Sunday, Jun 30th
Last update07:49:10 AM GMT
Political Glance
New York's Appellate Division has upheld Judge Juan Merchan's decision not to recuse himself from former President Trump's hush money case.
Trump's defense team had sought Merchan's recusal based on his daughter's work for a consulting firm with Democratic clients.
A panel of appellate judges ruled that Trump failed to prove the judge overstepped his authority by denying a defense motion for recusal.
Powerful Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into an alleged quid pro quo offer from Donald Trump to fossil fuel executives.
At a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago home and club last month, the former president reportedly told oil bosses he would immediately roll back dozens of environmental regulations if elected, and requested $1bn in contributions to his presidential campaign. It would be a “deal” for the executives because of the costs they would avoid under him, he reportedly said.
On Thursday morning, the chairmen of two Senate committees each sent letters to eight oil companies and top fossil fuel trade group the American Petroleum Institute.
The letters from Sheldon Whitehouse, the Senate budget committee chairman, and Ron Wyden, the Senate finance committee chair, accused the companies of engaging in a quid pro quo with Trump and requested additional details about the meeting.
The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, is reeling from a sudden staff exodus as he struggles to keep his position and the GOP’s tiny majority in the run-up to November’s elections.
In the latest in a spate of resignations, Johnson’s well-connected communications director, Raj Shah, a former White House deputy press secretary under Donald Trump, has confirmed he is leaving, Axios reported. He is expected to depart by the end of the summer.
News of his impending departure comes a day after it was announced that three top policy staff members, Brittan Specht, Jason Yaworske and Preston Hill, had quit and would leave by the end of May.
All three worked for the previous speaker, Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted in an internal party coup last October, but were retained by Johnson when he ascended to the speaker’s chair.
With the Senate’s confirmation of Angela Martinez to a U.S. district court in Arizona, Biden surpassed the number of lifetime federal judges that Donald Trump had confirmed by the same point in his presidency. Trump, who made judicial confirmations a major focus of his presidency, was at 196 at this point in his presidency.
It is the diversity of Biden’s judges, though, that really jumps out. He has put more women, people of color, LGBTQ+ people and professionally diverse people into lifetime federal judgeships than any of his predecessors, and in some cases, more than any of them combined.
Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, addressed Trump’s controversial behavior in a video released Tuesday that shows him watching a clip of Trump repeating criticism he has made of Jewish people who support President Joe Biden.
“If Jewish people are going to vote for Joe Biden, they have to have their head examined,” Trump can be heard saying in the video.
Emhoff, who is the first Jewish spouse of an American president or vice president, called out Trump’s language and dubious personal connections while challenging his remark.
Another flag − not an upside one, but a flag that said "Appeal to Heaven'' − carried by some of the people who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, flew over a home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito last summer, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
The second flag, which the report said is a symbol for a religious strand of the “Stop the Steal” campaign, was raised over Alito's New Jersey vacation home in July and September of 2023.
The Times previously reported that an upside-down American flag flew over the justices Virginia home in January of 2021.
Alito told the Times his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, raised the inverted flag in response to a dispute with a neighbor and he “had no involvement whatsoever."
The Times said Alito declined to respond to questions about the beach house flag.
A spokesperson for the Supreme Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY to the latest report.
Supreme Court justices are supposed to avoid politics.
Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney overseeing Georgia’s expansive criminal case against Donald Trump and his allies for attempting to overturn the 2020 election, has won her Democratic primary bid for re-election with nearly 90% of the vote.
Willis and Judge Scott McAfee – who won his primary election on Tuesday – are central figures in the prosecution against the former president and associates in his orbit accused of conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Willis will now face Republican lawyer Courtney Kramer in November. With her high name recognition, the advantages of incumbency and a hefty fundraising haul, Willis’s victory in the primary was not terribly surprising.
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