OAN, a conservative news network, issued a retraction and apology to former attorney Michael Cohen after falsely reporting he had a six-month affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels. In a statement on Monday, OAN made it clear that no one should rely on the outlet's reporting about Cohen's alleged affair. The outlet said it had used a source supposedly in contact with disgraced attorney Michael Avenatti, who subsequently denied that he ever made such claims. "The so-called whistleblower, Mr. Avenatti, has denied making the allegations. OAN apologizes to Mr. Cohen for any harm the publication may have caused him," the statement said.
Louisiana Republicans say yes to child labor, nix lunch breaks for kids The Pelican State joins Texas and Florida in a vile race to the bottom to see who can stick it to workers the worst. Last week, the Republican-dominated state House of Representatives in Louisiana voted 61-37 to repeal a law requiring employers to provide a 20-minute meal break to any minor who works more than five hours, or pay a $500 penalty. You read that correctly. Republicans bravely stood up and voted to do away with lunch breaks for kids. The enterprising Republican solution to proliferating labor violations is to simply repeal as many child-labor protections as they can get their hands on. No child-labor law, no child-labor violation! FaMiLy VaLuEs, y'all.
Florida "callously" strips healthcare from thousands of children despite new law Florida Republicans, not to be outdone by their Louisiana counterparts, have ignored new federal legislation and disenrolled 22,500 children from Florida KidCare, the state's version of the government-subsidized Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for families with earnings just above the threshold for Medicaid, since the beginning of 2024. It's good to know Gov. DeSantis is getting back to doing what he's always done best — targeting thousands of marginalized children in defiance of federal laws intended to protect them.
Delay, delay, delay It now seems likely that Donald Trump will be able to run for president this year without having faced any legal penalties for his effort to overturn the last presidential election. To many of his supporters, of course, this outcome is just. But it is also striking. Most Americans believe that Trump committed serious crimes, polls show. He chose not to order the authorities to stop a violent attack on the Capitol, even when his vice president was in danger. And he directed state election officials to “find” him votes. Even so, Congress did not sanction him, and neither of the criminal trials related to his actions may even start before the 2024 election. In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain how this happened, by focusing on the three crucial groups of people: Republican senators, Democratic (or Democrat-appointed) prosecutors and Republican appointees on the Supreme Court. Spoiler 1. Republican senators The simplest path for addressing Trump’s attempts to overthrow an election was always in Congress. Congress has the power to impeach officials and bar them from holding office again, and it has used this power before. Most criminal convictions, by contrast, do not prevent somebody from holding office. In early 2021, Congress seemed to be on the verge of barring Trump. The House impeached him, with 10 Republicans joining every Democrat in voting to do so. In the Senate, convicting him would have required at least 17 Republicans. That seemed plausible. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, signaled that he supported impeachment. As people close to him told The Times, McConnell believed that the process would make it easier to purge Mr. Trump from the party. Other Republican senators sent similar signals. Ultimately, though, they backed down. Trump remained popular with Republican voters, and many senators feared confronting him. McConnell played the central role. He delayed the trial until after Trump left office — and some senators then justified their acquittal votes by saying Trump was no longer president. Seven Republicans, a mix of moderates and conservatives, did vote to convict: Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Others who were witheringly critical of Trump in private — like Roy Blunt of Missouri and Rob Portman of Ohio — voted to acquit, making it possible for Trump to become the Republican nominee this year. 2. Democratic prosecutors After the Senate acquitted Trump, the next focus became the criminal investigations of his postelection actions. But these investigations moved slowly. At the Justice Department, Attorney General Merrick Garland and his deputy, Lisa Monaco, worried that an indictment of Trump would appear partisan and told aides to proceed with extreme caution. Their caution was reminiscent of Robert Mueller’s decision as special counsel in 2019 not to announce a conclusion about whether Trump had broken the law during his 2016 campaign — even after Mueller presented such evidence. In both cases, top prosecutors were hoping to remain above the political fray. To some Justice Department officials working for Garland and Monaco, this was an impossible goal in today’s political atmosphere. As The Washington Post put it: “Some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him.” The F.B.I. did not open a probe into election interference for more than a year, and the Justice Department did not charge Trump until August 2023. The investigation, as The Times described, was methodical, slow and at times dysfunctional. The one state prosecution for election interference, in Georgia, has also been chaotic. Last year, Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, filed a sprawling indictment involving 18 defendants, which made a speedy trial impossible. Willis also assigned the case to a lawyer she was secretly dating, causing further delays. 3. Republican justices Even with the Justice Department’s go-slow approach, Trump’s federal trial for election interference had a chance to finish before Election Day, but the Supreme Court intervened. It did so in a way that caused several delays. First, the justices declined to hear Trump’s appeal — in which he claimed that presidents are immune from prosecution — on the expedited schedule that Jack Smith, the Justice Department’s special counsel, requested. Then the justices did agree to hear the case. And during oral arguments last week, the Republican-appointed majority suggested it would issue a broad ruling setting a new precedent, which could take months. On their own, each of these decisions can be defended. The overall approach, however, is very different from the one the court took in 2000 during Bush v. Gore. Then, the justices acted urgently, recognizing the political calendar, and said that their decision was a narrow one, applying only to a single election. This time, as Justice Neil Gorsuch put it, they seek a ruling “for the ages.” Critics have pointed out that in both 2000 and 2024, Republican-appointed justices chose an approach that benefited the Republican presidential nominee. A fast, narrow ruling in 2000 stopped the vote count in Florida and let George W. Bush take office. A slow, broad ruling in 2024 may push the start of Trump’s federal trial past Election Day. All these decisions — by senators, prosecutors and justices — have played into Trump’s central legal strategy: delay. It’s a strategy he used to fight investigations during his business career, and it seems to have worked again in this campaign. And in New York: The one trial that has moved ahead — involving Trump’s payment of hush money in 2016 — resumes on Tuesday. Related: Trump’s trial could bring consequences for his words. That’s a rarity, Maggie Haberman and Jonah Bromwich write.
so go fucking make babies, stop forcing everyone else to, and quit bitching that everyone is sending their babies here.
ole Merrick is the democrats' version of Paul Von Hindenburg, without doing shit at Tannnenberg or Chamberlin without having the common decency to step down and swiftly die of prostate cancer
I was watching the Max doc on the Oklahoma City bombing last night and Garland was who prosecuted McVeigh. So apparently he is capable of bringing charges against domestic terrorists.
"If you tax us, the economy will collapse!" rich people say. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bi...-could-have-major-economic-impact-experts-say
At what point will people like Medhi realize that 40% of the American electorate would gladly take fascism if it punishes the people they don't like?
Thank you. Contemnor was not a word I knew before today. Autocorrect doesn’t like it, but I’m still going to try and find a way to shoehorn it into a conversation.
Well, this page has been pretty bleak reading so far. Good grief. Maybe one day Trump willl tell us what he's really thinking.
Now that’s he’s pushed a judge to plainly say that this is the last warning, will Trump see a time in jail as a worthy campaign visual?
They need to throw him in jail for doing crimes. Otherwise all of this hand wringing about institutions is nonsense.
I think it’s a good thing, it breaks the seal and does a trial run for Secret Service to oversee him in custody. Future violations and contempts of court and shit can stop teasing around the edge of this unprecedented action and start holding him accountable (lol, I know).