The Interior Department’s inspector general released a report examining the permitting process that allowed tens of thousands of Trump supporters to gather on Jan. 6, 2021.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times
Let’s clear up one thing about January 6 and the FBI. There has been much misinformation from the left when it comes to the FBI and January 6. One thing for sure. FBI had people in the crowd.
There is no way that they would not be there. It was known for weeks that this rally and protest was taking place. One thing we are not sure of is what if any did the agents play in the rally that for some turned into a protest.
Vivek Ramaswamy was pretty much on in the interview with CNN. The CNN person had no clue about what happened January 6. Remember that the MSM only goes by what parts of the videos they want their audience to see.
Farmworkers pick strawberries on the Ramos Farm outside of Watsonville in May. Xavier Mascareñas Sacramento Bee file
What did you think would happen? California farm workers make less with overtime law. A law took effect back in 2019 that put the farm workers on overtime pay. It passed in 2016. As it was phased it the idea was to have the farm workes make more money. But did it work?
A recent study showed that some of the workers were making from 100 to 200 dollars less a week. Why? Many farmworkers are not working overtime and their take-home pay has decreased as a result of employers reducing hours.
“We have an option to keep fighting for an agricultural economy in which workers are treated with dignity and have a real say,” said Antonio De Loera-Brust, communications director for UFW.
De Loera-Brust conceded the union has heard from workers who have had their hours cut, but emphasized that employers are the ones making the schedules. He also acknowledged that retailers continue to raise prices, which creates a “horrible race to the bottom” that hurts growers and workers.
Why the Supreme Court must stop State Courts from Gerrymandering. We see it in Wisconsin, New York, and Pennsylvania to name a few. Legislatures create the districts and state courts step in and set their own. The US Supreme Court needs to put a stop to this. Except for Gerrymandering the state courts need to butt out.
Now in instances where the New York Legislature removed all but two Republican districts, then yes that was proper for the courts to step in. The courts picked an independent person and fairness was achieved.
State courts controlled by one party have no business creating their own districting maps. The Constitution is plain when it says that the maps should be created by the State legislature less Gerrymandering.
Headlines making the news. Today we have a very long list of what’s happened and is happening around the world. See if any of the topics peaks your interest, and feel free to comment.
North Carolina is suing HCA Healthcareopens in a new tab or window, alleging that it breached terms of the takeover agreement with Mission Health and has “degraded” care at the former nonprofit. (STAT)
Emergency contraception useopens in a new tab or window among American women more than doubled since the morning-after pill was approved to be sold without a prescription (from 10.8% in 2006-2010 to 26.6% in 2015-2019), according to CDC data.
Stop Progressive misinformation groups.
Alex Wong / Getty Images
Winning. Congressman Johnson gets a stop misinformation amendment in the Defense Bill. It’s been a regular practice by the Biden Administration to allow Progressive groups like Newsguard and Global Disinformation Index (GDI) to control who’s allowed to advertise with the Pentagon. This new bill stops that.
The new NDAA provision expressly prohibits any advertising agency the Defense Department contracts with from using services that engage in “determinations of misinformation.”
The new law would also require the Pentagon to inform the House and Senate Armed Services committees any time the recruitment division directly contracts with NewsGuard, GDI or a similar entity.
This is crazy. New York Removes Medical Debt from Credit Reports.
New York Removes Medical Debt from Credit Reports . So how can a law like this even be legal? Unpaid medical debt will no longer appear in New York residents’ credit reports under a bill signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday.
So, if you refuse to pay your medical bills, banks and John Q Public will not know that you’re a deadbeat? Don’t get me wrong. Medical bills have put people in Bankruptcy. Still not a reason to ignore your personal responsibility.
Just because the NY governor says so, it doesn’t absolve you of your debt. If anything, it causes a false sense of security and will cause some to go into more debt. This needs to be court challenged.
(Left) Special counsel Jack Smith in Washington on Aug. 1, 2023. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images) / (Right) Former U.S. President Donald Trump. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
(Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Pool via Getty Images)
Reported by THE EPOCH TIMES
The special counsel’s office is preempting former President Donald Trump’s appeal of his case to the U.S. Supreme Court by petitioning the high court for a writ certiorari before judgment—an immediate ruling—of whether the former president can rely on his presidential immunity defense.
Special counsel Jack Smith has charged President Trump on four counts regarding his actions to challenge the 2020 election results; President Trump has filed four motions to dismiss the case. Several were rejected by U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, and the defense has since appealed the motion to dismiss based on presidential immunity to a federal appeals court.
The prosecutors are asking the Supreme Court “whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”
President Trump had asked the district court to pause proceedings pending appeal, noting that he would seek that pause from the appeals court if the district court didn’t grant it. If granted in either court, the legal strategy would certainly throw off the trial schedule.
Prosecutors are now asking the Supreme Court to issue judgment before the appeals court makes a decision.
“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy,” the special counsel’s team argued in the new filing. “The district court rejected respondent’s claims, correctly recognizing that former Presidents are not above the law and are accountable for their violations of federal criminal law while in office.”
They argue that President Trump’s legal strategy in the appellate court now jeopardizes the March 4, 2024, trial date.
“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” the prosecutors argued.
They claimed that President Trump is “profoundly mistaken” on the law and only the Supreme Court can “definitively resolve” the issues at hand. The court’s granting the writ of certiorari before judgment would “provide the expeditious resolution that this case warrants.”
he former president issued a statement describing the move as a “Hail Mary” on the prosecutor’s part, “by racing to the Supreme Court and attempting to bypass the appellate process.”
He also noted Mr. Smith’s poor record at the high court, which he stated “has not been kind to him, including by handing down a rare unanimous rebuke when the Court overturned him 8-0 in the McDonnell case,” in which Mr. Smith prosecuted former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.
President Trump reiterated his belief that the prosecution is politically motivated.
“There is absolutely no reason to rush this sham to trial except to injure President Trump and tens of millions of his supporters. President Trump will continue to fight for Justice and oppose these authoritarian tactics,” he stated.
Trial Date
The trial on March 4, one day before Super Tuesday Republican primary elections in more than a dozen states, would be the first of the four criminal cases against President Trump.
The 45th president, who has pleaded not guilty to 91 criminal counts, was also facing a May trial date in a federal criminal case in the Southern District of Florida, which is almost certainly going to be postponed as the judge is set to revisit the trial schedule in January.
In Georgia, prosecutors have pushed for an August 2024 trial start, which President Trump’s attorney has argued falls too close to the general election, likely putting jurors in the position of voting for or against him while they attempt to try the case objectively.
President Trump is also facing criminal charges in Manhattan; prosecutors originally set a March 2024 trial date, but the court is set to postpone the case around the schedules of these other criminal cases.
On top of that, President Trump faces several civil lawsuits, one with trial ongoing in New York and another two set to go to trial in mid-January.
Presidential Immunity?
On Dec. 1, a federal appeals court ruled that presidential immunity doesn’t shield President Trump from lawsuits regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach and noted that the court wouldn’t be the final authority on the issue.
In November 2022, Mr. Smith was appointed special counsel on issues related to the Capitol breach, just days after President Trump announced his candidacy. This summer, he unsealed the indictment against President Trump alleging criminal conspiracy in his actions to challenge the 2020 results, tying much of the case to Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. Circuit Judge Sri Srinivasan ruled that President Trump was acting as candidate Trump in much of what he is being sued for and that his actions weren’t official acts of a president.
“When a sitting president running for re-election speaks in a campaign ad or in accepting his political party’s nomination at the party convention, he typically speaks on matters of public concern. Yet he does so in an unofficial, private capacity as office-seeker, not an official capacity as office-holder. And actions taken in an unofficial capacity cannot qualify for official-act immunity,” he wrote, rejecting an appeal filed by President Trump, who is also facing civil lawsuits related to Jan. 6, 2021.
The judge added that the rejection of presidential immunity in this case assumes truth in the plaintiffs’ allegations against him, which will need to play out in district court.
“When these cases move forward in the district court, [President Trump] must be afforded the opportunity to develop his own facts on the immunity question if he desires to show that he took the actions alleged in the complaints in his official capacity as President rather than in his unofficial capacity as a candidate,” he wrote. “At the appropriate time, he can move for summary judgment on his claim of official-act immunity.”
The special counsel’s office argues that President Trump sought to “overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud” and that he conspired with several people outside of office to do so.
They rebutted President Trump’s presidential immunity defense by arguing that a former president doesn’t have the same immunity and that if he did, it “would be narrower than the ‘outer perimeter’ standard” afforded a sitting president.
The defense argued that President Trump has a history of taking allegations of election fraud seriously, pointing to several investigations he approved while in office, and argued that the speech about election fraud during the end of his term fell squarely within the duties of a president. The special counsel frames the situation quite differently, arguing that President Trump was aware of having legitimately lost the election when he made allegedly false claims about election fraud and “stolen” votes.
In the petition to the Supreme Court, they are also arguing that President Trump has been impeached on similar issues and that the immunity argument is “undercut” by the impeachment clause.
The special counsel has argued, and the district court affirmed, that to grant President Trump presidential immunity here would be to put him “above the law.”
If the Supreme Court agrees to issue judgment before the appeals court rules, it may throw off President Trump’s plans to stall the case past the general election.
Former President Donald Trump speaks after arriving for his civil business fraud trial in New York State Supreme Court in New York City on Dec. 7, 2023. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Pool via Getty Images)
Yes, Virginia the former President is entitled to the DOJ documents. Smith’s team is arguing that the information requested wouldn’t help the defense team and it’s only a fishing expedition. I ask, how would the prosecution know what the defense team needs? We have this from NTD.
As part of these efforts, defense counsel has requested great amounts of material from the prosecution, arguing that, by law, prosecutors must turn over any potentially exculpatory evidence to the criminal defendant. In recent court filings, the defense submitted email exchanges in arguing that the Department of Justice has refused multiple requests for evidence.
Thus, documents belonging to the FBI, U.S. Attorney’s office, DOJ, the special counsel’s office at large, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and Congressional committees are not discoverable, they argued.
Will the Supreme Court hear this case on COVID mandates? The American Freedom Law Center is petitioning the Supreme Court on behalf of four Pennsylvania citizens in reference to COVID mandates. We have this from WND.
The petition explained, “The COVID-19 pandemic created a constitutional crisis. For years, American citizens, including Petitioners, were subject to constantly changing orders that imposed burdens on fundamental freedoms in a way that our nation has never experienced in its history. The cost of these burdens is incalculable. Unfortunately, many courts did nothing, abdicating their duty to say what the law is and allowing this assault on liberty to proceed largely unchecked.”
CDC director issues false alarm. Mask up. Yes, my friends mask up or you’re going to get sick or die. At least that’s what the CDC DIRECTOR IS SPEWING. But here’s what’s on the CDC website.
At this time, there is no evidence that JN.1 presents an increased risk to public health relative to other currently circulating variants, and CDC is closely monitoring COVID-19 activity and JN.1 spread. The increase of this variant does not alter CDC’s
