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US Monthly Headline News May 2023 - Page 5
Story by Thom Hartmann

The first rule of business and marketing is that if you make it easy for folks to buy your product or engage with you, more people will do so. If you don’t want people to buy or use your product or service, on the other hand, just make them jump through hoops to complete the transaction and many won’t bother.

Republicans know this and have been applying it to voting for the better part of 50 years; recently they’ve turned it into a science. Polling before the 2020 election in Texas, for example, showed that Joe Biden may beat Trump just as he did in so many other swing states across the country. From Trump failing there, the Republican elders in the state knew, it would be a short jump to flipping the entire state Blue, as happened with Michigan and Wisconsin.
Story by Aila Slisco

Former President Donald Trump is lashing out following a report claiming that federal prosecutors have an audio recording of him discussing his possession of a classified document after leaving office.

CNN reported on Wednesday that prosecutors obtained a July 2021 recording of Trump speaking about keeping a classified document that purportedly details a potential attack on Iran. Special Counsel Jack Smith is leading dual Department of Justice (DOJ) criminal investigations into Trump's post-presidency handling of classified documents and his January 6 activities.

The recording reportedly features Trump saying that the Iran document was not declassified, despite the former president having repeatedly claimed that he "automatically" declassified all of the documents he kept after leaving office. CNN also reported that it features Trump discussing the document with multiple associates who did not have required security clearances.
Opinion by Robert Reich

Republican leaders have mastered the art of manufacturing crises to divert the public’s attention from the real crisis of our era – the siphoning of income, wealth and power from most Americans by a small group at the top. Consider the fake fears they’ve been whipping up:

1. Wokeness
Florida’s governor (and now Republican presidential candidate) Ron DeSantis has declared a “war on woke”. Immediately after the mangled launch of his presidential campaign, DeSantis claimed on Fox News that “the woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism”.

What?
What exactly is “woke”? The term gained popularity at the start of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014, following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, when many Americans – including white Americans who were seeing the extent of the problem for the first time – awoke to the reality of police brutality against the Black community. DeSantis’s own general counsel has defined “woke” as “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them”. He’s right. We all need to be woke.
Story by Dirk Libbey

Earlier this month when Disney announced that a plan to move 2,000 Cast Member jobs (including most of Walt Disney Imagineering, from California to Florida) would not move forward, it was obviously a financial blow to the state. The move was expected to result in nearly $1 billion in spending in the state that now won’t happen, but it looks like Disney’s decision in its ongoing battle with Florida is already causing repercussions, as it could mean a lot of additional economic activity won’t happen.

At this point, it’s unclear what Disney will do with the land it purchased in 2021, but at least in the short term, the answer is “absolutely nothing” and that’s bad news for the Lake Nona area, which was expecting a boom in both residential and commercial projects in response to the move. The Wall Street Journal reports that when Disney first announced the move, construction on new homes and apartments jumped up, many of which are actively being built now, but it appears the people who were expected to live in them aren’t coming.
Story by Ananya Gairola

New research revealed concerning findings about the impact of Elon Musk’s Twitter algorithm changes, reportedly amplifying anger and animosity among users, particularly towards those with opposing views.

What Happened: Musk’s Twitter algorithm changes have come under scrutiny as researchers from Cornell University and UC Berkeley uncovered troubling consequences, revealing that the platform now prioritizes emotionally charged tweets that fuel anger and animosity, ultimately leading to increased polarization among users with opposing views.
Story by Kalhan Rosenblatt and Dennis Romero

Shootings across the U.S. left at least 16 people dead and dozens more injured over Memorial Day weekend. The gun violence occurred at beaches, high schools and motorcycle rallies, among other locations, across at least eight states. The victims were teenagers to people in their 60s.

The weekend concluded as it began — with gunfire. Nine people were injured in a shooting in the Hollywood Beach area of Hollywood, Florida, on Monday evening as people enjoying the holiday amassed along the Atlantic coast north of Miami, police said.

Police said an altercation between two groups led to the violence, with all nine victims hospitalized in unknown condition and the possibility that children were among the injured. A person of interest was detained, and a suspect was sought, Hollywood police spokesperson Deanna Bettineschi said at a nighttime news conference.
Story by Jesselyn Radack

Defense lawyers for Jack Teixeira, the Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified documents using the online gaming site Discord, recently argued that he should get bail because he was no Edward Snowden. Their arguments were misleading at best, and easily contradicted by a simple Google search. They claimed, for example, that "Mr. Snowden fled the [United States] prior to any arrest" and was already in China at the time his documents were leaked to the media.

Snowden didn't "flee the country." When he traveled to Hong Kong on May 10, 2013, there were no criminal charges against him. There was no arrest warrant. He had a valid U.S. passport. He left the United States a free man.

Another glaring, but overlooked, difference between Teixeira's leaks and Snowden's is the question of how each man viewed his actions. Teixeira bragged about breaking the rules, the sensitivity of what he had access to, and the "f**k ton of information" he possessed about U.S. intelligence on countries considered among America's greatest enemies, such as Syria, Iran and China.
Story by Stephen Silver

A few months back, Marjorie Taylor Greene said 6 “billion” have crossed the border in the Biden years. In a since-deleted tweet from back in February, the controversial Georgia Congresswoman misstated the number of illegal border crossings in the last two-plus years. Should we be surprised? Well, no.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Is At It Again
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) often tweets wild and outrageous things, and she rarely deletes such messages. And, of course, as one would expect, she did so a few months back yet again, after wildly misstating the number of border crossings since President Joe Biden took office.

"$113 Billion has been appropriated to Ukraine in just 1 yr,” Greene said in the deleted tweet back in February of this year, per Newsweek. "Trump's wall would have only cost $22 billion, but Congress refused to fund it. 6 Billion people illegally crossed our border since Biden took office, but Ukraine's border is the only border that matters to Washington.”

There is a number of issues with Greene's tweet. For starters, the population of the world is a little under 8 billion, so clearly it’s not true that 6 billion people have illegally crossed the U.S. border since 2021.
Story by Marina Pitofsky, USA TODAY

Former congresswoman Liz Cheney called out her Republican colleagues in a commencement speech on Sunday, accusing them of urging her to tell lies following the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.  

Cheney, addressing graduates of Colorado College, said: "After the 2020 election and the attack of January 6th, my fellow Republicans wanted me to lie. They wanted me to say that the 2020 election was stolen, that the attack of January 6th wasn’t a big deal, and that Donald Trump wasn’t dangerous."  

"I had to choose between lying and losing my position in House leadership," the former Republican lawmaker, who graduated from Colorado College in 1988, said.  
Story by gdean@insider.com (Grace Dean)

A farmer who lives near Elon Musk's Texas campus around 30 miles east of Austin says that the boom in development in the area means it's like "the Wild West." Harold "Skip" Connett, an organic farmer in Bastrop, a rural area, told The Washington Post that industrial developments in the area were increasing truck traffic and pollution.

"Between Elon Musk coming in here and all the sand and gravel mines ... suddenly this bucolic, pastoral prime farmland is now more than a thousand acres of an industrial site," Connett told the outlet. "There's no zoning, there are no rules. It's the Wild West."

A Bastrop County commissioner told The Post that the growth in development was "more than this county was ready to handle," but that it was allowed under the state's property rights. "This is Texas," the commissioner said. "If you own the property and you stay within the state laws, you can pretty much do what you want."
Story by Lee Moran

Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign tweeted this solemn video to honor fallen U.S. soldiers on Memorial Day on Monday: But the 54-second clip shared by the @TrumpWarRoom account ― which was posted after Trump had written an unhinged, all-caps rant all about himself to mark the day on his Truth Social platform ― prompted a deluge of critical comments.

Twitter users highlighted the many insulting and offensive things the former president has said about veterans and military families in the past. They also brought up Trump’s multiple deferments to avoid combat in the Vietnam War and his description of American war dead as “losers” and “suckers."
Beatrice Nolan

Ron DeSantis has signed a bill into law that could potentially shield SpaceX and other private space companies such as Blue Origin from liability over injuries or deaths.

The bill, which relates to passengers and crew members, was sent to Governor DeSantis after it passed the Florida Senate and House with little opposition. It was previously adjusted to reflect "the evolution of spaceflight," the bill's sponsor, Republican senator Tom Wright said, per Florida Politics.

The bill was one of 27 bills DeSantis signed the day after announcing his presidential campaign during a conversation with Elon Musk via Twitter Spaces. The chaotic announcement was plagued with technical issues, which caused the Twitter app to crash repeatedly. This reportedly left Musk furious.
Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey

Mississippi sheriff’s deputies are being accused of sexually assaulting Michael Corey Jenkins in addition to forcing a gun in his mouth, and firing after nearly two hours of “torture.” Dr. Rashad Richey and Sharon Reed discuss on Indisputable. Tell us what you think in the comments below.
Story by Associated Press

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — “Don’t say gay.” Regulation of books and classroom discussion. Teachers, parents and school librarians all navigating new and uncertain ground. LGBTQ+ rights under attack. A very public spat between state government and Disney. And at the center of it all is a governor who has emerged as a rival of former President Donald Trump and now has his eyes set on the White House. This is Florida at this moment in history, in mid-2023.

For many of those who live in Florida, recent months have brought some changes — many linked to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Here, longtime Florida-based Associated Press journalist Brendan Farrington, who has covered the state’s politics since 1997, reflects on the changes for different groups and puts them into the context of the cultural and political landscape. Following is Farrington’s look at how life in Florida is changing for various people and groups.
The House voted 121-23 to suspend the attorney general and refer him to the Senate for trial on charges of bribery, abuse of office and obstruction. It was the first such impeachment since 1975.
by Zach Despart and James Barragán

Defying a last-minute appeal by former President Donald Trump, the Texas House voted overwhelmingly Saturday to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, temporarily removing him from office over allegations of misconduct that included bribery and abuse of office. The vote to adopt the 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23.

The stunning vote came two days after an investigative committee unveiled the articles — and two days before the close of a biennial legislative session that saw significant right-wing victories, including a ban on transgender health care for minors and new restrictions on public universities’ diversity efforts.
Story by James Franey, Senior U.S. Political Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Taxpayers have bankrolled so-called 'air taxis' for the U.S. government to the tune of at least $14 billion since the start of the Trump administration, open source data shows. The USA Spending website indicates officials working during the Trump presidency spent $9.4 billion on ‘non-scheduled chartered passenger air transportation.'

The figures could anger some Republican voters, who have long stressed the importance of restraint in public spending. Cabinet secretaries or members of Congress, for example, can also ask to use military planes, which do not appear in the data for security reasons, when they claim such travel is ‘mission critical.’

One senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, accused Trump administration officials of 'using the US Air Force like a taxi service.' 'There needs to be more done about the abuse of government flights,' the source said. One senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, accused Trump administration officials of 'using the US Air Force like a taxi service.' 'There needs to be more done about the abuse of government flights,' the source said.
Story by Joshua Wilburn • 6h ago

AUFO sighting over a U.S. military base in California left Marine witnesses mystified and perplexed. The incident occurred near Camp Wilson, a 998-square-mile installation at the southern tip of San Bernardino County in the Mojave Desert, the largest Marine Corps base in the world. The sighting included flashing lights and strange objects in the area, caught on film by Jeremy Corbell, the only civilian named during the historic UFO hearing on May 22, 2022.

Sue Gough, a Department of Defense spokesperson, revealed that the Pentagon's office that tracks UFOs, referred to as UAPs, or unidentified anomalous phenomena, does not have any record of this incident. Corbell and his colleague, George Knapp, reviewed the incident's pictures and videos as well as aired interviews with the unidentified Marine witnesses on their podcast. According to Corbell, people shouldn't be surprised by this activity, as events like this have occurred "for decades, not only in the United States, but all over the world."
CBS TEXAS

On Thursday, Stewart Rhodes, the founder and leader of the Oath Keepers, received an 18-year prison sentence for orchestrating an extensive conspiracy aimed at maintaining then-President Donald Trump in office following his defeat in the 2020 election.
By Robert Legare

Oath Keepers defendant Jessica Watkins — a military veteran from Ohio who founded a militia in the area —  was sentenced Friday to 8 and a half years in prison for her role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Last year, a jury convicted Watkins of numerous felony counts including obstructing Congress and interfering with police, but acquitted her of the most severe seditious conspiracy count after she admitted to much of her actions during the riot and disputed any seditious conduct from the stand.

Delivering a prewritten, emotionally raw expression of remorse in court today, Watkins told Judge Amit Mehta —  who on Thursday sentenced Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy —  that she was sorry for her actions on Jan. 6. "My actions and my behaviors that fateful day were wrong and as I now understand, criminal," Watkins said through tears, later saying she was "ashamed" of her conduct. When she testified at trial, Watkins called herself  "another idiot" inside the Capitol building, a part of the mob, and alluded to that testimony on Friday.
Story by Jack Doyle

Despite their best attempts to convince viewers that “woke culture” and “trans agendas” are the biggest threats to the country’s children, Fox News once again proves that the real danger is their own programming.

Greg Gutfeld—the host of the right-wing network’s atrocious late-night “comedy” show—recently used his platform to discuss the merits of teacher/student sexual relationships. In a segment on Tracy Vanderhulst, a high school math teacher recently arrested and charged with the statutory rape of a 16-year-old boy, Gutfeld applauded Vanderhulst’s “heroic” actions. He compared the alleged assault to the Van Halen song “Hot For Teacher,” saying that he “would have died” for the opportunity to have sex with a teacher when he was the victim’s age.
Story by Will Carless, USA TODAY

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who launched his presidential bid this week, was the subject of a USA TODAY investigation this week revealing he appointed a woman who raided the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to a state oversight board. Meanwhile, a man with a Nazi flag rammed into barriers outside the White House, while the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the Allen, Texas, shooter's neo-Nazi ideology, warning he is part of a growing trend. And what Target pulling Pride merchandise from its shelves after threats says about extremist far-right's fixation with the LGBTQ community. It's the week in extremism.

Appointing an insurrectionist?
Sandra Atkinson, a county Republican chair in Florida, can be seen in videos breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, according to a USA TODAY investigation of footage outside and inside the building, and an interview with a Republican Party colleague. Two months after the insurrection, Gov. De Santis appointed her to the Florida Board of Massage Therapy, where she would spend more than a year overseeing the profession in the state, and granting or taking away practitioners' licenses, often based on their own criminal backgrounds.
By Kaanita Iyer, CNN

CNN — Two employees of Donald Trump moved boxes of papers at Mar-a-Lago a day before the Justice Department visited the former president’s residence to collect classified documents , The Washington Post reported Thursday. The Post, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that investigators view the timing – just before FBI agents and a prosecutor visited the Florida resort to recover the documents sought as part of a subpoena – as a potential sign of obstruction.

Investigators have evidence, the newspaper reported, that the former president kept classified documents in a visible place in his office and had shown them to others. He also allegedly conducted “a ‘dress rehearsal’ for moving sensitive papers” along with his team before they were subpoenaed in May 2022, according to the report.

CNN previously reported that following the May 2022 subpoena – which the former president wanted to fight – federal prosecutors had a June meeting at Mar-a-Lago during which they were returned documents that had been found in a basement room. At the meeting, Trump lawyers turned over an envelope with 38 classified documents, according to court filings.
By JIM VERTUNO and JAKE BLEIBERG

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — After years of legal and ethical scandals swirling around Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state’s GOP-controlled House of Representatives has moved toward an impeachment vote that could quickly throw him from office.

The extraordinary and rarely used maneuver comes in the final days of the state’s legislative session and sets up a bruising political fight. It pits Paxton, who has aligned himself closely with former President Donald Trump and the state’s hard-right conservatives, against House Republican leadership, who appear to have suddenly had enough of the allegations of wrongdoing that have long dogged Texas’ top lawyer.

Paxton has said the charges are based on “hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims.” Here is how the impeachment process works in Texas, and how the 60-year-old Republican came to face the prospect of becoming just the third official to be impeached in the state’s nearly 200-year history:
Story by Aaron Johnson

Ron DeSantis recently announced he'll be running for president in the 2024 election, and he's already been accused of election violation, according to NBC News.

"Officials who work for Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration — not his campaign — have been sending text messages to Florida lobbyists soliciting political contributions for DeSantis' presidential bid, a breach of traditional norms that has raised ethical and legal questions and left many here in the state capital shocked," the report reads.

“The bottom line is that the administration appears to be keeping tabs on who is giving, and are doing it using state staff,” one Florida lobbyist said. “You are in a prisoner’s dilemma. They are going to remain in power. We all understand that.”
Story by Tony Capaccio

(Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co. refused to give the Pentagon cost data for almost 11,000 replacement parts over a year, according to a congressionally mandated report intended to shine a light on some military contractors’ opaque pricing data.

The data denials for 10,659 items under a single contract accounted for 97% of such refusals by contractors during negotiations from October 2020 through September 2021, according to a previously undisclosed Pentagon assessment submitted to House and Senate defense committees.

Boeing’s “refusal to provide basic transparency on cost and pricing information represents a breach of the company’s duty to government, taxpayers and our service members,” Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative John Garamendi, Democratic members of the Senate and House Armed Services committees, wrote in a letter to Boeing Chief Executive Officer David Calhoun dated Wednesday.
Story by kvlamis@insider.com (Kelsey Vlamis)

The Supreme Court issued a ruling Thursday that will limit the Environmental Protection Agency's ability to protect wetlands and address water pollution, with all but one conservative justice, Brett Kavanaugh, signing off on it.

The case concerned a couple in Idaho who wanted to build a home on their property, but the EPA determined the land included wetlands that were protected under the Clean Water Act, subjecting it to the agency's oversight.

All nine justices agreed that the couple's land should not have been subject to regulation, but four justices — the liberal wing and Kavanaugh — sharply disagreed with part of the majority ruling, written by Alito, that could impact what exactly counts as protected "waters of the United States."
Opinion by Pilar Melendez

Moments before being sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy in connection with the Capitol riot, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes went on an unhinged, politically charged rant—and continued to pledge fealty to the former president who landed him in prison in the first place.

“I’m a political prisoner,” Rhodes, clad in an orange prison uniform, said from the podium in D.C. federal court on Thursday. “I feel like I’m the lead character in Kafka’s The Trial.”

Rhodes was found guilty in November of seditious conspiracy and evidence tampering in connection with an insurrection that forced dozens of elected officials into hiding for hours and left several people dead. The far-right leader was convicted of the rare Civil War-era charge alongside Florida Oath Keeper leader Kelly Meggs, who is set to be sentenced on Thursday afternoon.
Ariane de Vogue
By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter

Washington CNN —  The Supreme Court on Thursday cut back on the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate wetlands under the Clean Water Act, with a 5-4 majority rolling back federal safeguards in a long-running dispute between the government and a couple who owns property in Idaho. The decision continues a trend in which the conservative-leaning court has narrowed the reach of environmental regulations, this time with Justice Amy Coney Barrett apparently providing the decisive vote for the majority.

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for himself, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Barrett concluded that the Clean Water Act extends only to those “wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are waters of the United States in their own rights.”

The decision is a victory for Chantell and Michael Sackett, who purchased a vacant lot near Idaho’s Priest Lake. Three years later they broke ground, hoping to build a family home, but soon got entangled in a regulatory dispute. As they began backfilling the property with 1,700 cubic yards of sand and gravel to create a stable grade, the EPA sent them an order halting construction.
Story by People Staff

Among the officers who moved to Florida for the program, a new report claims, at least two dozen had previously been subject to complaints, with allegations ranging from excessive force to racial profiling. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proudly championed a $13.5 million police relocation program — and according to a new report, it led to the state hiring a handful of police officers with violent records.

The program began in 2021 and was meant to incentivize law enforcement officers outside Florida to move to the state amid the COVID-19 pandemic, offering them bonuses of upwards of $5,000 to do so. In April, DeSantis announced that at least 530 officers had relocated from other states and territories to Florida due to the program. More than 1,750 new recruits, he said, had received bonuses through the program.

“I’m proud to announce that more than 1,750 new law enforcement officers have received bonuses through the Law Enforcement Recruitment Bonus Program,” DeSantis said in April, calling Florida "first in the nation in law enforcement recruitment because of our focus on back-the-blue initiatives that make our law enforcement officers feel supported by their communities."
By Samantha Delouya, Clare Duffy and Donie O'Sullivan, CNN

New York CNN — Twitter’s livestream event with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis crashed and was delayed on Wednesday as hundreds of thousands of users logged on to hear DeSantis announce his bid for the White House. Sound from the livestream event — which was held on Twitter Spaces and hosted by owner Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks — cut in and out in the first minutes after starting.

“We’ve got so many people here that we are kind of melting the servers,” Sacks said at one point. More than 500,000 Twitter users joined the event, which was ultimately ended and then restarted, delaying DeSantis’ announcement by nearly half an hour. When the event was relaunched using Sacks’ account, only around 250,000 users ultimately listened in.

Twitter has faced a variety of outages and technical issues since Musk took over the platform late last year. Shortly after acquiring the company, Musk laid off large numbers of technical and other staff and reduced Twitter’s server capacity in an effort to cut costs.
Story by Ron Dicker

Former GOP Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich suggested Wednesday that Donald Trump communicates better than Ron DeSantis ― but it didn’t come off as complimentary to many. (Watch the video below.)

“One of Trump’s great advantages is he talks at a level where third, fourth and fifth grade educations can say, ‘Oh yeah, I get that. I understand it.’” Gingrich told host Laura Ingraham on her Fox News show.

The comment drew mockery from online critics. “The fact that [Trump] speaks to the children says everything you need to know about the educational level the Right is shooting for,” one person on Twitter wrote. “I don’t see where that’s good for somebody that’s running a country. SMH,” another commented.
Story by Jeremiah Budin

Tesla employees allegedly engaged in egregious violations of customers’ privacy, according to a disturbing report released by Reuters.

What Happened?
According to Reuters, Tesla employees were able to access video footage from the cameras built into Teslas to assist in driving. They shared those videos and images in an internal company messaging system, often to mock customers.

This information was supplied to Reuters by nine ex-Tesla employees, some of whom said that they could even access footage from the cameras when the Teslas were parked in a garage and ostensibly turned off. This allowed the employees to essentially see inside customers’ homes without consent.
Story by Brian Bennett

Five months after House Republicans launched an investigation into President Biden’s son Hunter and other members of his family, they have so far failed to identify any business dealings that may have influenced his decisions as Vice President or President.

But Rep. James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee, said on Monday that his committee’s public airing of overseas business transactions by Hunter Biden and other Biden relatives was helping Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. During an interview on Fox News, Comer linked the Republicans’ investigation into Joe Biden’s relatives to Donald Trump’s poll numbers.

A Fox News anchor asked Comer, “do you think that because of your investigation, that is what’s moved this needle with the media?”
Story by Igor Derysh

Special counsel Jack Smith's team issued a subpoena for information about former President Donald Trump's foreign deals since he took office, according to The New York Times.

Smith's team overseeing the investigation into Trump's handling of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago has "cast a wider net than previously understood as they scrutinize whether he broke the law" by taking documents home from the White House and failing to comply with a subpoena for their return, according to the report.

The subpoena specifically sought details on the Trump Organization's real estate licensing and development deals in China, Saudi Araba, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Kuwait, Oman and France dating back to 2017.

PHOENIX (AP) — A judge on Monday dismissed the only remaining legal claim in Republican Kari Lake’s challenge of her loss in last year's race for Arizona governor, affirming the election of Democrat Katie Hobbs. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter A. Thompson said Lake failed to prove her claim that Maricopa County did not verify signatures on mail ballots as required by law.

Lake was among the most vocal of last year’s Republican candidates promoting former President Donald Trump’s election lies, which she made the centerpiece of her campaign. She has built a loyal following among Trump supporters and is openly considering a run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Kyrsten Sinema, an independent and former Democrat. Lake is also often mentioned as a potential vice presidential pick for Trump. While most other election deniers around the country conceded after losing their races in November, Lake did not. She has touted her legal battle in fundraising appeals and speeches around the country.
Opinion by Amanda Marcotte

On Friday night, Fox News' Laura Ingraham did something nearly unheard of on the propaganda-masquerading-as-news network: She admitted that a story Fox had been hyping was wrong.

For a week, Fox News and other right-wing outlets had been heavily hyping claims that "homeless veterans" were being forced out of a hotel in upstate New York to make room for Central American refugees. Due to diligent reporting from local reporters at the Mid Hudson News, however, the story quickly unraveled. The hotel denied the claims and had receipts to refute the right-wing narrative. By the end of the week, the Mid Hudson News had a group of homeless men ready to talk about how Sharon Toney-Finch, the source of this tale and the head of a veteran advocacy group, had recruited them to pretend they were the displaced veterans. The whole thing was a hoax.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Police have arrested a Missouri man they believe intentionally crashed a U-Haul truck into a security barrier at a park across from the White House.

The box truck's driver smashed into the barrier near the north side of Lafayette Square on Monday at around 10 p.m., Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement. He was identified as a 19-year-old from Chesterfield, a St. Louis suburb. No one was injured in the crash.
Story by By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — E. Jean Carroll, the advice columnist who won a $5 million sexual abuse and defamation award against former President Donald Trump, is seeking at least $10 million more in a court filing Monday that seeks to hold him liable for remarks he made after the verdict.

The amended lawsuit was filed in Manhattan by Carroll's lawyers, who said Trump “doubled down” on derogatory remarks about the former Elle magazine columnist during a cable television appearance a day after the verdict.

"It is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will, or spite,” they wrote of Trump's remarks at a CNN town hall. “This conduct supports a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor both to punish Trump, to deter him from engaging in further defamation, and to deter others from doing the same."
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