitter’s world-renowned bird logo was transformed into an X, however. Early Sunday, Musk posted a short video of a flickering "X." Asked if the logo would change in a Twitter Spaces audio chat, he said "yes," telling an unknown speaker: “We’re cutting the Twitter logo off the building with blow torches." Early Monday, Musk tweeted an image of the X branding beamed across Twitter's headquarters.
Story by Cherie Saunders

*Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said recently that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reminds him of Samuel L. Jackson’s plantation overseer character Stephen in Quentin Tarantino’s film “Django Unchained.”

"Well, Clarence Thomas, anybody who's watched the movie, just watch Stephen and you see Clarence Thomas," the Minnesota AG said recently during an interview with the Michigan Chronicle.

Stephen, also enslaved in the film, is loyal to the plantation owner played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and revels in the “power” his master gives him to keep his fellow enslaved people in line. He ultimately betrays the Black hero of the movie, played by Jamie Foxx.
Opinion by LeBron Hill, USA TODAY

To a crowd of Tennessee's GOP faithful on July 15, Florida Gov. and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis went to his greatest hits and boasted about his self-proclaimed battle against "wokeness."

“We’ve made the state of Florida the place where woke goes to die," DeSantis said in Nashville. “And now, it is our mission as Americans to ensure that in January 2025 ... we leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history where it belongs.”

But woke ideology, plain and simple, is imaginary hatred that its critics can't even define. There is no culprit, only rabbit holes that lead to nowhere.
Story by Paige Skinner

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film 'Barbie' on July 12 in London. “Barbie” earned $155 million at the box office during its opening weekend and critics called it “spontaneous and fun.” Movie-goers, made up of mostly women, dressed in all pink to celebrate the occasion. But when there’s a group of women excited about and praising something, rest assured that there are conservatives lurking around the corner, ready to trash it.

Ben Shapiro, a conservative commentator, posted a 43-minute long YouTube video on Saturday, complaining “Barbie” divides men and women, calling it “flaming garbage” and “woke.” He also lit a Barbie and Ken doll on fire to protest the movie. Ginger Gaetz, the wife of Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), wrote on Instagram that “Barbie” shows Ken with a “disappointingly low T” and that the movie gives an “unfair treatment of pregnant Barbie Midge.”
CNN

U.S. Capitol police officer Harry Dunn speaks with CNN’s Jim Acosta after Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis said the January 6 riot at the Capitol was not an insurrection.
Opinion by Glenn C. Altschuler, opinion contributor

“The most durable narratives are not the ones that stand up to fact-checking. They’re the ones that address our deepest needs and desires,” journalist George Packer once acknowledged. But, he warned, “when facts become fungible, we’re lost.” These days, in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, conspiracy theories are in the saddle, and facts have become fungible.

During the testimony of John Kerry before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee a couple of weeks ago, Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) accused the U.S. Climate Envoy of hyping a global warming “problem that doesn’t exist.” When Kerry pointed to the consensus of climate scientists and the 195 nations that signed the Paris Accords, Perry declared they were “grifting, just like you.” In the 117th Congress, according to one study, 52 percent of House Republicans and 60 percent of Senate Republicans were climate skeptics or deniers. Every time soil or a rock “is deposited into the seas,” opined Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) “that forces the sea levels to rise because now you’ve got less space in those oceans because the bottom is moving.”
Story by Joe Jacquez

An Arizona law limiting how close people can get to police while recording them was declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in a Friday ruling.

The law would have made it illegal to film police officers within 8 feet of law enforcement activity if the officer had requested that the citizen or journalist stop filming. In addition, officers could have ordered anyone filming on public property to stop if they determined the area was unsafe or if the person filming was interfering.

U.S. District Judge John J. Tuchi cited infringement against a clear right for citizens to film police while doing their jobs in his ruling. “The law prohibits or chills a substantial amount of First Amendment protected activity and is unnecessary to prevent interference with police officers given other Arizona laws in effect,” Tuchi wrote.
Story by Nicquel Terry Ellis

The doubt surrounding the alleged kidnapping of Carlethia “Carlee” Nichole Russell, which Alabama police said they couldn’t verify, threatens to overshadow thousands of unsolved cases of missing Black people, advocates say. Russell went missing shortly after calling 911 on July 13 to report a toddler in a diaper walking along the highway. Police said Russell mysteriously returned home on foot around 10:45 p.m. two days later.

Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis said police were unable to verify most of the 25-year-old’s initial statement to investigators, including a claim that a man with orange hair abducted her when she got out of the vehicle to check on the child. Derzis said after finding Russell’s cell phone, police discovered web searches for “Do you have to pay for an Amber Alert?” and for the movie “Taken.”
Story by Brandon Gage

United States Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) on Sunday reminded the public that the events involving former President Donald Trump and his associates on and around January 6th, 2021 constituted "a very carefully orchestrated and choreographed plot to overthrow the election" and that "nothing spontaneous or out of control about" what went down that day. Raskin's remarks came as he was urging the American people to avoid downplaying the criminal nature of what occurred.

"Trump and his followers would invite us to believe that all of this was some kind of spontaneous eruption at a rally that just got a little bit out of control," Raskin said on The Katie Phang Show. "No. This was a very clear concerted plot that took place over many weeks to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election."
Story by lloydlee@insider.com (Lloyd Lee)

A yearslong public relations campaign praising and defending Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas can be traced to a network of nonprofit groups tied to a prominent conservative activist, The Washington Post reported.

Leonard Leo, co-chairman of The Federalist Society, has spent several decades pushing federal courts to the right by leveraging a large network of nonprofit organizations in which he holds formal or informal roles.

According to the Post, Leo has also used that network to support the confirmation of every conservative Supreme Court justice in the past two decades. But one more recent campaign was directed at Justice Thomas, who had already spent about three decades on the Court's bench.

The initiative includes a two-hour movie, "Created Equal," released in 2020, that followed Thomas' upbringing; websites that praise Thomas's life or dispute the sexual harassment allegations made by Anita Hill; and even a Twitter fan account with close to 30,000 followers. The Post found that the effort cost at least $1.8 million from conservative nonprofits tied to Leo.
Story by Carrie McCabe

Anewly unredacted version of the search warrant used in the Mar-a-Lago investigation relating to Donald Trump‘s classified documents trial revealed that the Department of Justice has obtained security camera footage that “reflects that evidence has been moved recently”after a subpoena was issued by the DOJ for access to any classified documents and that “the current location of the boxes that were removed from the storage room area but not returned to it is unknown.”

The footage is quite relevant in the case against former president Trump, as it pertains to several of the counts against him in the indictment, including conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, and a scheme to conceal.
Story by Jon Levine

A Department of Justice attorney who led a years-long investigation into Hunter Biden is the son of a crooked Internal Revenue Service agent, records show. Meyer Weiss — whose son David served as the US Attorney for Delaware — was convicted in 1985 of taking more than $200,000 from businessmen looking to skirt federal tax laws, according to the nonprofit Marco Polo. The elder Weiss worked at the IRS in Philadelphia from 1955 to 1984. The story of his disgrace was covered by the Washington Post in 1984. “Mr. Weiss confessed and cooperated in the investigation,” court records read.
Story by By PAT EATON-ROBB, Associated Press

Famed forensic scientist Henry Lee was found liable for fabricating evidence in a murder case that sent two Connecticut men to prison for decades for a crime they did not commit, a federal judge ruled Friday. Ralph “Ricky” Birch and Shawn Henning were convicted in the Dec. 1, 1985, slaying of Everett Carr, based in part on testimony about what Lee said were bloodstains on a towel found in the 65-year-old's home in New Milford, 55 miles (88.5 kilometers) southwest of Hartford.

A judge vacated the felony murder convictions in 2020, and the men filed a federal wrongful conviction lawsuit naming Lee, eight police investigators and the town of New Milford. The ruling Friday sends the case against the police and the town to trial. In granting a motion for summary judgement against Lee, the only outstanding issue for a jury in his case will be the amount of damages. Lee, the former head of the state’s forensic laboratory and now a professor emeritus at the University of New Haven’s Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
By Phillip Nieto

Hunter Biden‘s attorney filed an ethics complaint against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Friday after the Republican firebrand showed graphic sexual images of the president’s son during a Congressional hearing earlier this week. Biden’s lawyer, Abbe David Lowell, said in a letter to the Office of Congressional Ethics that Greene’s actions were ‘abhorrent” and “blatantly violates House Ethics rules and standards of official conduct.”

“Your colleague has lowered herself, and by extension the entire House of Representatives, to a new level of abhorrent behavior that blatantly violates House Ethics rules and standards of official conduct,” Lowell wrote, according to the Washington Post. “If the OCE takes its responsibilities seriously, it will promptly and decisively condemn and discipline Ms. Greene for her latest actions.” The letter further cites comments made by Greene where the lawmaker tried linking Biden to “an Eastern prostitution or human trafficking ring.”
Story by Josephine Harvey • 4h ago

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough tore into Donald Trump on Friday after the former president said it would be “dangerous” for special counsel Jack Smith to send him to jail. Trump had told an Iowa radio station this week that the possibility of jail time is a “very dangerous thing to even talk about, because we do have a tremendously passionate group of voters — much more passion than they had in 2020 and much more passion than they had in 2016.” Scarborough said Trump was “talking like a mobster.”
Story by By LARRY NEUMEISTER and JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump's company and his former longtime lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen have settled a lawsuit over Cohen's claims that he was unfairly stuck with big legal bills after getting entangled in investigations into the former president.

Lawyers for the two sides disclosed the settlement during a video conference with the judge Friday, three days before Cohen’s 2019 lawsuit was slated to go to trial in a Manhattan state court. Details of the agreement were not made public. Cohen said Friday the matter "has been resolved in a manner satisfactory to all parties.” Messages seeking comment were left with lawyers for Trump’s company, the Trump Organization.

The legal fees lawsuit was one of the more obscure branches of the thicket of legal troubles surrounding Trump and his company. Still, the trial stood to give a platform to Cohen — an ardent Trump loyalist who became an outspoken antagonist — and to put the ex-president's son Donald Trump Jr. on the witness stand.
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