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Author: John Hanno
Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Bogan High School. Worked in Alaska after the earthquake. Joined U.S. Army at 17. Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army. Member of 12 different unions, including 4 different locals of the I.B.E.W. Worked for fortune 50, 100 and 200 companies as an industrial electrician, electrical/electronic technician.
Column: Aileen Cannon’s handling of Trump’s classified records case just went from bad to horrible
Harry Litman – March 20, 2024
Classified documents seized during a search of former President Trump’s Florida estate. (Associated Press)
As the judge presiding over the federal prosecution of Donald Trump for hoarding classified records at his Florida estate, Aileen Cannon has been a dubious influence from the start. She has consistently indulged Trump’s far-fetched legal arguments and overall strategy of delay.
But her latest order confirmed that Cannon has truly crossed the line into running interference for the former president who put her on the bench.
The order, issued by Cannon Monday evening, concerns one of Trump’s recurrent and baseless arguments for dismissal of the charges. His lawyers claim that the Presidential Records Act gave him the power to reclassify any and all records as “personal” and that he did so through the mere act of putting them in the bankers boxes he had spirited away to Mar-a-Lago.
This frivolous argument wouldn’t get anywhere in most federal courts. It’s a nonsensical reading of the act, which was designed to clarify that apart from a small set of personal possessions such as diaries, presidential records belong to the people rather than an outgoing president.
Moreover, the argument is beside the point. However the records Trump purloined are characterized, it remains a crime under the Espionage Act to willfully retain national defense information, which the documents at the center of this case clearly are.
Cannon’s order doesn’t address Trump’s arguments on the merits, though. Rather, it instructs each side to submit two sets of proposed jury instructions that “engage with” different legal conclusions about the records act. The problem is that both of the conclusions are directly contrary to the law.
Cannon’s first scenario supposes that a jury has to make a factual finding as to whether the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the records Trump absconded with are presidential rather than personal. In other words, what if Trump’s contention that he magically transmogrified the classified documents into his personal property were a valid factual defense rather than a meritless legal claim?
The second scenario is even wackier in that it assumes a president has unreviewable authority to categorize records as personal. If the jury were so instructed, it would be tantamount to ensuring Trump’s acquittal.
Cannon’s order isn’t just legally nonsensical. It’s also bizarre and pernicious.
It’s a completely loony way to address Trump’s motion to dismiss the case on the basis of the records law. Asking the parties to frame jury instructions based on a legal fiction — indeed, a legal fantasy — months before a jury has been selected is perfectly surreal. I have never seen a remotely similar order.
Cannon started her rocky handling of the case with a similarly inexplicable ruling permitting Trump to challenge the search warrant served at Mar-a-Lago. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in terms sharp enough to raise the prospect that another such lawless misadventure could lead to the judge’s removal from the case.
That would dramatically change the legal and political course of events. The classified records charges against Trump are so cut and dried that another judge could easily speed the case toward a likely and serious criminal conviction well before the November election.
That is where the pernicious aspect of Cannon’s order comes in. Even as the judge has entertained Trump’s quarter-baked theories and helped him eat up the clock, she has studiously avoided issuing an order that could give special counsel Jack Smith’s team an opening to appeal and seek her recusal.
Her latest order is a case in point: It floats legal conclusions that could lead to a swift reversal and force her recusal, but it requires the parties only to “engage with” these lawless suppositions, which doesn’t give an appellate court much to grab onto. In short, Cannon is making mischief in Trump’s favor while dodging appellate oversight.
The judge appeared to employ a similar gambit in her ruling last week. While she denied Trump’s meritless motion to dismiss the case on the basis that the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally vague, she left open the prospect that his lawyers could raise the issue again after a trial has commenced.
Cannon’s latest order likewise appears to set the stage for a recognition of Trump’s ridiculous legal claims down the line in jury instructions. That’s a particularly ominous prospect because at that point, a jury would have been impaneled and the double jeopardy clause would preclude retrial.
Cannon may have hit upon a strategy that gives Trump the delay he wants and then dismisses the case once a jury has been sworn in — while never exposing herself to being reined in or forced off the case by the 11th Circuit.
All of which leaves Smith facing a tricky choice. He can adhere to the letter of the judge’s order and acquiesce in potentially laying the groundwork to dismiss the case at an irremediable point. Or he can refuse to go along, risk Cannon’s ire and try to position the prosecution to appeal if she actually does something reviewable.
It’s not an easy call — especially when the umpire seems to be playing for the other team.
“I would be forced to mortgage”: Trump melts down on Truth Social as lawyers admit he can’t get bond
Trump fears he may have to “sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices”
By Igor Derysh – March 19, 2024
Former President Donald Trump speaks as the court takes a lunch break during his civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court on October 17, 2023 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Former President Donald Trump lashed out at the judge who imposed a $450+ million penalty in his New York fraud case after his lawyers admitted he was unable to secure a bond to appeal the case.
Trump’s lawyers on Monday asked a New York appeals court to stay the enforcement of the judgment in his fraud case, saying it has been impossible to secure a bond necessary to appeal the judgment after approaching 30 different underwriters.
The former president lashed out at the judge on Truth Social after the filing.
“Engoron wants me to put up the ridiculous fine (I DID NOTHING WRONG!) before I get a chance to Appeal his crazed ruling – A first!” Trump falsely wrote. New York law requires a defendant to put up the full judgment amount with interest in order to appeal a civil judgment.
“Judge Engoron actually wants me to put up Hundreds of Millions of Dollars for the Right to Appeal his ridiculous decision. In other words, he is trying to take my Appellate Rights away,” Trump falsely claimed again in another post. “Nobody has ever heard of anything like this before. I would be forced to mortgage or sell Great Assets, perhaps at Fire Sale prices, and if and when I win the Appeal, they would be gone. Does that make sense? WITCH HUNT. ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”
Trump continued to lash out at the judge in a series of more than a half-dozen posts on Monday night and Tuesday morning, claiming that his Mar-a-Lago property is worth “50 to 100 times” more than what Judge Arthur Engoron valued it at — even though the valuation was based on estimates by local officials.
Trump further lashed out at Engoron as a “Crazed, Trump Hating, Rogue Judge.”
“The Corrupt Political Hacks in New York, Judge and AG, are asking me to put up massive amounts of money before I am allowed to appeal the ridiculous decision. Never done before. No jury, no victim, full disclaimer clause, happy banks,” Trump repeated, falsely, about the New York law the requires him to put up the money to appeal.
“I shouldn’t have to put up any money, being forced by the Corrupt Judge and AG, until the end of the appeal,” he complained. “That’s the way system works!”
Bolton says Trump wants to be treated like North Korean leader: ‘Get ready’
Lauren Irwin – March 20, 2024
Former national security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday that former President Trump wants to be treated like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and people should “get ready.”
“Donald Trump wants Americans to treat him like North Koreans treat Kim Jung Un. Get ready…..” Bolton posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Bolton, who served as the national security adviser under the Trump administration, posted a viral clip of Trump speaking with Fox News’s Steve Doocy in 2018, where the former president offered praise for the North Korean leader.
“He’s the head of a country, and I mean he’s the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention,” Trump said in the clip. “I want my people to do the same.”
Bolton joins a list of former Trump officials who are warning of his return to power, just after he clinched the Republican nomination for president and will face off against President Biden in the polls this fall.
The clip of Trump speaking highly of Kim follows a meeting between the former president and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán at his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump received sharp criticism for meeting with the Hungarian leader, who said he hopes to see Trump return to the White House.
After the meeting, Trump said Orbán is a “Great Leader” who is “respected all over the World.” The former president has also favorably commented about Adolf Hitler on multiple occasions.
In the past, Trump has said that he would not be a dictator if he were reelected, “Except for day one.”
Meet the wealthy boomer Americans fleeing to Portugal, Spain, and Italy out of fear of a Donald Trump presidency: ‘This country of mine has become intolerant’
Ryan Hogg – March 20, 2024
Fortune· Gabriel Mello—Getty Images
For years, aging Americans have looked south to Florida for their ideal retirement home to escape into retirement from their four-decade grinds in the U.S. workforce.
But wealthy citizens are increasingly considering a life across the Atlantic, with an unappealing showdown between Joe Biden and Donald Trump being labeled as the reason.
‘This country of mine has become intolerant’
David, a 65-year-old lawyer from Chicago, is going to Portugal on a scouting trip next month with a $500,000 budget in the hopes of finding a new second home on the Silver Coast, between Lisbon and Porto.
The lawyer, who asked to remain anonymous, citing concerns he might be harassed, said the political climate had turned so toxic that he was driven to seek peace across the Atlantic.
As the grandson of four immigrants who landed on Ellis Island, David has become particularly perturbed by debate in the U.S. around immigration.
“This country of mine has become intolerant,” David says.
“This country has always vilified people who are not like them. So we see these pictures of people on the south of the border, and they’re just people, but both sides use them for political reasons, and that’s just one example of the absolute intolerance, and it’s sad.”
The lawyer is also moving to escape the looming threat of gun violence.
“I told my wife about 15 years ago that I had made peace with the fact that I could be shot dead at any moment in time in this country,” David said.
David is hoping to close a deal before the U.S. elections in November, because he believes that if Trump secures a second term as President, demand for homes abroad could skyrocket.
Americans rushing abroad
The lawyer isn’t just going on a scouting trip for himself next month. He and his wife intend to earmark locations and properties for five of their other friends.
David’s and his friend’s politically motivated decision to start uncoupling themselves from their home country isn’t uncommon, according to Kylie Adamec, a real estate consultant for Casa Azul who is advising David and other Americans on their moves.
“People are not caring so much about the tax situation, they’re more concerned with what’s going to happen in the United States in the next couple of months. Come November with the election, people just want to have options set up,” Adamec told Fortune.
Last week, Donald Trump and Joe Biden were confirmed as the respective Republican and Democrat nominees for the U.S. presidency in a rematch of 2020.
If this year’s battle is anything like the last one, voters can expect an incredibly toxic election battle, something Adamec’s clients are well aware of.
“From what I can see, it’s, this is a first-time thing in terms of the decision of an election really being a determining factor in whether or not someone moves abroad, be it full-time or part-time.”
Adamec says it’s a mix of American buyers looking at property options in Portugal, but they are more left-leaning.
According to Marco Permunian, you can get a good sense of political instability in the U.S. simply by observing the number of people applying for Italian passports through his company, Italian Citizenship Assistance (ICA), at any given time.
Inquiries began to spike in 2016 following Trump’s election to the White House. They did so again in 2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic and instability stoked by protests and riots following the murder of George Floyd, as well as after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.
As the U.S. gears up for a second gruesome showdown between Trump and Biden, it’s no surprise that ICA has seen inquiries triple since the end of last year.
The latest spike, though, is attributable to exhaustion on both sides of the political spectrum, Permunian says.
The majority of his clients are from the East Coast areas of New York, Pennsylvania, and Boston, but there are more dotted across the country in places like California and Texas.
He says demand for passports is often the first move for many in a long-term plan to seek a new home in Italy or elsewhere in the European Union, rather than a sign of imminent emigration.
“The majority is still not ready to move but is getting ready, just in case,” Permunian told Fortune.
The company mainly works with people between the ages of 35 and 65 who are looking for extra citizenship options.
That chimes with the latest data. The latest USA Wealth Report found a record number of Americans were looking abroad for residency and citizenship options as the political environment frayed.
Christopher Willis, managing director of citizenship and residency advisor Latitude Consultancy, is experiencing a 300% increase in client inquiries.
It means the smart money is going toward getting exit plans in place now before demand jumps further later in the year. Portugal and Spain are proving to be particularly popular European locations for Willis’s clients.
“People are not waiting for November. They’re getting their affairs in order now,” Willis says.
“So if things go sideways, they’ve already got the option to act on it as opposed to scrambling once the election is completed.”
Steven, who is also is also using a pseudonym as he is awaiting visa approval, is a New Yorker making the move to Portugal through Casa Azul. Having grown sick of New York City, he and his Brazilian wife are giving up their $3,500 rent in the Big Apple for a $2,100 per month three-bedroom home in Lisbon.
“It’s a great city if you have to still have ambition and drive,” Steven says of New York. “But if you want to downshift a little, it will just steamroll you.”
While the political climate isn’t the main reason for his move, Steven acknowledged that the U.S. political system had become “crazy.”
“Being back here is horrifying,” Steven said.
Europe’s own political toxicity
Americans escaping the U.S. in the event of a Trump presidency may find the grass isn’t necessarily greener across the pond.
Europe may appear a haven for U.S. expats tired of their polarized climate and growing threats of violence, but the continent is no longer the safe or mild-mannered haven it has been for so much of the post-World War Two era.
Trump has threatened to pull out of NATO if he is re-elected if “delinquent” European nations don’t pay an agreed 2% of their GDP towards membership in the bloc.
That leaves Europe strategically exposed, as leading figures from the Airbus CEO to European Commission chief Christine Lagarde have warned.
It is also more complicated than it once was for Americans to buy their place on the continent.
Portugal scrapped its golden visa program last year, which allowed foreigners to acquire residency and eventually citizenship in the country through the purchase of property. This set off a scramble to secure visas in the country before the scheme closed.
A higher level of investment, crucially not in real estate, is now the best option for wealthy foreigners.
There are fears that the elevation of right-wing parties into the country’s parliament could further intensify harmful rhetoric against immigrants, aping the kind of polarization that has become commonplace in the U.S.
In Italy, the ruling far-right party has made sweeping changes to the country’s cultural landscape and clamped down on immigration.
Casa Azul’s Adamec, though, said despite expecting inquiries about residency in Portugal to nosedive following the closure of the golden visa program, applications have remained steady, probably fueled by the U.S. election.
As for Europe’s own political toxicity, David isn’t feeling anywhere near as anxious as events in the U.S. have made him.
“They’re all kind of like baby Trumps, so I’m not going to worry about it,” David says of Europe’s intensifying political cauldron.
“Portugal’s always been a pretty liberal place. I’m not overly concerned.”
Ukraine’s Zelenskiy says world must make global rule of law ‘work again’
Josh Smith – March 20, 2024
Ukraine’s President Zelenskiy speaks with India’s PM Modi via phone line in Kyiv
SEOUL (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy urged world leaders on Wednesday to make a rules-based international order “work again” by standing up to Russian use of force.
In a video address to a global conference hosted by South Korea, Zelenskiy – whose country was invaded by Russia in 2022 – said many nations and regions of the world would benefit from the restoration of the international rule of law.
“Together we have to make the force that has gone mad come back to the rules, and make the rules work again,” he told the Summit for Democracy, an initiative of U.S. President Joe Biden aimed at discussing ways to stop democratic backsliding and erosion of rights and freedoms.
Zelenskiy said that for peace to prevail, the U.S. Congress – where political wrangling has held up passage of a bill that would provide $60 billion more in aid for Ukraine – must join the world in being the “co-authors of solid reliability.”
Kyiv and its Western partners have accused Russia of using false pretexts to wage an unjustified war of colonial conquest in Ukraine. Russia says it sent troops to Ukraine two years ago in a “special military operation” to ensure its own security.
Biden, a Democrat, has backed military aid to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion. Some members of Congress and former President Donald Trump, the likely Republican candidate in the U.S. presidential election in November, have opposed it.
This year’s Summit for Democracy largely focused on digital threats to elections and democracy, including AI-powered misinformation, spyware, and other technology.
Russia’s defence minister said on Wednesday that Russian troops were pushing Ukrainian forces back, and that Moscow would bolster its military by adding two new armies and 30 new formations by the end of this year.
Russia said last month its goals in Ukraine remain unchanged, including the demilitarisation and “denazification” of occupied regions, and preserving the broader security of Russia in the face of NATO encroachment.
(Reporting by Josh Smith, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
The world’s 100 worst polluted cities are in Asia — and 83 of them are in just one country
By Helen Regan, CNN – March 19, 2024
Morning walkers seen during a cold and hazy morning at Kartavya Path near India Gate on December 9, 2023 in New Delhi, India. Arvind Yadav/Hindustan Times/Getty Images
All but one of the 100 cities with the world’s worst air pollution last year were in Asia, according to a new report, with the climate crisis playing a pivotal role in bad air quality that is risking the health of billions of people worldwide.
The study looked specifically at fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, which is the tiniest pollutant but also the most dangerous. Only 9% of more than 7,800 cities analyzed globally recorded air quality that met WHO’s standard, which says average annual levels of PM2.5 should not exceed 5 micrograms per cubic meter.
“We see that in every part of our lives that air pollution has an impact,” said IQAir Global CEO Frank Hammes. “And it typically, in some of the most polluted countries, is likely shaving off anywhere between three to six years of people’s lives. And then before that will lead to many years of suffering that are entirely preventable if there’s better air quality.”
When inhaled, PM2.5 travels deep into lung tissue where it can enter the bloodstream. It comes from sources like the combustion of fossil fuels, dust storms and wildfires, and has been linked to asthma, heart and lung disease, cancer, and other respiratory illnesses, as well as cognitive impairment in children.
Begusarai, a city of half a million people in northern India’s Bihar state, was the world’s most polluted city last year with an average annual PM2.5 concentration of 118.9 — 23 times the WHO guidelines. It was followed in the IQAir rankings by the Indian cities of Guwahati, Assam; Delhi; and Mullanpur, Punjab.
Asian countries top air pollution ranking for 2023
In 2023, the average air quality in Bangladesh exceeded the World Health Organization’s (WHO) safety guidelines by nearly 16 times, making it the country with the worst air quality globally. Pakistan and India followed closely behind, with India occupying nine of the top 10 spots for the most polluted cities.
Countries where avg. PM2.5 concentration (micrograms per cubic meter) exceeded WHO guideline seven to 10 times in 2023
A bar chart showing 15 most polluted countries on average in 2023, with Bangladesh at the top. Bangladesh 79.9 – Pakistan 73.7 – India 54.4- Tajikistan 49 – Burkina Faso 46.6 – Iraq 43.8 – United Arab Emirates 43 -Nepal 42.4 – Egypt 42.4 – DR Congo 48.8 – Kuwait 39.9 – Bahrain 39.2 -Qatar 37.6 – Indonesia 37.1 – Rwanda 36.8
Note: The concentration of small air particles called PM2.5 is used to compare air quality as they are responsible for most air pollution today.
Source: IQAirGraphic: Rosa de Acosta and Krystina Shveda, CNN
Across India, 1.3 billion people, or 96% of the population, live with air quality seven times higher than WHO guidelines, according to the report.
Central and South Asia were the worst performing regions globally, home to all four of the most polluted countries last year: Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Tajikistan.
South Asia is of particular concern, with 29 of the 30 most polluted cities in India, Pakistan or Bangladesh. The report ranked the major population centers of Lahore in 5th, New Delhi in 6th and Dhaka in 24th place.
Hammes said no significant improvement in pollution levels in the region is likely without “major changes in terms of the energy infrastructure and agricultural practices.”
“What’s also worrisome in many parts of the world is that the things that are causing outdoor air pollution are also sometimes the things that are causing indoor air pollution,” he added. “So cooking with dirty fuel will create indoor exposures that could be many times what you’re seeing outdoors.”
Video Ad Feedback. This is what happens to your body when you breathe polluted air03:08 – Source: CNN
A global problem
IQAir found that 92.5% of the 7,812 locations in 134 countries, regions, and territories where it analyzed average air quality last year exceeded WHO’s PM2.5 guidelines.
Only 10 countries and territories had “healthy” air quality: Finland, Estonia, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda, Grenada, Iceland, Mauritius and French Polynesia.
Millions of people die each year from air pollution-related health issues. Air pollution from fossil fuels is killing 5.1 million people worldwide every year, according to a study published in the BMJ in November. Meanwhile, WHO says 6.7 million people die annually from the combined effects of ambient and household air pollution.
The human-caused climate crisis, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, plays a “pivotal” role in influencing air pollution levels, the IQAir report said.
The climate crisis is altering weather patterns, leading to changes in wind and rainfall, which affects the dispersion of pollutants. Climate change will only make pollution worse as extreme heat becomes more severe and frequent, it said.
The climate crisis is also leading to more severe wildfires in many regions and longer and more intense pollen seasons, both of which exacerbate health issues linked to air pollution.
“We have such a strong overlap of what’s causing our climate crisis and what’s causing air pollution,” Hammes said. “Anything that we can do to reduce air pollution will be tremendously impactful in the long term also for improving our climate gas emissions, and vice versa.”
Regional rankings
North America was badly affected by wildfires that raged in Canada from May to October last year. In May, the monthly average of air pollution in Alberta was nine times greater than the same month in 2022, the report found.
And for the first time, Canada surpassed the United States in the regional pollution rankings.
The wildfires also affected US cities such as Minneapolis and Detroit, where annual pollution averages rose by 30% to 50% compared to the previous year. The most polluted major US city in 2023 was Columbus, Ohio for the second year running. But major cities like Portland, Seattle and Los Angeles experienced significant drops in annual average pollution levels, the report said.
In Asia, however, pollution levels rebounded across much of the region.
China reversed a five-year trend of declining levels of pollution, the report found. Chinese cities used to dominate global rankings of the world’s worst air quality but a raft of clean air policies over the past decade has transformed things for the better.
A study last year had found the campaign meant the average Chinese citizen’s lifespan is now 2.2 years longer. But thick smog returned to Beijing last year, where citizens experienced a 14% increase in the annual average PM2.5 concentration, according to the IQAir report. China’s most polluted city, Hotan, was listed at 14 in the IQAir ranking.
In Southeast Asia, only the Philippines saw a drop in annual pollution levels compared to the previous year, the report found.
Indonesia was the most polluted country in the region, with a 20% increase compared to 2022. Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand all had cities that exceeded WHO PM2.5 guidelines by more than 10 times, according to the report.
Last month, Thai authorities ordered government employees to work from home due to unhealthy levels of pollution in the capital Bangkok and surrounding areas, according to Reuters. On Friday, tourism hot spot Chiang Mai was the world’s most polluted city as toxic smog brought by seasonal agricultural burning blanketed the northern city.
Inequality… and one bright spot
The report also highlighted a worrying inequality: the lack of monitoring stations in countries in Africa, South America and the Middle East, which results in a dearth of air quality data in those regions.
Although Africa saw an improvement in the number of countries included in this year’s report compared with previous years the continent largely remains the most underrepresented. According to IQAir, only 24 of 54 African countries had sufficient data available from their monitoring stations.
Seven African countries were among the new locations included in the 2023 rankings, including Burkina Faso, the world’s fifth most polluted country, and Rwanda, in 15th.
Several countries that ranked high on the most polluted list last year were not included for 2023 due to a lack of available data. They include Chad, which was the most polluted country in 2022.
“There is so much hidden air pollution still on the planet,” said Hammes.
One bright spot is increasing pressure and civic engagement from communities, NGOs, companies, and scientists to monitor air quality.
“Ultimately that’s great because it really shows governments that people do care,” Hammes said.
Kushner Pitches Moving Palestinians Out of Gaza’s ‘Valuable’ Waterfront
Edith Olmsted – March 19, 2024
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has offered his own solution to the mass bloodshed and displacement in Gaza: some good, old-fashioned real estate development.
During an interview with Tarek Masoud, the faculty chair of Harvard’s Middle East Initiative, Kushner proposed moving Palestinians to Israel’s arid desert region to “clean up” Gaza’s “valuable” waterfront.
“Gaza’s waterfront property could be very valuable to—if people would focus on building up livelihoods,” Kushner said, without clarifying who exactly would profit off such a project. He added that the area could’ve had great potential if “all the money” in Gaza had gone into “education and innovation,” instead of its tunnel network and munitions.
Kushner’s statement comes on the heels of warnings from the United Nations that the people of Gaza are facing an “imminent famine” as Israel continues its offensive.
Kushner suggested displacing the remaining Palestinians from the “valuable” waterfront, and dropping them in the Negev desert.
“I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there, I know that that won’t be the popular thing to do, but I think that that’s a better option to do, so that you can go in and finish the job,” he said. The Jewish Virtual Library describes the Negev as “oppressively hot” and “filled more with dirt, rocks and canyons, which are no less forbidding” than sand dunes.
When asked about concerns that Palestinians would be prohibited from returning to Gaza, Kushner said, “I am not sure there’s much left of Gaza at this point.”
Kushner clarified that he didn’t know if Israeli officials were seriously considering displacing Palestinians to the Negev.
“I’m sitting in Miami Beach right now, and I’m looking at the situation and I’m thinking: what would I do if I was there?” Kushner said.
When asked if Israel should allow a Palestinian state, Kushner said it was a “super bad idea” and would “essentially be rewarding an act of terror.”
The ruling rebuffed a call by Trump’s legal team to exclude the pair’s testimony. Both Daniels and Cohen have claimed that Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, was paid ahead of the 2016 presidential election to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she had with Trump.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up his reimbursing Cohen for the $130,000 hush money payment. Trump repaid Cohen in 2017 through monthly checks that were disguised as payments for legal services and falsely documented at the Trump Organization, according to prosecutors.
Former President Donald Trump, disbarred attorney Michael Cohen and adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
Judge Juan Merchan’s ruling on the testimony maps out the potential contours of the trial, which was previously slated to begin March 25 but has been delayed until at least mid-April after Trump’s legal team asked for more time to review new documents.
Merchan will instead hold a hearing March 25 to deal with what happened with the new documents and potentially set a new trial date. The trial is expected to last several weeks.
Why Trump said Cohen should be kept out
“Michael Cohen is a liar,” Trump’s legal team wrote in their request to exclude Cohen’s testimony. They said Cohen has a history of lying that ranged from minimizing his own criminal conduct to distorting his background.
The Trump team pointed specifically to Cohen’s statement at Trump’s New York civil fraud trial that he had previously lied to a federal judge when he pleaded guilty to tax evasion. Cohen said at the civil fraud trial that he engaged in “tax omission,” not tax evasion.
“The People’s desire to rush ahead with these proceedings rather than look into the ongoing criminal conduct of their star witness is troubling and violates the People’s ethical and constitutional obligations,” Trump’s team argued, referring to the DA’s office.
However, Merchan said he wasn’t aware of any perjured testimony from Cohen in the hush money case.
“Defendant provides examples of situations where Cohen’s credibility has been called into question. However, he offers no proof of perjury in the case at bar,” Merchan wrote.
Merchan said he wasn’t able to find any applicable law or court holding that blocked a prosecution witness because the witness’s credibility was previously called into question.
The 2024 Republican presumptive nominee’s hush money case will mark the first-ever criminal trial of a former president.
Why Trump said Daniels should be kept out
In trying to get Daniels’ testimony blocked, Trump’s legal team described her stories as “contrived” and “inflammatory,” and quoted her as having said, in the context of testifying, she has “been asked to kind of behave.”
Prosecutors “appear to have recognized the risks of presenting this irrelevant and untrue testimony by warning their witness,” Trump’s team said in their request to exclude her testimony.
In allowing Daniels’ testimony, Merchan said its value is “evident.”
“Locating and purchasing the information from Daniels not only completes the narrative of events that precipitated the falsification of business records but is also probative of the Defendant’s intent,” he wrote.
Merchan did grant Trump’s request to block the jury from hearing about the results of any polygraph test Daniels took.
Testimony but not video on Access Hollywood tape allowed
In a separate ruling Monday, Merchan also made several determinations about the government’s requests around evidence, including about the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump stated that he kisses women without consent.
“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful (women) — I just start kissing them,” Trump said. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.” He added, “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab them by the p—-y. You can do anything.”
Merchan said the tape “is relevant to the critical issues in this case,” noting the government’s argument that Trump and his campaign team were worried after the tape was released that it would hurt his candidacy.
“Thus, the tape helps establish Defendant’s intent and motive for making the payment to Daniels and then” trying to hide it, Merchan wrote.
Merchan said, however, that there should be a compromise to avoid undue prejudice against Trump.
“This Court rules that the proper balance lies in allowing the People to elicit testimony about a videotaped interview which surfaced on October 7, 2016, that contained comments of a sexual nature which Defendant feared could hurt his presidential aspirations,” Merchan wrote.
“However, it is not necessary that the tape itself be introduced into evidence or that it be played for the jury,” Merchan added.
Merchan said he may reconsider his ruling on the tape if Trump opens the door to more evidence about it at trial.
Merchan also said Trump won’t be allowed to offer any evidence that the Justice Department chose not to prosecute him for potential campaign finance law violations. The department’s decision didn’t prove anything for purposes of the hush money case, Merchan said.
MAGA Reps Suddenly Face an Existential Threat: Themselves
Sam Brodey, Reese Gorman – March 18, 2024
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
It would be hard to argue that Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) is guilty of the worst sin in today’s GOP—being a dreaded RINO, or “Republican In Name Only.”
The Illinois congressman endorsed Donald Trump for president and voted with him 93 percent of the time during his administration. Bost voted to throw out the electoral votes of states Joe Biden won in 2020. And Trump has even endorsed his 2024 re-election bid, saying Bost is doing a “fantastic job.”
None of it has been enough to stop a far-right challenger from casting Bost as the epitome of a RINO—forcing the incumbent into a brutal political dogfight ahead of Tuesday’s primary election.
Darren Bailey, a far-right state senator who was the GOP nominee for governor in 2022, is arguing that Illinois’ most conservative district needs the most MAGA possible representative.
On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast last week, Bailey told the former Trump strategist that Bost “will not stick his neck out like you, and like Mike Lindell, because obviously these people are career politicians, they’re concerned about the next election cycle.” Bannon, for his part, hyped up his guest’s opponent as “one of the worst, as bad as they come,” calling Bost a “mini-McCarthy” and fixating on reports that he had threatened to punch “our own” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). (On top of regularly guest-hosting the War Room podcast, Gaetz has traveled to Bost’s district to campaign for Bailey.)
With his résumé, Bost would have been all but immune to a challenge from his right in years past. Since he was elected in 2014, in fact, he’s only faced one other primary challenge—in 2018, when he won by nearly 70 points.
But 2024 is poised to be a very different election year, one in which no House Republican is safe, no matter how MAGA they may be.
At least 21 House Republican incumbents are facing primary challenges from candidates who are seriously campaigning and raising at least some funds, according to a Daily Beast review of campaign filings and other materials.
Three lawmakers have already survived, but by slim margins. In March 5 primaries, Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Steve Womack (R-AR), and Jake Ellzey (R-TX) defeated underfunded MAGA challengers, but with less than 60 percent of the vote. Womack, a critic of hardline conservatives, won by just 7 points.
In a brief interview with The Daily Beast last week, Bost lamented what he saw as the driving factors behind many of these challenger campaigns: attention and purity tests.
“What that is is all about your own ego, and that’s the problem,” Bost said. “And they find like people that think like they do, and then try to drag them up against somebody that doesn’t think like they do.”
Some of the incumbents are familiar primary targets, like Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Don Bacon (R-NE), considered among the most centrist members of the GOP conference. Some are being challenged simply because they aren’t loud or combative enough—or even if they cast a vote in favor of funding the government, which is now a punishable offense in the MAGA base.
But many are as conservative and Trump-supporting as Bost, if not more so. Rep. William Timmons (R-SC), who has a 95 percent lifetime score from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is facing an aggressive primary challenge.
Some archconservatives are being targeted because they backed Ron DeSantis for president, like Reps. Bob Good (R-VA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), while others are being challenged in part because they didn’t support Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in his bid for the House speakership last fall.
1920481347House Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. Bob Good (R-VA) speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol.Photo by Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
What nearly all of these incumbents have in common is that their opponents hail from the far-right fringes of the party. Where the incumbents are on Fox and Newsmax, the challengers are regulars on Bannon’s show, hoping to land endorsements from figures like Mike Lindell, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn.
One primary hopeful is a pro-gun YouTuber; another has based his campaign around having served prison time for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Far-right troll Laura Loomer, who came within 7 points of defeating Rep. Daniel Webster (R-FL) in 2022, is running again. Often lost in the noise from these ultra-MAGA figures is that their beloved party leader has endorsed their opponent.
That’s what’s so different about this primary cycle, say Republicans and election analysts.
“The threshold of what it takes to offend Republican primary voters has fallen lower,” said Dave Wasserman, the election expert and senior editor for U.S. House races at the Cook Political Report.
At this point, GOP strategist Ken Spain said, “many of the Republicans in the House have taken on a Trump-like persona, where you either fight to the death, or you’re simply not committed to the cause—and that’s what we’re seeing play out.”
Like in every election year, at least one of these challenges will almost certainly be successful. It’s possible many could lose, or 2024 could be a better year for incumbents than 2022, when five lost primary challenges in non-redistricting related races.
But the more important upshot of any member having to worry about a primary threat, no matter how marginal, may not be who wins—it may be how members adjust their behavior to survive.
Pointing to weak incumbent performances on March 5, Wasserman said, “the combined impact of those three outcomes will be a chilling effect on other Republican members who have been willing to speak out against Trump or vote for things that Trump doesn’t like.”
While Trump often put Republicans in a difficult position when they had to defend his near-daily controversies, he offered many of them something they desperately desired: a cheat code to avoid primary challenges.
Republicans during the Trump era were largely measured by their support of Trump. Gone were the Heritage Action or Club for Growth scores to rank a Republican’s conservatism, or the need to collect endorsements from across the GOP spectrum, or even the need to spend considerable time in the district.
Republicans, by and large, only needed Trump’s endorsement to be considered sufficiently conservative and avoid a credible threat. That fealty of Republicans to Trump further reinforced his power in the party, and further exacerbated the transformation of the party into his image.
Even with Trump out of office for three years, his influence has been constant. What has changed, however, is just the number of anti-Trump—or, really, insufficiently pro-Trump—Republicans that are left in Congress.
With just about every Republican claiming the mantle of a ‘Trump Republican,’ being ‘pro-Trump’ might not be the same prophylactic that it once was against primary challengers. (If every Republican is pro-Trump, is anyone really pro-Trump?)
Combine it all with the dearth of successful challenges in recent years—which has just increased the internal tension in the party—and there’s a pressure cooker situation developing.
After a year that unleashed unprecedented internal animosity in the House GOP, members’ increased eagerness to campaign against their own colleagues is adding yet another layer of drama in a majority already ripped apart by it.
Gaetz, naturally, is a ringleader, having stumped for primary challengers to Bost and Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX). Timmons’ challenger, meanwhile, has been endorsed by a remarkable seven colleagues.
Many Republicans, of course, would rather see these members using their campaign time and resources working to protect and expand the House GOP’s increasingly slim majority instead of trying to replace conservative colleagues with even more conservative colleagues.
On the Democratic side of the aisle, the primary fever that helped put the left-wing “Squad” into office in 2018 and 2020 has abated. The most high-profile challenges to incumbents this cycle are from the center, not the left, targeting Squad-aligned Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). Meanwhile, just two members of the party’s center and center-left wing are facing viable primaries from progressives.
Occasionally, this frustration has emanated from the top of the House GOP. During House Republicans’ annual retreat last week, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) privately—and showing real frustration—admonished members who were campaigning against each other, a source familiar with his remarks told The Daily Beast.
“I’ve asked them all to cool it,” Johnson told CNN on Sunday. “I am vehemently opposed to member-on-member action in primaries because it’s not productive… So I’m telling everyone who’s doing that to knock it off.”
In response to a question from The Daily Beast about primaries, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the fourth-ranking House Republican, declared her support for all GOP incumbents and urged members to work as a team.
“It’s a slim majority, and we need to make sure that everyone feels the support from their colleagues,” she said. “Even if you vote differently based upon your district, it’s important to know that we’ve all heard the support of our constituents to be here.”
Perhaps more than any other primary fight, the one in West Virginia’s 1st District illustrates the singular dynamics at this fraught moment within the Republican Party.
The incumbent, Rep. Carol Miller, has represented this district since 2019. Trump won it by over 40 points in 2020. Miller voted to throw out Biden’s Electoral College votes on Jan. 6 and has been a Trump ally. But in general, she has quietly gone about her business in Congress, and has cast votes to keep the government open and avoid defaults on the national debt.
Miller’s opponent is Derrick Evans, a former West Virginia state lawmaker who might be the purest expression of the MAGA id and political incentive structure on display anywhere in the country.
Now, the candidate’s feed on X is full of daily outrage bait. “White liberal women are the greatest threat to the future of our constitutional republic,” he posted recently. He has called for “arresting the people who stole the 2020 election.” He has been endorsed by QAnon favorite Michael Flynn and Trump acolyte Roger Stone. For some reason, he traveled to Delaware last Friday to give a speech about Joe Biden.
While he has dinged her for such offenses as appearing in a photo with Bill Gates, Evans has occasionally made a succinct case for his primary campaign. “My opponent,” Evans once tweeted, “is a total RINO representing an Ultra MAGA District.”
Evans has also raised real money: over $290,000 in 2023, according to his Federal Election Commission filings. (Miller has raised just over $560,000.)
In a brief interview with The Daily Beast at the House GOP retreat last week, which took place in her district, Miller demonstrated how starkly different she is from her opponent.
“My mama told me not to say anything if I can’t say anything nice,” Miller said. “I welcome people challenging me. His lack of experience is a little different to me. I’ve worked very hard the last six years. I represent my district well. I’ve listened to them, I’ve voted conservatively, and it’s been my honor to serve.” (Evans did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.)
There is another potent GOP primary dynamic adding to the 2024 chaos: incumbents who may face challenges stemming from their votes to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker last year. The furious deposed leader has taken verbal potshots at the eight GOP lawmakers who ousted him, and he and his powerful allies are moving to hamper their re-election campaigns.
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) is considered one of the top targets, along with Rep. Good in Virginia. One of the McCarthy Eight, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), is not even seeking re-election, citing a personal smear campaign against him.
In Good’s 5th Congressional District of Virginia, all the strains of GOP drama converge. The chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, it’s hard to get more conservative than Good. But he earned establishment enemies with his support for removing McCarthy—and earned enemies in the MAGA movement for his support of DeSantis for president.
His opponent is John McGuire, a Virginia state senator who has touted his support for Trump at every turn possible. Ahead of the June 18 primary, Good’s standing among primary voters is so poor that he was thrown out of a pro-Trump store in his district that had hosted an event for McGuire.
Massie, the Kentucky Republican, also was a prominent DeSantis backer, and his opponent has touted that as his No. 1 reason to dump the incumbent. But Massie has been here before; in 2020, Trump backed his primary challenger. He won easily anyway.
“This would be the third person who’s tried to run to the Trump of me, and that’s the only direction you can go where I might not be 100 percent in terms of the MAGA scorecard,” Massie told The Daily Beast.
But Massie acknowledged that not all of his colleagues have cultivated as strong a brand that lets them survive getting crosswise with Trump.
“If you’re not known in your district,” Massie said, a Trump endorsement could “cost you 10 points in your primary.”
“If somebody gets endorsed on the other side they can go up 10 points, and the other person could go down 10 points if they’re not very well defined in their district,” he said.
How Massie fares in his own state’s primary could show how acute the party’s MAGA angst really is. But he’s not sweating the challenge.
“People would rather I support the Constitution,” he said, “than any particular president.”
Supreme Court Puppetmaster Explains How Billionaires Can Push America Right
Andrew Perez – March 18, 2024
Conservative activist and Supreme Court puppetmaster Leonard Leo recently outlined his pitch for billionaires on how they can help move the United States government and society to the right.
“It’s really important that we flood the zone with cases that challenge misuse of the Constitution by the administrative state and by Congress,” Leo said in a new podcast interview, calling on the ultra-wealthy to support these litigation efforts.
“We have a great Overton window in the next couple of decades to really try to create a free society,” Leo said of the Supreme Court. “And I think we should take full advantage of it.”
The co-chair of the Federalist Society, the conservative lawyers network, Leo is best known as the man who helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative 6-3 supermajority, in his role as President Donald Trump’s judicial adviser. Leo’s dark money network, which received a historic $1.6 billion infusion in 2021, additionally helps bring cases before the high court, influence which cases the justices consider, and shape the court’s decisions. As Rolling Stone reported last month, Leo has been working to expand his network in recent months.
Leo has been at the center of the ethics questions swirling around the Supreme Court in the past year. ProPublica reported that Leo arranged Justice Samuel Alito’s seat on a private jet — paid for by a billionaire hedge-fund chief — as part of an undisclosed luxury fishing trip in Alaska in 2008. He also reportedly steered secret consulting payments to Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife.
Long averse to media attention, Leo recently taped a podcast interview with Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of surveillance company Palantir and the University of Austin, a conservative alternative college he started with journalist Bari Weiss. The discussion was first highlighted by the watchdog group Accountable.US.
In the interview, Leo spoke about his $1.6 billion dark money fund, called the Marble Freedom Trust, explaining: “We’re trying to really institute a lot of legal and social change through philanthropy.” He also offered his thoughts on how billionaires can help conservatives limit regulations, take over corporate C-suites, reshape America’s education system, and influence our culture. Leo, a devout Catholic, additionally discussed his interest in reforming religious institutions.
Leo outlined how conservatives can chip away at the administrative state by flooding the courts with legal challenges. Touting a Supreme Court ruling that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate some carbon emissions, he said that “there needs to be constraints on agencies’ interpretations of their own power,” and that “courts have a role to play in interpreting agency power and constraining them when necessary.” He added, “There are many more of those cases that are going to be brought over the next three to five years.”
In the business realm, he argued, “We need to be building pipelines of talent — pipelines of people who understand that the Constitution matters, and that the private sector and civil society matter. And that means building talent pipelines of people who can be in the C-suite and in boardrooms, because corporate America plays an enormously important role in potentially constraining government.”
He continued: “Corporate America, [the] finance world, banks — they have an enormous amount of influence over our culture and our social life. And we need to be finding ways of getting folks in the C-suites and in the boardrooms who are just tired of our woke culture.”
Leo has financed the right-wing campaign against so-called “woke capitalism,” targeting the use of ESG — environmental, social, and governance — criteria in investment decisions.
Twice in the interview, Leo talked about the need for conservatives to “build talent pipelines in the media and entertainment industry,” adding: “There are a lot of people in the entertainment world who really understand limited government and free society. And they’re not happy with the entertainment world, and they’re looking for opportunities to band together, and to be a part of new enterprises.”
Leo’s network has funded the conservative National Review Institute as well as the RealClearFoundation, a nonprofit affiliated with the political news aggregator RealClearPolitics.
Another key element in Leo’s pitch to prospective donors centered around education — both K-12 and higher education. “We need to create talent pipelines for K-12 education and for higher ed, something like you’re doing with the University of Austin,” he told Lonsdale, “so that we remind people that the purpose of higher ed, for example, is to basically build a citizenry that’s committed to the Constitution as it was originally written.”
Leo explained this means recruiting teachers and working to influence education board races, “so that we can begin to have some sanity and local education.”
He added, “The idea behind education, as [Thomas] Jefferson put it, was to create good engaged citizens. So if we teach them civics, in a way that’s understandable, and comprehensible, and appealing, the idea that limited government advances human dignity, and I really believe that, if we can, if we can have educational institutions that instill that, we’ll create a better electorate. And if we create a better electorate, I think ultimately, we’ll have a government, including an administrative state, that’s much more reflective of a free and just society.”
One group in Leo’s network, Free to Learn, has been involved in local school board elections. His network recently created a new group called the American Parents Coalition.
Lastly, Leo talked about the need to reform the clergy. “This is one that I just started thinking about, there’s the whole issue of clergy, and this is a tough one to crack,” he said, adding: “This may not be for everybody, but my own perspective is: God made us to know him, to love him, and to serve him. And I think our religious leaders need to center more on that, and less on knowing, loving, and serving ourselves, and whatever personal desires or affections we may have.”
Leo leads a separate nonprofit entity, called the Sacred Spaces Foundation, which he used to purchase a Catholic church near his summer home in Northeast Harbor, Maine, last year.
Former President Donald Trump speaks as the court takes a lunch break during his civil fraud trial at New York State Supreme Court on October 17, 2023 in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
