Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) made news again today when he dropped his candidacy as an independent for the House, saying he didn’t want to take votes from the GOP candidate in the district. His campaign has raised $48,128, spent $76,746, and owes $781,932.
The Senate required two days to pass the foreign aid stalled in the House for two months. By 79 to 18, the Senate voted for the four House bills in one package to give aid to Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, Gaza humanitarian aid, and a package of miscellany including requiring TikTok to be divested from the Chinese company ByteDance within 30 days. Most of the bill’s contents were in the bill that the Senate passed by 70-29 in February. Earlier in the day, the Senate had voted 80-19 to forward the bill.
New, inexperienced MAGA Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) hoped to use the Ukraine aid battle to depose veteran Senate leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and become vice president candidate for Deposed Donald Trump (DDT), who is keeping wannabees dangling. Supporters of the Ukrainian aid have criticized Vance for inaccurate information, overestimating Ukraine’s needs for weapons and didn’t use classified information. McConnell allies compared Vance to Sen. Robert Taft (R-OH) who opposed the 1941 Lend-Lease Act to help Britain fight the Nazis and the formation of NATO.
DDT is telling young people that President Joe Biden wants to get rid of TikTok although U.S. investors, including DDT’s Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, want to purchase the social media. He lied that Biden wants to make “his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant.” Four years ago, DDT issued an executive order to attack TikTok which failed in Court. Yet he continued to claim that it should not exist on U.S. phones and said in July 2020, “we’re banning them from the United States.” In the House, 186 Republicans, including the entire GOP leadership, voted to take TikTok from its Chinese owner.
With the passage of the House bills, MAGA Mike Johnson (R-LA), who has been fiddling during the Ukrainian fire for his entire Speaker tenure, faces a contentious caucus. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) hopes for more support to depose Johnson and continues to rage against human rights for publicity—much like DDT. Last Friday, she declared a collection of fringe anti-LGBTQ+ activists “champions” in response to President Joe Biden’s new school protection for LGBTQ+ students under Title IX. On X, she misrepresented his ban on discrimination “on the basis of sex” as “changing the definition of ‘sex’ to mean gender identity.” The new rules are based on the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision, that laws forbidding sex-based discrimination include sexual orientation and gender identity and thus forbid discriminatory or harassing behavior towards all students, including ones who are pregnant or have terminated a pregnancy.
Greene’s support for Russian President Vladimir Putin is developing opposition from not only her colleagues but also the conservative media. Tabloid New York Post’s headline ”NYET, MOSCOW MARJORIE” topped her photograph in a Russian fur cap after she fought to block aid for Ukraine.The story states that Johnson “crushed a putsch” by Greene and other rebels. DDT’s open defense of Johnson may also show Greene, once a DDT favorite, that she is on the wrong MAGA side.
Elise Stefanik (R-NY), also wishing to be DDT’s vice president, was another vote against Ukrainian aid after opposing the invasion two years ago, calling it “an unwarranted and unjustified invasion by a gutless, bloodthirsty, authoritarian dictator.” She added:
“Vladimir Putin is a war criminal and deranged thug. We must stand with democracies under assault.”
Stefanik was the only GOP House leader to oppose the foreign aid for Ukraine but didn’t issue any statement giving her reason.
Democrats not only joined a minority of Republicans to provide aid to Ukraine but also saved the government from shutting down, reauthorized the surveillance law, passed a bipartisan compromises on tax policy that the House GOP leadership supported, and provided the military with funding in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Last spring, Democratic votes saved the U.S. economy by helping to pass the bipartisan debt ceiling solution.
A mixed bag from this week’s Supreme Court decisions:
A majority of justices rejected a challenge to Texas vote-by-mail restrictions blocking anyone other than senior citizens from automatically using this process. Republicans believe that they can only win elections by increasing difficulties to casting ballots. Forced to vote in person, younger voters face lack of transportation, long lines, trouble finding or accessing polling places, and limited time off work. The majority of the few cases of voter fraud come from Republicans.
In its next session, the Supreme Court will hear a case concerning Biden’s regulations controlling homemade “ghost guns,” those made from kits. The three-judge 5th Circuit Court panel appointed by DDT upheld a district judge in Texas who invalidated the regulations, but a 5-4 vote in the high court temporarily stayed the ruling last summer by reinstating the 2022 federal regulation requiring serial numbers on incomplete frames and components receivers. The number of ghost guns submitted to police for tracing grew from 1,600 in 2017 to 19,000 in 2021. In 2022, the DOJ seized 25,785 ghost guns in the U.S. Philadelphia sued two ghost gun manufacturers after a mass shooter killed five people, and Colorado’s ghost gun ban went into effect this year.
Can a city block homeless from camping if it doesn’t provide other accommodations? The Supreme Court heard arguments on that question on Monday with conservatives skeptical of challenge to the crackdown in Grants Pass (OR). The Eighth Amendment, barring cruel and unusual punishment, has been used to prevent these laws. Punishment in the city ordinance includes fines up to several hundred dollars every time they are found. Justice Neil Gorsuch equated laws against homeless camping to urinating or defecating in public. Chief Justice John Roberts believes that courts don’t have a role in homeless policy and questioned why “these nine people are the best people to judge and weigh those policy judgments.”
Opponents to the law argued that cities already have the power to regulate encampments without driving the homeless out of these cities. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked if the city could “execute homeless people” if they couldn’t use the Eighth Amendment. The 9th Circuit Court ruled 2-1 that Grants Pass cannot “enforce its anti-camping ordinances against homeless persons for the mere act of sleeping outside with rudimentary protection from the elements, or for sleeping in their car at night, when there is no other place in the city for them to go.” In 2018, the same court, covering nine western states, made that ruling in Martin v. Boise.
The Supreme Court decision concerns the 650,000 homeless people in the U.S. Housing experts agree that civil and criminal penalties are counterproductive, but governments use them to satisfy critics of homelessness without addressing its causes, one of them lack of affordable housing. City officials argue that their policies are intended to encourage homeless people to seek housing although the city has no shelter. The U.S. has a demand for an additional 7.3 million affordable rental units, and 22.4 million spend more of their incomes on homes than deemed financially prudent. The median price for a one-bedroom apartment in Grants Pass is $1,250 a month, but the median per capita income is $30,649. The average person spends half of their income before taxes on rent. Grants Pass has one Christian-run overnight shelter for adults with 100 beds, and people must attend daily religious services. Pets, including service animals, are prohibited. Grants Pass has 600 homeless people.
On Tuesday, the high court seemed to support Starbucks for firing seven union activists, creating difficulty in a rapid halt to labor practices challenged as unfair under federal law. The National Labor Relations Board had ordered the workers’ reinstatement. Starbucks has opposed employee unionizing for several years.
The high court rejected an appeal from Arizona’s U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake to ban the use of electronic vote-counting machines in the state after she lost the 2022 gubernatorial election. Lake had no reason for her request, and a federal judge had sanctioned Lake’s attorneys for filing a “frivolous” and deceptive complaint. No justices dissented. After the ruling, Lake accused Hillary Clinton of wanting to assassinate her and said that “many of her friends … mysteriously died or committed suicide.”
DDT Trial Days 5-6: Judge Juan Merchan ruled that prosecutors can cross-examine DDT about his lies in two civil lawsuits—the sexual assault and defamation of E. Jean Carroll and the business fraud case—if he decides to testify. The judge also stated he opposes “jury nullification,” directing the jury to convict DDT if they find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. After opening statements on both sides of the criminal business fraud case and 20 minutes of testimony from David Pecker, former CEO of the tabloid company American Media, the court closed early
In opening statements the prosecution stated that DDT knowingly lied and broke state laws “to undermine the integrity of a presidential election.” The defense attorney said “trying to influence an election” isn’t wrong. “It’s called democracy.” He also said he will call DDT “president.”
Pecker continued his testimony on Tuesday. High points:
Pecker’s meetings with DDT and DDT’s personal lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen to plan coverups for DDT’s affairs with women and “catch-and-kill,” paying for stories and then not publishing them. Two of them were $30,000 to Trump Tower doorman Dino Sajudin about DDT’s fathering a child with a maid who worked in the building and $150,000 to Karen McDougal about her alleged affair with DDT. Stormy Daniels received a flat payment of $130,000.
DDT’s failure to pay Pecker for McDougal’s $150,000.
DDT’s personal review and approval of invoices and other financial documents despite his claim that he delegated everything to Cohen.
An increase in meetings with DDT to sometimes over once a week after he became a candidate in 2015.
Pecker’s promise to DDT that he would publish lies in the National Inquirer about his opponents such as the involvement of Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) father being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Pecker’s testimony is important to the DA’s case changing misdemeanor charges for business records falsification to felonies in conspiring to promote an electoral campaign through unlawful means.
In the hearing about DDT’s violation of his gag order, Merchan appeared skeptical about arguments from DDT’s lawyers that he should not be held in contempt about his multiple violates of a gag order. Merchan postponed a decision on a $10,000 fine for attacking expected trial witnesses but told the lawyer that he wad “losing all credibility with the court.” The lawyer had tried to excuse DDT by saying that he was responding to political attacks and reposting Jesse Watters’ posts. Merchan pointed out that DDT had made his own additions to the post and put quotation marks around it. The Secret Service is meeting to determine how to handle its protection if DDT goes to jail.
The trial continues on Thursday.
Melania broke her silence during her husband’s criminal trial by advertising a $245 gold-plated necklace for Mother’s Day with the engraving “Love & Gratitude.”
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