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US loses to Sweden on penalty kicks in earliest Women’s World Cup exit ever
By ANNE M. PETERSON
Updated 7:49 AM CDT, August 6, 2023
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The United States played its best game of this Women’s World Cup and it’s wasn’t good enough to stop the two-time reigning champions from being eliminated from the tournament.
The Americans’ bid to win an unprecedented third consecutive title ended Sunday night on penalty kicks when Lina Hurtig converted and Sweden knocked the United States out of the World Cup 5-4 after a scoreless draw.
It is the earliest exit in tournament history for the United States, four-time winners of the World Cup.
“Just devastated. It feels like a bad dream,” said captain Alex Morgan. “The team put everything out there tonight, I feel like we dominated, but it doesn’t matter. We’re going home and it’s the highs and lows of the sport of soccer. So, yeah, it doesn’t feel great.”
U.S. goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher fruitlessly argued she had saved Hurtig’s attempt, but it was ruled over the line. The stadium played Abba’s “Dancing Queen” in the stadium as the Swedes celebrated.
“We just lost the World Cup by a millimeter. That’s tough,” said Naeher, who successfully converted her own penalty kick. “I am proud of the fight of the team. We knew we hadn’t done our best in the group stage and we wanted a complete team performance and the team came out and played great.”
She praised Sweden goalkeeper Zecira Musovic, who had 11 saves to eliminate the United States in the Round of 16 for the first time in team history. The American’s worst finish had been third place, three times.
“We didn’t put anything in the back of the net,” sobbed Julie Ertz after the loss. “The penalties were tough. It’s just emotional because it’s probably my last game ever. It’s just tough. It’s an emotional time. It obviously sucks. Penalties are the worst.”
The loss was somewhat expected based on the Americans’ listless play through three group stage matches. But they played their best game of this World Cup against Sweden, only to have it decided by penalties.
Megan Rapinoe, Sophia Smith and Kelly O’Hara all missed penalty kicks that could have given the United States the win.
“I am proud of the women on the field,” said U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski. “I know we were criticized for the way we played, and for different moments in the group stage. I think we came out today and showed the grit, the resilience, the fight. The bravery showed we did everything we could to win the game. And, unfortunately, soccer can be cruel sometimes.”
It was the first match at this World Cup to go to extra time.
It was the was the fourth time the Americans went to extra time at the World Cup. All three previous matches went to penalties, including the 2011 final won by Japan. The U.S. won on penalties in a 2011 quarterfinal match against Brazil, and in the 1999 final at the final at the Rose Bowl against China.
Sweden knocked the United States out of the 2016 Olympics in the quarterfinals on penalties.
Sweden goes on to the quarterfinals to play Japan, the 2011 World Cup winner, which defeated Norway 3-1 on Saturday night.
Sweden has never won a major international tournament, either the World Cup or the Olympics. The closest the team has come is World Cup runner-up in 2003. They finished in third in the 1999, 2011 and 2019 editions, and won silver medals in the last two Olympics.
The result ended the international career of Rapinoe, the Golden Boot winner of the 2019 tournament who is retiring after the World Cup. She had taken on a smaller role for the Americans in her final tournament and was a substitute in the United States’ first and third games of group play, and didn’t get off the bench in the middle match.
She came on in extra time against Sweden and in her final game and few minutes of action, she failed to control a ball played in deep, whiffed on a rebound, hit the side of the net with a corner and then missed the penalty that would have won the game for the United States.
The Americans struggled through group play with just four goals in three matches. They were nearly eliminated last Tuesday by first-timers Portugal, but eked out a 0-0 draw to fall to second in their group for just the second time at a World Cup.
The Americans looked far better against Sweden, dominating possession and outshooting the Swedes 5-1 in the first half alone. Lindsey Horan’s first-half header hit the crossbar and a second-half blast was saved by goalkeeper Musovic, who had six saves in regulation.
Sweden won all three of their group games, including a 5-0 rout of Italy in its final group match. Coach Peter Gerhardsson made nine lineup changes for the match, resting his starters in anticipation of the United States.
It was tense from the opening whistle.
Naeher punched the ball away from a crowded goal on an early Sweden corner kick. Three of the Swedes’ goals against Italy came on set pieces.
Trinity Rodman’s shot from distance in the 18th minute was easily caught by Musovic, who stopped another chance by Rodman in the 27th.
Horan’s header off Andi Sullivan’s corner in the 34th hit the crossbar and skipped over the goal. Horan was on target in the 53rd minute but Musovic dove to push it wide. Horan crouched to the field in frustration while Musovic was swarmed by her teammates.
The United States was without Rose Lavelle, who picked up her second yellow card of the tournament in the group stage finale against Portugal and has to sit out against Sweden.
In Lavelle’s absence, Andonovski started Emily Sonnett, who was making her first start for the team since 2022. The addition of Sonnett allowed Horan to move up higher in the midfield.
Sweden pressed in the final 10 minutes of regulation. Sofia Jakobsson, who came in as a substitute in the 81st minute, nearly scored in the 85th but Naeher managed to catch it for her first save of the tournamen
https://apnews.com/article/womens-world-cup-sweden-united-states-penalty-kicks-d9e30c1d4cbe185aaf015b2e7915261e
US loses to Sweden on penalty kicks in earliest Women’s World Cup exit ever
By ANNE M. PETERSON
Updated 7:49 AM CDT, August 6, 2023
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The United States played its best game of this Women’s World Cup and it’s wasn’t good enough to stop the two-time reigning champions from being eliminated from the tournament.
The Americans’ bid to win an unprecedented third consecutive title ended Sunday night on penalty kicks when Lina Hurtig converted and Sweden knocked the United States out of the World Cup 5-4 after a scoreless draw.
It is the earliest exit in tournament history for the United States, four-time winners of the World Cup.
“Just devastated. It feels like a bad dream,” said captain Alex Morgan. “The team put everything out there tonight, I feel like we dominated, but it doesn’t matter. We’re going home and it’s the highs and lows of the sport of soccer. So, yeah, it doesn’t feel great.”
U.S. goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher fruitlessly argued she had saved Hurtig’s attempt, but it was ruled over the line. The stadium played Abba’s “Dancing Queen” in the stadium as the Swedes celebrated.
“We just lost the World Cup by a millimeter. That’s tough,” said Naeher, who successfully converted her own penalty kick. “I am proud of the fight of the team. We knew we hadn’t done our best in the group stage and we wanted a complete team performance and the team came out and played great.”
She praised Sweden goalkeeper Zecira Musovic, who had 11 saves to eliminate the United States in the Round of 16 for the first time in team history. The American’s worst finish had been third place, three times.
“We didn’t put anything in the back of the net,” sobbed Julie Ertz after the loss. “The penalties were tough. It’s just emotional because it’s probably my last game ever. It’s just tough. It’s an emotional time. It obviously sucks. Penalties are the worst.”
The loss was somewhat expected based on the Americans’ listless play through three group stage matches. But they played their best game of this World Cup against Sweden, only to have it decided by penalties.
Megan Rapinoe, Sophia Smith and Kelly O’Hara all missed penalty kicks that could have given the United States the win.
“I am proud of the women on the field,” said U.S. coach Vlatko Andonovski. “I know we were criticized for the way we played, and for different moments in the group stage. I think we came out today and showed the grit, the resilience, the fight. The bravery showed we did everything we could to win the game. And, unfortunately, soccer can be cruel sometimes.”
It was the first match at this World Cup to go to extra time.
It was the was the fourth time the Americans went to extra time at the World Cup. All three previous matches went to penalties, including the 2011 final won by Japan. The U.S. won on penalties in a 2011 quarterfinal match against Brazil, and in the 1999 final at the final at the Rose Bowl against China.
Sweden knocked the United States out of the 2016 Olympics in the quarterfinals on penalties.
Sweden goes on to the quarterfinals to play Japan, the 2011 World Cup winner, which defeated Norway 3-1 on Saturday night.
Sweden has never won a major international tournament, either the World Cup or the Olympics. The closest the team has come is World Cup runner-up in 2003. They finished in third in the 1999, 2011 and 2019 editions, and won silver medals in the last two Olympics.
The result ended the international career of Rapinoe, the Golden Boot winner of the 2019 tournament who is retiring after the World Cup. She had taken on a smaller role for the Americans in her final tournament and was a substitute in the United States’ first and third games of group play, and didn’t get off the bench in the middle match.
She came on in extra time against Sweden and in her final game and few minutes of action, she failed to control a ball played in deep, whiffed on a rebound, hit the side of the net with a corner and then missed the penalty that would have won the game for the United States.
The Americans struggled through group play with just four goals in three matches. They were nearly eliminated last Tuesday by first-timers Portugal, but eked out a 0-0 draw to fall to second in their group for just the second time at a World Cup.
The Americans looked far better against Sweden, dominating possession and outshooting the Swedes 5-1 in the first half alone. Lindsey Horan’s first-half header hit the crossbar and a second-half blast was saved by goalkeeper Musovic, who had six saves in regulation.
Sweden won all three of their group games, including a 5-0 rout of Italy in its final group match. Coach Peter Gerhardsson made nine lineup changes for the match, resting his starters in anticipation of the United States.
It was tense from the opening whistle.
Naeher punched the ball away from a crowded goal on an early Sweden corner kick. Three of the Swedes’ goals against Italy came on set pieces.
Trinity Rodman’s shot from distance in the 18th minute was easily caught by Musovic, who stopped another chance by Rodman in the 27th.
Horan’s header off Andi Sullivan’s corner in the 34th hit the crossbar and skipped over the goal. Horan was on target in the 53rd minute but Musovic dove to push it wide. Horan crouched to the field in frustration while Musovic was swarmed by her teammates.
The United States was without Rose Lavelle, who picked up her second yellow card of the tournament in the group stage finale against Portugal and has to sit out against Sweden.
In Lavelle’s absence, Andonovski started Emily Sonnett, who was making her first start for the team since 2022. The addition of Sonnett allowed Horan to move up higher in the midfield.
Sweden pressed in the final 10 minutes of regulation. Sofia Jakobsson, who came in as a substitute in the 81st minute, nearly scored in the 85th but Naeher managed to catch it for her first save of the tournamen
https://apnews.com/article/womens-world-cup-sweden-united-states-penalty-kicks-d9e30c1d4cbe185aaf015b2e7915261e
05.16.23 --Extending Trump Tax Cuts Would Add $3.5 Trillion to the Deficit, According to CBO
New report finds Republicans’ giveaways to the wealthy and large corporations are significantly more costly than previously estimated
ChairmanChairman's NewsroomChairman Press
Washington, D.C.—According to a report released today by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), extending the Trump tax cuts would add $3.5 trillion to the deficit through 2033.
Written at the urging of Senator Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Senator Wyden (D-OR), Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, the new report finds the Republicans’ policy priority is a half a trilliondollars more costly than previously estimated. House Republicans’ legislation to make permanent the Trump tax cuts—and blow up the federal deficit—comes at the same time they are holding the federal debt limit hostage to extract disastrous spending cuts to programs and services like veterans’ support, opioid treatment, law enforcement, and affordable energy.
The new report comes the day before a Senate Budget Committee hearing on how the Bush and Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations have driven recent and projected federal deficits.
They have been the largest driver of deficits over the past two decades and account for 57% of the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio since 2001.
“MAGA Republicans don’t give a damn about the deficit, and today’s estimate of the cost of kickbacks for their friends and donors is further proof,” said Senator Whitehouse. “Republicans racked up the national debt by giving tax breaks to their billionaire buddies, and now they want everyone else to pay for them. It is one of life’s great enigmas that Republicans can keep a straight face while they simultaneously cite the deficit to extort massive spending cuts to critical programs and support a bill that would blow up deficits to extend trillions in tax cuts for the people who need them the least.”
“Three and a half trillion dollars is an eye-popping long-term price tag for the Trump tax law that Republicans swore up and down would pay for itself,” Wyden said. “Republicans who say they’re worried about the deficit have brought our economy on the brink of default, and yet they want to run up the debt by locking in the Trump tax law that remains horribly skewed toward corporations and the wealthy. The Republican game plan is clear. For every penny they give in tax handouts to the rich, down the road they’re going to demand equivalent cuts that boot people off their health care, increase child hunger, and raise the cost of living for typical Americans.”
According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, extending the Trump tax cuts would create a windfall for the top 5 percent of income earners, who would receive nearly 40 percent of the benefits in the first year alone, making this legislation one of the most regressive and expensive tax giveaways in history. The average taxpayer in the top 1 percent would save nearly $26,000 in just that first year.
CBO’s previous cost estimate for extending the Trump tax cuts was $3 trillion through 2032, but the 10-year budget window now includes more years post-expiration. The new estimate is part of a larger report analyzing alternative assumptions about spending and revenues. It also includes a projection that permanently extending the enhancements made to the Affordable Care Act’s premium tax credits—originally enacted in 2021’s American Rescue Plan Act and extended through 2025 by 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act—would cost $300 billion, a fraction of the cost of extending the Trump tax cuts.
https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/extending-trump-tax-cuts-would-add-35-trillion-to-the-deficit-according-to-cbo
Trump's defense in 2020 election case could conjure ghost of Nixon once more
August 5, 2023 5:00 AM ET
Ron Elving
The cases against Trump and Nixon raised crucial constitutional questions about how far could a president go to stay in office if convinced his reelection was crucial to the nation, Ron Elving writes.
Getty Images/File
The multiple criminal charges against former President Donald Trump are often described as unprecedented, and so they are. But Trump is not the first president to be named in a criminal indictment.
That distinction, such as it is, belongs to Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, still in office in March 1974 when a specially appointed prosecutor named Leon Jaworski indicted Nixon aides and advisers for their roles in the Watergate scandal. They were all the president's men, but Nixon himself was named as an "unindicted co-conspirator."
That phrase was back in the news this week when Trump's latest indictment also identified (but did not name) six unindicted co-conspirators. Some of those individuals might still be charged in the ongoing prosecution, which alleges Trump led a multi-faceted effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election that he lost
This is far from the first time the common elements of Trump's case and Nixon's have come into view. Nixon was the subject of lengthy congressional hearings in 1973 and an impeachment process in 1974 that ended only because he resigned from office. For his part, Trump was impeached twice, with the Senate acquitting him both times for want of a two-thirds majority.
Half a century apart in time, the cases against both men raised crucial constitutional questions about authority within the three branches of the federal government — questions about the legal culpability of presidents and the limits on their individual power.
How far could a president go to stay in office if convinced his reelection was crucial to the nation? And what would be his legal liability for the actions he chose to take?
And most important of all is the haunting question of how much stress the fragile structure of a democracy can stand.
The Nixon episode had a huge impact in its day, but when he left Washington he largely left the public eye. The Trump trajectory is still drawing its arc. He currently dominates the polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and has vowed to press on, whatever happens in the courts. Even from prison, he says.
That would mean the current, elevated levels of stress on the system – stress evident in many facets of everyday life in America – will only rise higher in the months (and possibly years) ahead.
The Nixon-Trump parallels
Both Nixon and Trump, in pursuit of a second term in office, took it upon themselves to find means to ensure their success – even it meant going beyond the usual processes of a campaign and an election.
In Nixon's case, he directed a cover-up of his own campaign's extensive illegal "black bag jobs" that included wiretapping and other forms of unlawful surveillance. The most famous of these was a bungled burglary at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate office complex in June of 1972.
Trump is accused of seeking to alter vote counts in individual states, promoting alternative electors to supplant the ones chosen by the voters and attempting to disrupt the reporting of the Electoral College votes to Congress.
All are felonies with potential sentences of years in federal prison.
Jaworksi did not charge Nixon in 1974 because a legal memo fresh from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said a sitting president could not be criminally charged while in office.
But later that year, pressured by a pending impeachment in the House (and a warning from Republican senators that the Senate would vote to convict him), Nixon resigned.
Jaworksi could have indicted him at that point, but the new president, Gerald R. Ford, promptly weighed in with a full pardon. Case closed, at least for Nixon.
But in a larger, historical sense, the case against Nixon has been tried and retried in countless ways.
And that case remains open today, as witness some of the arguments Trump and his lawyers are considering in his defense.
Nixon never went to court to defend himself after the pardon. But he did speak to a delegation from the special grand jury that was considering cases against some of his former subordinates in 1975. On that occasion, under questioning, he admitted to making mistakes, but insisted he did nothing others had not done before him, calling himself a victim of "selective prosecution."
Biographer John A. Farrell reported from the transcript in Richard Nixon: The Life.
There have been indications that Trump and his lawyers will try to make his trial in Washington, D.C., an opportunity to attack actions by predecessors such as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and to readjudicate his own claims of election fraud and even his allegations of influence peddling on the part of current President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Another argument likely to re-emerge from the Nixon era is the contention that presidents have unique responsibilities for the nation's security and well-being and thus must, at least at times, exercise extraordinary powers to execute those responsibilities.
In 1977, almost three years after he had left office, Nixon was still telling BBC host David Frost that certain actions might be against the law, but that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal."
That assertion of an overriding right to supersede the law under certain circumstances may well figure in Trump's defense, whether in court or in the media, when he goes to court to face the charges released this week by Special Counsel Jack Smith regarding Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election.
The defense of sincere belief (even if mistaken)
Then there is the idea that Trump did all the things he did in the sincere belief that he was correcting error, that he was blameless because he genuinely believed he was "stopping the steal." Convinced of his "sacred landslide victory," for whatever reason, he was simply carrying out his own distorted sense of justice.
In that imaginary scenario, why not tell the secretary of state in Georgia to "find another 11,780 votes"? Why not call the relevant leaders in the state legislatures and urge them to call special sessions to reverse the decision of the voters?
In this sense, the question would become the famous question posed in the Watergate hearings on Capitol Hill in 1973: "What did the president know, and when did he know it?"
There are two problems with this defense, of course. One is that it does not matter what Trump thought because it would not excuse his actions. Even if Trump did think he had won, it would not insulate Trump against the charges Smith has brought.
William Barr, who was Trump's attorney general in 2020, spelled this out on CNN this week: "They are not attacking [Trump's] First Amendment right [to free speech]. He can say whatever he wants, he can even lie. He can even tell people the election was stolen when he knew better."
The problem is that Trump went much further, not just in words but in actions, to overturn the result of the election. Those actions, Barr stressed, would not be protected – regardless of what Trump believed
The other problem with the "sincere belief" defense is the evidence to the contrary.
"At first I wasn't sure," Barr said, "but I have come to believe he knew well he had lost the election." Barr said he thought Smith would be loaded for bear on this issue, calling the evidence in the indictment "the tip of the iceberg."
Trump ultimately poses yet another challenge
In a sense, the Trump prosecution poses an even more fundamental question than the Nixon case. That is because Trump is insisting that his perception of a stolen election should prevail over all evidence.
He is in essence insisting that his reality — his version of the facts, his view of the situation — should take precedence over any other
It is pure assertion on his part that he won. And if the polling among Republican voters is any indication, it has been working for him.
We cannot say we were not warned. At crucial moments in his first campaign in 2016, Trump signaled his intent to behave in just this fashion — to revise reality and insist on his version. For example, in September 2016, after five years of harassing Obama over his birth certificate, Trump insisted he and he alone had resolved at long last the controversy he had promoted. He wanted credit for doing this.
It was a challenge at the time and it brought into sharp relief at that moment to every news organization, election observer, academic and parent: What do you do with a man on the brink of the presidency of the United States peddling such an outrageous distortion? At the time, given the generations of its traditions in such matters, most of American mainstream journalism refused to use the word lie.
We had always assumed that once the word lie was attached to political speech, it would become devalued. And so indeed it has. We see it used in the media routinely and the shock value it once carried is long gone. And that has, too, has proven to be a tool and a weapon for Trump.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/05/1192174891/trumps-defense-in-2020-election-case-could-conjure-ghost-of-nixon-once-more
TRUMP WAS WORST PRESIDENT EVER ---- VERIFIED
Tuesday, June 15, 2021 4:25:01 PM
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=164406121
10 Trump election lies his own officials called false
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 2:34 PM EDT, Thu June 16, 2022
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/replies.aspx?msg=171794976
========================
Fact check: Trump, in 2023, tells a new lie about the 2020 election
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Published 3:56 PM EDT, Tue April 25, 2023
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=171794976
Trump's Jan. 6 defense strategy: "Flood the zone with sh*t"
Trump and his defenders resort to his Big Lie tactics:
Spew so much nonsense that debunkers can't keep up
PUBLISHED AUGUST 4, 2023 5:30AM (EDT
By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
Within the first 48 hours of Donald Trump's latest indictment, on federal charges related to his attempted coup after the 2020 election, the number of Republican excuses for his crimes rivaled the number of votes he demanded Georgia election officials fabricate to steal the election. (Which was 11,780, for those whose memory needs refreshing.) .. https://www.salon.com/2021/01/03/audio-trump-pressures-georgias-secretary-of-state-to-find-11780-votes_partner/ .. In the true spirit of competitive GOP hackery, each "defense" was dumber than the last.
There were claims that "free speech" provides Trump blanket immunity for conspiring to overturn an election, on the grounds that most conspiring is done with vocal cords. As a Georgia State University law professor, Anthony Michael Kreis, told Salon, "A person cannot walk into a bank and say, 'stick 'em up,' and then cling to the First Amendment's protections." Similarly, it's not "free speech" when Trump told people to commit crimes for him, simply because he used his mouth to do so.
Even Trump's former attorney general, Bill Barr, dismissed this gambit by saying, "free speech doesn't give you the right to engage in a fraudulent conspiracy." As Barr pointed out, no conspiracy charge could stick if the "conspiring" part was excluded from evidence.
[...]
https://www.salon.com/2023/08/04/jan-6-defense-strategy-flood-the-zone-with-sht/
=========================
Facts First -- 21 Donald Trump election lies listed in his new indictment
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 10:34 AM EDT, Wed August 2, 2023
Washington CNN -- Special counsel Jack Smith said Tuesday .. https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-2020-election-probe-08-01-23/h_e96680ac7b680c7aebb81bbb7bf88006 .. that the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol was “fueled by lies” told by former President Donald Trump.
The indictment of Trump on four new federal criminal charges, .. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/politics/donald-trump-indictment-grand-jury-2020-election/index.html .. all related to the former president’s effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, lays out some of those lies one by one.
Even in listing 21 lies, the 45-page indictment does not come close to capturing the entirety of Trump’s massive catalogue of false claims about the election. ..https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/12/politics/analysis-trump-election-lies-blog-post-presidency/index.html
But the list is illustrative nonetheless – highlighting the breadth of election-related topics Trump was dishonest about, the large number of states his election dishonesty spanned, and, critically, his willingness to persist in privately and publicly making dishonest assertions even after they had been debunked to him directly.
'Here is the list of 21.
1. The lie that fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 election, that Trump “had actually won,” and that the election was “stolen.” (Pages 1 and 40-41 of the indictment)
Trump’s claim of a stolen election whose winner was determined by massive fraud was (and continues to be) his overarching lie about the election. The indictment asserts that Trump knew as early as 2020 that his narrative was false – and had been told as such by numerous senior officials in his administration and allies outside the federal government – but persisted in deploying it anyway, including on January 6 itself.
2. The lie that fake pro-Trump Electoral College electors in seven states were legitimate electors. (Pages 5 and 26)
The indictment alleges that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators “organized” the phony slates of electors and then “caused” the slates to be transmitted to Vice President Mike Pence and other government officials to try to get them counted on January 6, the day Congress met to count the electoral votes.
3. The lie that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have affected the outcome of the election. (Pages 6 and 27)
Attorney General William Barr and other top Justice Department officials had told Trump that his claims of major fraud had proved to be untrue. But the indictment alleges that Trump still sought to have the Justice Department “make knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials in the targeted states through a formal letter under the Acting Attorney General’s signature, thus giving the Defendant’s lies the backing of the federal government and attempting to improperly influence the targeted states to replace legitimate Biden electors with the Defendant’s.”
4. The lie that Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral votes. (Pages 6, 32-38)
Pence had repeatedly and correctly told Trump that he did not have the constitutional or legal right to send electoral votes back to the states as Trump wanted. The indictment notes that Trump nonetheless repeatedly declared that Pence could do so – first in private conversations and White House meetings, then in tweets on January 5 and January 6, then in Trump’s January 6 speech in Washington at a rally before the riot – in which Trump, angry at Pence, allegedly inserted the false claim into his prepared text even after advisors had managed to temporarily get it removed.
5. The lie that “the Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.” (Page 36)
The indictment alleges that the day before the riot, Trump “approved and caused” his campaign to issue a false statement saying Pence agreed with him about having the power to reject electoral votes – even though Trump knew, from a one-on-one meeting with Pence hours prior, that Pence continued to firmly disagree.
6. The lie that Georgia had thousands of ballots cast in the names of dead people. (Pages 8 and 16)
The indictment notes that Georgia’s top elections official – Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – a republican – explained to Trump in a phone call on January 2, 2021 that this claim was false, but that Trump repeated it in his January 6 rally speech anyway. Raffensperger said in the phone call and then in a January 6 letter to Congress that just two potential dead-voter cases had been discovered in the state; Raffensperger said in late 2021 that the total had been updated and stood at four.
7. The lie that Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than voters. (Pages 8 and 20)
The indictment notes that Trump’s acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue had both told him that this claim was false, but he kept making it anyway – including in the January 6 rally speech.
8. The lie that there had been a suspicious “dump” of votes in Detroit, Michigan. (Pages 9 and 17)
The indictment notes that Barr, the attorney general, told Trump on December 1, 2020 that this was false – as CNN and others had noted, supposedly nefarious “dumps” Trump kept talking about were merely ballots being counted and added to the public totals as normal – but that Trump still repeated the false claim in public remarks the next day. And Barr wasn’t the only one to try to dissuade Trump from this claim. The indictment also notes that Michigan’s Republican Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, had told Trump in an Oval Office meeting on November 20, 2020 that Trump had lost the state “not because of fraud” but because Trump had “underperformed with certain voter populations.”
9. The lie that Nevada had tens of thousands of double votes and other fraud. (Page 9)
The indictment notes that Nevada’s top elections official – Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, also a Republican – had publicly posted a “Facts vs. Myths” document explaining that Nevada judges had rejected such claims.
10. The lie that more than 30,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona. (Pages 9 and 11)
The indictment notes that Trump put the number at “over 36,000” in his January 6 speech – even though, the indictment says, his own campaign manager “had explained to him that such claims were false” and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who had supported Trump in the election, “had issued a public statement that there was no evidence of substantial fraud in Arizona.”
11. The lie that voting machines in swing states had switched votes from Trump to Biden. (Page 9)
This is a reference to false conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which Trump kept repeating long after it was thoroughly debunked by his own administration’s election cybersecurity security arm and many others. The indictment says, “The Defendant’s Attorney General, Acting Attorney General, and Acting Deputy Attorney General all had explained to him that this was false, and numerous recounts and audits had confirmed the accuracy of voting machines.”
12. The lie that Dominion machines had been involved in “massive election fraud.” (Page 12)
The indictment notes that Trump, on Twitter, promoted a lawsuit filed by an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as lawyer Sidney Powell, that alleged “massive election fraud” involving Dominion – even though, the indictment says, Trump privately acknowledged to advisors that the claims were “unsupported” and told them Powell sounded “crazy.”
13. The lie that “a substantial number of non-citizens, non-residents, and dead people had voted fraudulently in Arizona.” (Page 10)
The indictment alleges that Trump and an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, made these baseless claims on a November 22, 2020 phone call with Bowers; the indictment says Giuliani never provided evidence and eventually said, at a December 1, 2020 meeting with Bowers, “words to the effect of, ‘We don’t have the evidence, but we have lots of theories.”
14. The lie that Fulton County, Georgia elections workers had engaged in “ballot stuffing.” (Pages 13 and 14)
This is the long-debunked lie – which Trump has continued to repeat in 2023 – that a video had caught two elections workers in Atlanta breaking the law. The workers were simply doing their jobs, and, as the indictment notes, they were cleared of wrongdoing by state officials in 2020 – but Trump continued to make the claims even after Raffensperger and Justice Department officials directly and repeatedly told him they were unfounded.
15. The lie that thousands of out-of-state voters cast ballots in Georgia. (Page 16)
The indictment notes that Trump made this claim on his infamous January 2, 2021 call with Raffensperger, whose staff responded that the claim was inaccurate. An official in Raffensberger’s office explained to Trump that the voters in question had authentically moved back to Georgia and legitimately cast ballots.
16. The lie that Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable,” to address Trump’s claims about a “‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more.” (Page 16)
In fact, contrary to this Trump tweet the day after the call, Raffensperger and his staff had addressed and debunked all of these false Trump claims.
17. The lie that there was substantial fraud in Wisconsin and that the state had tens of thousands of unlawful votes. (Page 21)
False and false. But the indictment notes that Trump made the vague fraud claim in a tweet on December 21, 2020, after the state Supreme Court upheld Biden’s win, and repeated the more specific claim about tens of thousands of unlawful votes in the January 6 speech.
18. The lie that Wisconsin had more votes counted than it had actual voters. (Page 21)
This, like Trump’s similar claim about Pennsylvania, is not true. But the indictment alleges that Trump raised the claim in a December 27, 2020 conversation with acting attorney general Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Donoghue, who informed him that it was false.
19. The lie that the election was “corrupt.” (Page 28)
The indictment alleges that when acting attorney general Rosen told Trump on the December 27, 2020 call that the Justice Department couldn’t and wouldn’t change the outcome of the election, Trump responded, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” (Deputy attorney general Donoghue memorialized the reported Trump remark in his handwritten notes, which CNN reported on in 2021 and which were subsequently published by the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot.)
20. The lie that Trump won every state by hundreds of thousands of votes. (Page 34)
The indictment says that, at a January 4, 2021 meeting intended to convince Pence to unlawfully reject Biden’s electoral votes and send them back to swing-state legislatures, Pence took notes describing Trump as saying, “Bottom line-won every state by 100,000s of votes.” This was, obviously, false even if Trump was specifically talking about swing states won by Biden rather than every state in the nation.
21. The lie that Pennsylvania “want[s] to recertify.” (Page 38)
Trump made this false claim in his January 6 speech. In reality, some Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania had expressed a desire to at least delay the congressional affirmation of Biden’s victory – but the state’s Democratic governor and top elections official, who actually had election certification power in the state, had no desire to recertify Biden’s legitimate win.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/02/politics/trump-indictment-lies/index.html
Facts First -- 21 Donald Trump election lies listed in his new indictment
By Daniel Dale, CNN
Updated 10:34 AM EDT, Wed August 2, 2023
'-10 Trump election lies his own officials called false -'
Washington CNN -- Special counsel Jack Smith said Tuesday .. https://edition.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-2020-election-probe-08-01-23/h_e96680ac7b680c7aebb81bbb7bf88006 .. that the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol was “fueled by lies” told by former President Donald Trump.
The indictment of Trump on four new federal criminal charges, .. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/01/politics/donald-trump-indictment-grand-jury-2020-election/index.html .. all related to the former president’s effort to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election, lays out some of those lies one by one.
Even in listing 21 lies, the 45-page indictment does not come close to capturing the entirety of Trump’s massive catalogue of false claims about the election. ..https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/12/politics/analysis-trump-election-lies-blog-post-presidency/index.html
But the list is illustrative nonetheless – highlighting the breadth of election-related topics Trump was dishonest about, the large number of states his election dishonesty spanned, and, critically, his willingness to persist in privately and publicly making dishonest assertions even after they had been debunked to him directly.
'Here is the list of 21.
1. The lie that fraud changed the outcome of the 2020 election, that Trump “had actually won,” and that the election was “stolen.” (Pages 1 and 40-41 of the indictment)
Trump’s claim of a stolen election whose winner was determined by massive fraud was (and continues to be) his overarching lie about the election. The indictment asserts that Trump knew as early as 2020 that his narrative was false – and had been told as such by numerous senior officials in his administration and allies outside the federal government – but persisted in deploying it anyway, including on January 6 itself.
2. The lie that fake pro-Trump Electoral College electors in seven states were legitimate electors. (Pages 5 and 26)
The indictment alleges that Trump and his alleged co-conspirators “organized” the phony slates of electors and then “caused” the slates to be transmitted to Vice President Mike Pence and other government officials to try to get them counted on January 6, the day Congress met to count the electoral votes.
3. The lie that the Justice Department had identified significant concerns that may have affected the outcome of the election. (Pages 6 and 27)
Attorney General William Barr and other top Justice Department officials had told Trump that his claims of major fraud had proved to be untrue. But the indictment alleges that Trump still sought to have the Justice Department “make knowingly false claims of election fraud to officials in the targeted states through a formal letter under the Acting Attorney General’s signature, thus giving the Defendant’s lies the backing of the federal government and attempting to improperly influence the targeted states to replace legitimate Biden electors with the Defendant’s.”
4. The lie that Pence had the power to reject Biden’s electoral votes. (Pages 6, 32-38)
Pence had repeatedly and correctly told Trump that he did not have the constitutional or legal right to send electoral votes back to the states as Trump wanted. The indictment notes that Trump nonetheless repeatedly declared that Pence could do so – first in private conversations and White House meetings, then in tweets on January 5 and January 6, then in Trump’s January 6 speech in Washington at a rally before the riot – in which Trump, angry at Pence, allegedly inserted the false claim into his prepared text even after advisors had managed to temporarily get it removed.
5. The lie that “the Vice President and I are in total agreement that the Vice President has the power to act.” (Page 36)
The indictment alleges that the day before the riot, Trump “approved and caused” his campaign to issue a false statement saying Pence agreed with him about having the power to reject electoral votes – even though Trump knew, from a one-on-one meeting with Pence hours prior, that Pence continued to firmly disagree.
6. The lie that Georgia had thousands of ballots cast in the names of dead people. (Pages 8 and 16)
The indictment notes that Georgia’s top elections official – Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger – a republican – explained to Trump in a phone call on January 2, 2021 that this claim was false, but that Trump repeated it in his January 6 rally speech anyway. Raffensperger said in the phone call and then in a January 6 letter to Congress that just two potential dead-voter cases had been discovered in the state; Raffensperger said in late 2021 that the total had been updated and stood at four.
7. The lie that Pennsylvania had 205,000 more votes than voters. (Pages 8 and 20)
The indictment notes that Trump’s acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue had both told him that this claim was false, but he kept making it anyway – including in the January 6 rally speech.
8. The lie that there had been a suspicious “dump” of votes in Detroit, Michigan. (Pages 9 and 17)
The indictment notes that Barr, the attorney general, told Trump on December 1, 2020 that this was false – as CNN and others had noted, supposedly nefarious “dumps” Trump kept talking about were merely ballots being counted and added to the public totals as normal – but that Trump still repeated the false claim in public remarks the next day. And Barr wasn’t the only one to try to dissuade Trump from this claim. The indictment also notes that Michigan’s Republican Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, had told Trump in an Oval Office meeting on November 20, 2020 that Trump had lost the state “not because of fraud” but because Trump had “underperformed with certain voter populations.”
9. The lie that Nevada had tens of thousands of double votes and other fraud. (Page 9)
The indictment notes that Nevada’s top elections official – Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, also a Republican – had publicly posted a “Facts vs. Myths” document explaining that Nevada judges had rejected such claims.
10. The lie that more than 30,000 non-citizens had voted in Arizona. (Pages 9 and 11)
The indictment notes that Trump put the number at “over 36,000” in his January 6 speech – even though, the indictment says, his own campaign manager “had explained to him that such claims were false” and Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican who had supported Trump in the election, “had issued a public statement that there was no evidence of substantial fraud in Arizona.”
11. The lie that voting machines in swing states had switched votes from Trump to Biden. (Page 9)
This is a reference to false conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which Trump kept repeating long after it was thoroughly debunked by his own administration’s election cybersecurity security arm and many others. The indictment says, “The Defendant’s Attorney General, Acting Attorney General, and Acting Deputy Attorney General all had explained to him that this was false, and numerous recounts and audits had confirmed the accuracy of voting machines.”
12. The lie that Dominion machines had been involved in “massive election fraud.” (Page 12)
The indictment notes that Trump, on Twitter, promoted a lawsuit filed by an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as lawyer Sidney Powell, that alleged “massive election fraud” involving Dominion – even though, the indictment says, Trump privately acknowledged to advisors that the claims were “unsupported” and told them Powell sounded “crazy.”
13. The lie that “a substantial number of non-citizens, non-residents, and dead people had voted fraudulently in Arizona.” (Page 10)
The indictment alleges that Trump and an alleged co-conspirator, whom CNN has identified as former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, made these baseless claims on a November 22, 2020 phone call with Bowers; the indictment says Giuliani never provided evidence and eventually said, at a December 1, 2020 meeting with Bowers, “words to the effect of, ‘We don’t have the evidence, but we have lots of theories.”
14. The lie that Fulton County, Georgia elections workers had engaged in “ballot stuffing.” (Pages 13 and 14)
This is the long-debunked lie – which Trump has continued to repeat in 2023 – that a video had caught two elections workers in Atlanta breaking the law. The workers were simply doing their jobs, and, as the indictment notes, they were cleared of wrongdoing by state officials in 2020 – but Trump continued to make the claims even after Raffensperger and Justice Department officials directly and repeatedly told him they were unfounded.
15. The lie that thousands of out-of-state voters cast ballots in Georgia. (Page 16)
The indictment notes that Trump made this claim on his infamous January 2, 2021 call with Raffensperger, whose staff responded that the claim was inaccurate. An official in Raffensberger’s office explained to Trump that the voters in question had authentically moved back to Georgia and legitimately cast ballots.
16. The lie that Raffensperger “was unwilling, or unable,” to address Trump’s claims about a “‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more.” (Page 16)
In fact, contrary to this Trump tweet the day after the call, Raffensperger and his staff had addressed and debunked all of these false Trump claims.
17. The lie that there was substantial fraud in Wisconsin and that the state had tens of thousands of unlawful votes. (Page 21)
False and false. But the indictment notes that Trump made the vague fraud claim in a tweet on December 21, 2020, after the state Supreme Court upheld Biden’s win, and repeated the more specific claim about tens of thousands of unlawful votes in the January 6 speech.
18. The lie that Wisconsin had more votes counted than it had actual voters. (Page 21)
This, like Trump’s similar claim about Pennsylvania, is not true. But the indictment alleges that Trump raised the claim in a December 27, 2020 conversation with acting attorney general Rosen and acting deputy attorney general Donoghue, who informed him that it was false.
19. The lie that the election was “corrupt.” (Page 28)
The indictment alleges that when acting attorney general Rosen told Trump on the December 27, 2020 call that the Justice Department couldn’t and wouldn’t change the outcome of the election, Trump responded, “Just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.” (Deputy attorney general Donoghue memorialized the reported Trump remark in his handwritten notes, which CNN reported on in 2021 and which were subsequently published by the House committee that investigated the Capitol riot.)
20. The lie that Trump won every state by hundreds of thousands of votes. (Page 34)
The indictment says that, at a January 4, 2021 meeting intended to convince Pence to unlawfully reject Biden’s electoral votes and send them back to swing-state legislatures, Pence took notes describing Trump as saying, “Bottom line-won every state by 100,000s of votes.” This was, obviously, false even if Trump was specifically talking about swing states won by Biden rather than every state in the nation.
21. The lie that Pennsylvania “want[s] to recertify.” (Page 38)
Trump made this false claim in his January 6 speech. In reality, some Republican state legislators in Pennsylvania had expressed a desire to at least delay the congressional affirmation of Biden’s victory – but the state’s Democratic governor and top elections official, who actually had election certification power in the state, had no desire to recertify Biden’s legitimate win.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/02/politics/trump-indictment-lies/index.html
In a 45-page indictment unveiled Tuesday, ..
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.1.0_1.pdf ..
special counsel Jack Smith charged Trump with four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.
The indictment also accused Trump of trying to exploit the violent Jan. 6, 2021, assault on Congress to continue his effort to cling to power.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/01/trump-indicted-again-00109286
Case 1:23-cr-00257-TSC Document 1 Filed 08/01/23 Page 1 thru 45
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149/gov.uscourts.dcd.258149.1.0_1.pdf
Trump indictment live updates: Grand jury charges former president in 2020 election probe
The grand jury examining Trump's role in the Jan. 6 riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election met Tuesday in Washington.
Updated Aug. 1, 2023, 4:33 PM CDT
By NBC News
Read the latest on the special counsel probe:
A sealed indictment has been handed down against an unnamed individual in the investigation of former President Donald Trump and his allies' attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump announced July 18 that he received a letter from special counsel Jack Smith notifying him he is the target of a grand jury examining the Jan. 6 riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Members of the grand jury in the Jan. 6 investigation were spotted at the courthouse this morning.
A new indictment was filed last week in a separate special counsel investigation of Trump involving his alleged mishandling of classified records. That indictment brought more charges against the former president and a top aide and added a newly charged defendant, Carlos De Oliveira, a property manager at Mar-a-Lago who helped move boxes of classified documents.
Meanwhile, Trump’s legal woes are costing his political operation millions of dollars.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/live-blog/trump-live-updates-grand-jury-2020-election-probe-arrives-courthouse-rcna96825
AP PHOTOS: Women’s World Cup highlights
By The Associated Press
Updated 10:14 AM CDT, July 31, 2023
The Women’s World Cup .. https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-womens-world-cup .. in Australia and New Zealand is showcasing some of the best soccer on the planet — and some of the best photographs.
Associated Press photographers are covering every match at the month-long tournament, including Zambia’s Lushomo Mweemba celebrating a goal against Costa Rica and Morocco’s Nouhaila Benzina becoming the first senior-level Women’s World Cup player to compete wearing a hijab.
Zambia’s Lushomo Mweemba celebrates the first goal of the match during the Women’s World Cup Group C soccer match between Costa Rica and Zambia in Hamilton, New Zealand, Monday, July 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Juan Mendez)
Players warm up during half time during the Women’s World Cup Group H soccer match between Germany and Colombia at the Sydney Football Stadium in Sydney, Australia, Sunday, July 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
Australia’s Hayley Raso, kneeling, celebrates after scoring the opening goal during the Women’s World Cup Group B soccer match between Australia and Canada in Melbourne, Australia, Monday, July 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Hamish Blair)
. . .
https://apnews.com/article/womens-world-cup-best-moments-photo-gallery-27b551ba9035928c5d5a7e538d333f89
AP PHOTOS: Women’s World Cup highlights
By The Associated Press
Updated 10:14 AM CDT, July 31, 2023
The Women’s World Cup .. https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-womens-world-cup .. in Australia and New Zealand is showcasing some of the best soccer on the planet — and some of the best photographs.
Associated Press photographers are covering every match at the month-long tournament, including Zambia’s Lushomo Mweemba celebrating a goal against Costa Rica and Morocco’s Nouhaila Benzina becoming the first senior-level Women’s World Cup player to compete wearing a hijab.
Zambia’s Lushomo Mweemba celebrates the first goal of the match during the Women’s World Cup Group C soccer match between Costa Rica and Zambia in Hamilton, New Zealand, Monday, July 31, 2023. (AP Photo/Juan Mendez)
Players warm up during half time during the Women’s World Cup Group H soccer match between Germany and Colombia at the Sydney Football Stadium in Sydney, Australia, Sunday, July 30, 2023. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft)
. . .
https://apnews.com/article/womens-world-cup-best-moments-photo-gallery-27b551ba9035928c5d5a7e538d333f89
Your hero is the NO. 1 LIAR
' Told you Joe is a liar '
In four years, President Trump made 30,573 false or misleading claims
Fact Checker Analysis
The Fact Checker’s database of the false or misleading claims made by President Trump while in office.
Updated Jan. 20, 2021
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?itid=lk_inline_manual_11
Chris Christie compares Donald Trump and allies to 'the Corleones with no experience
Ken Tran USA TODAY
Published 1:08 pm July 30, 2023
Links: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/07/30/chris-christie-donald-trump-indictment-2024/70494536007/
WASHINGTON — Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie likened former President Donald Trump and his allies to the fictional Corleone crime family from "The Godfather” series, albeit “with no experience.”
Christie took aim at the new charges special counsel Jack Smith filed against Trump last week in his classified documents case, alleging Trump ordered to have surveillance footage destroyed at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
“It’s pretty brazen,” Christie, a former federal prosecutor, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “These guys were acting like the Corleones with no experience.”
Prosecutors allege Trump, along with his valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira, attempted to delete surveillance video after investigators issued a subpoena for the footage.
Christie said Nauta was akin to Fredo Corloene, depicted in the series as the weaker and less intelligent brother in the crime family.
“The day after a grand jury subpoena is served, which includes the surveillance tapes, they go down to Mar-a-Lago and Walt Nauta appears to be the Fredo of this family,” Christie said. “They send him to go down there, and they sent him to go and delete it.”
“This is bad stuff,” Christie alleged. “This was the withholding of confidential classified information from the government after 18 months of asking Donald Trump to return it voluntarily.”
Unlike most of his opponents in the 2024 Republican presidential primary field, Christie has shown no reluctance to go after Trump for his multiple indictments and other legal troubles. Christie has argued Trump’s legal cases disqualify him from the presidency.
Trump’s alleged mishandling of the classified documents, Christie said, endangered national security.
“This is not what a former president should be doing and it’s certainly not something that someone who wants to be president should be doing,” Christie said.
Christie has said he wouldn't be inclined to pardon Trump if the former president is eventually convicted and the former New Jersey governor wins the 2024 race for the White House. But other candidates, including biotechnology entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, have said they disagree and would lean towards issuing Trump a pardon.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/07/30/chris-christie-donald-trump-indictment-2024/70494536007/
Only if you're a Brain-dead follower of Trump.
' We should all support crooks? '
And you seem to be the real idiot here,
by not supporting any one, but just whining and whining. . .
Trump's $475 million 'big lie' defamation lawsuit against CNN dismissed
By Joseph Ax
July 29, 20233:43 PM CDT Updated 3 hours ago
July 29 (Reuters) - A federal judge has thrown out Donald Trump's $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which the former president claimed the network's description of his election fraud as the "big lie" associated him with Adolf Hitler.
In a ruling late on Friday night, U.S. Judge Raag Singhal, who was nominated by Trump in 2019, said CNN's words were opinion, not fact, and therefore could not be the subject of a defamation claim.
"CNN's statements while repugnant, were not, as a matter of law, defamatory," wrote Singhal, who sits in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, near Trump's home at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
In a statement, a Trump spokesperson said: "We agree with the highly respected judge's findings that CNN's statements about President Trump are repugnant. CNN will be held responsible for their wrongful mistreatment of President Trump and his supporters."
The statement did not say whether Trump would appeal the decision.
The lawsuit, which was filed in October 2022, highlighted five instances in which CNN either published stories or aired comments referring to Trump's assertions about the 2020 election as his "big lie." The phrase is also associated with the Nazi regime's use of propaganda.
The wording, the lawsuit said, constituted "a deliberate effort by CNN to propagate to its audience an association between the plaintiff and one of the most repugnant figures in modern history."
But the mere use of the phrase "big lie" is not enough to give rise to a true connotation, Singhal wrote.
"No reasonable viewer could (or should) plausibly make that reference," he said.
Since launching his first presidential campaign in 2015, Trump has often attacked media outlets whose coverage he dislikes, with CNN a favorite target.
Trump is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, despite facing both state and federal indictments.
Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Sandra Maler and Deepa Babington
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-475-mln-big-lie-defamation-lawsuit-against-cnn-dismissed-2023-07-29/
A very impressive RESUME... that only Trump's Brain-dead followers could appreciate
Man who beat officer with flagpole during Capitol riot is sentenced to over 4 years in prison
By The Associated Press - | Jul 25, 2023
'-- A Republican nightmare seems about to become real --'
FILE - Violent insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump storm the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. An Arkansas truck driver who beat a police officer with a flagpole attached to an American flag during the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced Monday, July 24, 2023, to more than four years in prison. Peter Francis Stager struck the Metropolitan Police Department officer with his flagpole at least three times as other rioters pulled the officer, head first, into the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The bruised officer was among more than 100 police officers injured during the riot. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Arkansas truck driver who beat a police officer with a flagpole attached to an American flag during the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced Monday to more than four years in prison.
Peter Francis Stager struck the Metropolitan Police Department officer with his flagpole at least three times as other rioters pulled the officer, head first, into the crowd outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The bruised officer was among more than 100 police officers injured during the riot.
Stager also stood over and screamed profanities at another officer, who was seriously injured when several other rioters dragged him into the mob and beat him, according to federal prosecutors.
After the beatings, Stager was captured on video saying, “Every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy. That is the only remedy they get.”
U.S. Judge Rudolph Contreras sentenced Stager to four years and four months in prison, according to a spokesperson for the prosecutors’ office.
Stager, 44, of Conway, Arkansas, pleaded guilty in February to a felony charge of assaulting police with a dangerous weapon.
Prosecutors had recommended a prison sentence of six years and six months.
Stager assaulted the officer during one of the most violent episodes of Jan. 6 — a battle between rioters and police guarding an entrance to the Capitol building in a tunnel on the Lower West Terrace.
Stager’s actions at the Capitol “were the epitome of disrespect for the law,” prosecutors said in a court filing.
“Stager joined a prolonged, multi-assailant attack on police officers, which resulted in injuries to the officers,” they wrote. “Stager himself wielded a flagpole and used it to strike at a vulnerable officer, who, lying face down in a mob of rioters had no means of defending himself.”
Stager’s truck driving job took him to Washington, D.C., on the day before then-President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6. Stager stayed overnight to attend Trump’s rally after delivering a load of produce, a decision that he will regret for the rest of his life, his lawyers said in a court filing.
Stager’s attorneys say he tried to help others in the crowd who were injured after the riot erupted. Shocked by what he saw, Stager had “reached his breaking point” and was “seeing red” when he picked up a flag on the ground, they said.
“Once the adrenaline wore off, Mr. Stager immediately called his wife to tell her he was horrified by his actions and that he was going to turn himself in upon returning to Arkansas,” his lawyers wrote.
More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot.
Over 620 of them have pleaded guilty.
Approximately 100 others have been convicted by juries or judges after trials.
Nearly 600 have been sentenced, with over half receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from three days to 18 years.
Stager was indicted with eight other defendants on charges related to the tunnel battle. Four of his co-defendants also have pleaded guilty to assault charges.
Florida resident Mason Courson was sentenced in June to four years and nine months in prison.
Michigan resident Justin Jersey was sentenced in February to four years and three months in prison.
Michigan construction worker Logan Barnhart was sentenced in April to three years in prison.
Georgia business owner Jack Wade Whitton is scheduled to be sentenced on Aug. 16.
https://www.nashuatelegraph.com/top-headlines/2023/07/25/man-who-beat-officer-with-flagpole-during-capitol-riot-is-sentenced-to-over-4-years-in-prison/
Tony Bennett's World War II Experience Was a 'Front-Row Seat in Hell'
Honoree Tony Bennett arrives at the Los Angeles Confidential Magazine 2012 Grammys Celebration in Beverly Hills, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012. Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" graced a decadeslong career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday, July 21, 2023. He was 96. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
21 Jul 2023
Military.com | By Blake Stilwell
Singer Tony Bennett's stint in the U.S. Army during World War II led him to legendary entertainer Bob Hope, which inspired him to pursue a career spanning more than seven decades. Only after he announced he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease in 2021 did the crooner retire from performing live shows.
He continued to rehearse his repertoire, however, and broke the Guinness World Record for the oldest person to release an album of new material, at age 95. It was just one more honor earned by a man who spent a lifetime receiving awards and accolades for his work. Bennett died on July 21, 2023, two weeks shy of his 97th birthday.
His experience in World War II not only shaped the rest of his life, it put infantry rifleman Anthony Dominick Benedetto in the spotlight as a member of Special Services, singing for the Allied troops in the trenches, sometimes literally.
"The main thing I got out of my military experience was the realization that I am completely opposed to war," Bennett wrote in his 1998 autobiography, "The Good Life." "Although I understand why this war was fought, it was a terrifying, demoralizing experience for me... life can never be the same once you've been through combat."
From the age of 15, young Tony watched as his friends and relatives were drafted into service. Bennett turned 18 in the summer of 1944, and that November, he received a draft notice of his own. He was sent to the Army, completed basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and became an infantry rifleman at Fort Robinson, Arkansas.
After his post-training furlough, he waited to hear about his next assignment. He was shipped to Le Havre, France, to become a replacement troop for units that suffered heavy casualties fighting the Germans in Europe. Bennett was sent to G Company, 7th Army, 63rd Infantry Division.
Tony Bennett in the U.S. Army, 1945. (TonyBennett.com)
Bennett's group of replacements were taking over for casualties lost during the Battle of the Bulge. He recalled his batch being awakened at 4 a.m. by none other than Gen. George S. Patton himself, shouting: "Now listen up! Forget your mothers and everything else you've ever known! You're going up to the line."
The line was a terrifying place for all the replacements. Many, Bennett wrote, had no experience in combat and some had never fired a weapon. The idea was that more experienced soldiers would help instruct the replacements, but there was no time for that.
“Snow covered the ground and the front was a front-row seat in hell,” he wrote. “It was an absolutely terrifying spectacle.”
They quickly found themselves digging foxholes in the hard ground to protect themselves from German 88-millimeter artillery. During his first night on the line, Bennett was almost killed by shrapnel from a German 88. He learned the rules for the front line quickly: "Don't move."
"Most nights, we'd be awakened by the bombs that were going off around us," Bennett wrote. "On the front line, we'd see dead soldiers, dead horses and big craters in the ground where bombs had exploded. To me, it's a joke that they make 'horror' movies about things like Dracula and Godzilla, and they make 'adventure' movies about war. War is far more horrifying than anything anyone could dream up."
Bennett's company entered Germany in March 1945, pushing the Wehrmacht back and fighting house by house to take German towns. When he was finally pulled off the line, he went with a thousand other GIs to see Bob Hope perform a USO show.
"All the GIs loved him so much for boosting our dismally low morale," wrote Bennett. "He became a big part of the reason I went into show business, because at that moment he made me realize that the greatest gift you can give anyone is a laugh or a song."
The last official mission of his regiment was the liberation of a concentration camp near the town of Landsberg, 30 miles south of the Dachau Concentration Camp. The camp was still being defended by German prisoners, but Bennett's regiment fought hard to liberate those people, even fording the treacherous Lech River.
"Many writers have recorded what it was like in the concentration camps much more eloquently than I ever could, so I won't even try to describe it," he recalls in his autobiography. "Just let me say I'll never forget the desperate faces and empty stares of the prisoners as they wandered aimlessly around the campgrounds.
"We immediately got food and water to the survivors, but they had been brutalized for so long, they couldn't believe that we were there to help them and not to kill them."
Germany eventually surrendered, then Japan. Bennett had only been in the war for four months, so he had to stay on with the occupying force.
He was transferred to Special Services to entertain the Allied troops who had to stay behind. There, he met many musicians and performers who would see similar success on stage in their postwar years.
Tony Bennett singing with a U.S. Army Band, 1945. (TonyBennett.com)
In 1946, he set sail for New York, where he was honorably discharged on Aug. 15, where the war had "changed everything in ways I couldn't explain." He was ready to get his life started again.
https://www.military.com/off-duty/music/2023/07/21/tony-bennetts-world-war-ii-experience-was-front-row-seat-hell.html?ESRC=mr_230724.nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mr&utm_campaign=20230724
Tony Bennett's World War II Experience Was a 'Front-Row Seat in Hell'
Honoree Tony Bennett arrives at the Los Angeles Confidential Magazine 2012 Grammys Celebration in Beverly Hills, Calif., Thursday, Feb. 9, 2012. Bennett, the eminent and timeless stylist whose devotion to classic American songs and knack for creating new standards such as "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" graced a decadeslong career that brought him admirers from Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga, died Friday, July 21, 2023. He was 96. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
21 Jul 2023
Military.com | By Blake Stilwell
Singer Tony Bennett's stint in the U.S. Army during World War II led him to legendary entertainer Bob Hope, which inspired him to pursue a career spanning more than seven decades. Only after he announced he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease in 2021 did the crooner retire from performing live shows.
He continued to rehearse his repertoire, however, and broke the Guinness World Record for the oldest person to release an album of new material, at age 95. It was just one more honor earned by a man who spent a lifetime receiving awards and accolades for his work. Bennett died on July 21, 2023, two weeks shy of his 97th birthday.
His experience in World War II not only shaped the rest of his life, it put infantry rifleman Anthony Dominick Benedetto in the spotlight as a member of Special Services, singing for the Allied troops in the trenches, sometimes literally.
"The main thing I got out of my military experience was the realization that I am completely opposed to war," Bennett wrote in his 1998 autobiography, "The Good Life." "Although I understand why this war was fought, it was a terrifying, demoralizing experience for me... life can never be the same once you've been through combat."
From the age of 15, young Tony watched as his friends and relatives were drafted into service. Bennett turned 18 in the summer of 1944, and that November, he received a draft notice of his own. He was sent to the Army, completed basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and became an infantry rifleman at Fort Robinson, Arkansas.
After his post-training furlough, he waited to hear about his next assignment. He was shipped to Le Havre, France, to become a replacement troop for units that suffered heavy casualties fighting the Germans in Europe. Bennett was sent to G Company, 7th Army, 63rd Infantry Division.
Tony Bennett in the U.S. Army, 1945. (TonyBennett.com)
Bennett's group of replacements were taking over for casualties lost during the Battle of the Bulge. He recalled his batch being awakened at 4 a.m. by none other than Gen. George S. Patton himself, shouting: "Now listen up! Forget your mothers and everything else you've ever known! You're going up to the line."
The line was a terrifying place for all the replacements. Many, Bennett wrote, had no experience in combat and some had never fired a weapon. The idea was that more experienced soldiers would help instruct the replacements, but there was no time for that.
“Snow covered the ground and the front was a front-row seat in hell,” he wrote. “It was an absolutely terrifying spectacle.”
They quickly found themselves digging foxholes in the hard ground to protect themselves from German 88-millimeter artillery. During his first night on the line, Bennett was almost killed by shrapnel from a German 88. He learned the rules for the front line quickly: "Don't move."
"Most nights, we'd be awakened by the bombs that were going off around us," Bennett wrote. "On the front line, we'd see dead soldiers, dead horses and big craters in the ground where bombs had exploded. To me, it's a joke that they make 'horror' movies about things like Dracula and Godzilla, and they make 'adventure' movies about war. War is far more horrifying than anything anyone could dream up."
Bennett's company entered Germany in March 1945, pushing the Wehrmacht back and fighting house by house to take German towns. When he was finally pulled off the line, he went with a thousand other GIs to see Bob Hope perform a USO show.
"All the GIs loved him so much for boosting our dismally low morale," wrote Bennett. "He became a big part of the reason I went into show business, because at that moment he made me realize that the greatest gift you can give anyone is a laugh or a song."
The last official mission of his regiment was the liberation of a concentration camp near the town of Landsberg, 30 miles south of the Dachau Concentration Camp. The camp was still being defended by German prisoners, but Bennett's regiment fought hard to liberate those people, even fording the treacherous Lech River.
"Many writers have recorded what it was like in the concentration camps much more eloquently than I ever could, so I won't even try to describe it," he recalls in his autobiography. "Just let me say I'll never forget the desperate faces and empty stares of the prisoners as they wandered aimlessly around the campgrounds.
"We immediately got food and water to the survivors, but they had been brutalized for so long, they couldn't believe that we were there to help them and not to kill them."
Germany eventually surrendered, then Japan. Bennett had only been in the war for four months, so he had to stay on with the occupying force.
He was transferred to Special Services to entertain the Allied troops who had to stay behind. There, he met many musicians and performers who would see similar success on stage in their postwar years.
Tony Bennett singing with a U.S. Army Band, 1945. (TonyBennett.com)
In 1946, he set sail for New York, where he was honorably discharged on Aug. 15, where the war had "changed everything in ways I couldn't explain." He was ready to get his life started again.
https://www.military.com/off-duty/music/2023/07/21/tony-bennetts-world-war-ii-experience-was-front-row-seat-hell.html?ESRC=mr_230724.nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mr&utm_campaign=20230724
Sick of hearing about record heat?
Scientists say those numbers paint the story of a warming world
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 3:46 AM CDT, July 22, 2023
A man walks across an almost dried up bed of river Yumana amid hot weather in New Dehli, India, May 2, 2022
The summer of 2023 is behaving like a broken record about broken records.
Nearly every major climate-tracking organization proclaimed June the hottest June ever. .. https://apnews.com/article/heat-record-temperature-climate-change-el-nino-cb53a97161b0725ef94cae9b53bf1f81
Then July 4 became the globe’s hottest day, albeit unofficially, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. .. https://apnews.com/article/global-record-breaking-heat-july-27069b5380117534d78f1f40a6edc7a0
It was quickly overtaken by July 5 and July 6. .. https://apnews.com/article/global-heat-record-hottest-climate-change-july-7d55e351fc97f5cd6368bda60ed2bf31
Next came the hottest week, a tad more official, stamped into the books by the World Meteorological Organization and the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
With a summer of extreme weather records dominating the news, meteorologists and scientists say records like these give a glimpse of the big picture: a warming planet caused by climate change.
It’s a picture that comes in the vibrant reds and purples representing heat on daily weather maps online, in newspapers and on television.
Beyond the maps and the numbers are real harms that kill. More than 100 people have died in heat waves in the United States and India so far this summer.
Records are crucial for people designing infrastructure and working in agriculture because they need to plan for the worst scenarios, said Russell Vose, climate analysis group director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He also chairs a committee on national records.
In the past 30 days, nearly 5,000 heat and rainfall records have been broken or tied in the U.S.
and more than 10,000 records set globally, according to NOAA. Texas cities and towns alone have set 369 daily high temperature records since June 1.
Since 2000, the U.S. has set about twice as many records for heat as those for cold.
“Records go back to the late 19th century and we can see that there has been a decade-on-decade increase in temperatures,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, keeper of the agency’s climate records. “What’s happening now is certainly increasing the chances that 2023 will be the warmest year on record. My calculations suggest that there’s, right now, a 50-50 chance.”
The larger the geographic area and the longer stretch of time during which records are set, the more likely the conditions represent climate change rather than daily weather. So the hottest global June is “extremely unlikely” to happen without climate change, as opposed to one city’s daily record, Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said.
Still, some local specifics are striking: Death Valley has flirted this summer with the hottest temperature in modern history, though that 134 degree Fahrenheit (56.7 Celsius ) record is in dispute.
Phoenix grabbed headlines among major U.S. cities on Tuesday when it marked a 19th consecutive day of unrelenting mega heat: 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) or more. It kept going, reaching a 22nd straight day on Friday. The daytime heat was accompanied by a record stretch of nights that never fell below 90 Fahrenheit (32.2 Celsius).
“Everybody’s drawn to extremes,” Vose said. “It’s like the Guinness Book of World Records. Human nature is just drawn to the extreme things out of curiosity.”
But the numbers can be flawed in what they portray.
The scientific community “doesn’t really have the vocabulary to communicate what it feels like,” said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who co-chaired a groundbreaking United Nations report in 2012 warning of the dangers of extreme weather from climate change.
“I don’t think it captures the human sense, but it really does underscore that we live in a different world,” Field said of the records.
Think of the individual statistics as brush strokes in a painting of the world’s climate, Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald said. Don’t fixate on any specific number.
“The details of course matter, but the thing that really matters, especially for the impressionist painting, is when you step back and take a look at everything that’s happening,” Mahowald said.
She and other climate scientists say long-term warming from burning coal, oil and natural gas is the chief cause of rising temperatures, along with occasional boosts from natural El Nino warmings across parts of the Pacific, like the planet is experiencing this year.
El Nino is a natural temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather patterns worldwide and adds an extra warm boost. An El Nino formed in June and scientists say this one looks strong. For the previous three years El Nino’s cool flip side, La Nina, dampened a bit of the heat humans are causing.
A super El Nino spiked global temperatures in 1998, then was followed by less warming and even some flat temperatures for a few years until the next big El Nino, Mahowald said.
Weather won’t worsen each year and that should not become a common expectation, but it will intensify over the long run, she said.
The University of Michigan’s Richard Rood used to blog about climate records for Weather Underground, but in 2014 he got sick of continuously new extremes and stopped.
“I think we need to get away from that sort of record-setting sensationalism at some level and really be getting down to the hard work,” he said, addressing the need for people to adapt to a warmer world and get serious about slashing emissions causing hotter, more extreme weather.
NOAA tracks weather observations from tens of thousands of stations throughout the U.S. and its global calculations incorporate data from more than 100,000 stations, Vose said.
When those records come in, the agency checks their quality and calculates where the numbers fit historically. NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Information in North Carolina is the arbiter of national records, while the local National Weather Service offices handle those for individual cities, Vose said.
A special international committee deals with world records and, at times, scientists disagree on the reliability of 100-year-old data. Those disagreements come into play over questions such as determining the hottest temperature recorded on Earth.
Validating records takes time. Because of a backlog of extreme weather events to analyze, officials haven’t finished approving 130 degree Fahrenheit records from 2020 and 2021 at Death Valley, Vose said.
“Our primary job is keeping score, meaning what happened? How unusual was it?” he asked. “It’s not like we take great joy in saying it was the warmest year on record. Again.”
It’s the bigger picture that matters, Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini said.
“Look at them all together in the aggregate sense of the atmospheric orchestra,” Gensini said. “There are so many clear signs that we are just not living in the same type of climate that we were.”
___
Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
https://apnews.com/climate-and-environment
https://apnews.com/article/record-breaking-heat-climate-change-environment-7bcb569321504065cbf2356a34ba8902
Sick of hearing about record heat?
Scientists say those numbers paint the story of a warming world
' Why are they breaking records from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s? Lol " ????
BY SETH BORENSTEIN
Published 3:46 AM CDT, July 22, 2023
The summer of 2023 is behaving like a broken record about broken records.
Nearly every major climate-tracking organization proclaimed June the hottest June ever.
Then July 4 became the globe’s hottest day, albeit unofficially, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. It was quickly overtaken by July 5 and July 6. Next came the hottest week, a tad more official, stamped into the books by the World Meteorological Organization and the Japanese Meteorological Agency.
With a summer of extreme weather records dominating the news, meteorologists and scientists say records like these give a glimpse of the big picture: a warming planet caused by climate change. It’s a picture that comes in the vibrant reds and purples representing heat on daily weather maps online, in newspapers and on television.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/record-breaking-heat-climate-change-environment-7bcb569321504065cbf2356a34ba8902
CLIMATE CHANGE
https://apnews.com/climate-and-environment
2020 Presidential Election Results: Biden Wins
"-- THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN! --" LOLOL
306
Joseph R. Biden Jr. Winner
81,284,666 votes (51.3%)
232
Donald J. Trump
74,224,319 votes (46.8%)
--with details and graphics
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/03/us/elections/results-president.html
---------------------
Presidential Results
Joe Biden wins election to be the 46th US President
Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes put native son Joe Biden above the 270 needed to become the 46th President of the United States. Born in Scranton, the former vice president and longtime Delaware senator defeated Donald Trump, the first President to lose a reelection bid since George H.W. Bush in 1992.
306 BIDEN
51.3%
81,284,666
232 TRUMP
46.9%
74,224,319
--with details and graphics
https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/president
------------------
EXPLAINER: Election claims, and why it’s clear Biden won
ATLANTA (AP) — As Democrat Joe Biden is sworn in Wednesday as the nation’s 46th president, Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters still believe Biden was not legitimately elected after Trump continues to argue the election was stolen.
There is no evidence of the widespread fraud that Trump and his allies have claimed. Republican and Democratic election officials have certified the election as valid.
Courts have rejected lawsuit after lawsuit, and a clear majority of Congress has confirmed the final result despite a riotous mob earlier this month that sought to disrupt the process.
So who has claimed what, precisely? What’s the evidence that the 2020 election was valid and Biden is the duly elected president of the United States?
THE ‘MOST SECURE’ ELECTION IN U.S. HISTORY
After a rocky primary season that played out during the coronavirus pandemic, election officials were determined to ensure voters could safely cast their ballots and ramped up operations to handle a massive influx of absentee ballots. Voting absentee has long been available in the U.S., with some states limiting it to certain voters, and the process has safeguards so any ineligible voter or voter casting multiple ballots is caught and prosecuted.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/election-claims-biden-won-explained-bd53b14ce871412b462cb3fe2c563f18
Speffler, Cameron Smith, Koepka, Fleetwood, Hatton 273
The week in 32 photos
Published 6:28 PM EDT, Thu July 13, 2023
Catastrophic flooding, spawned by epic rainfall, damaged or destroyed countless homes in Vermont this past week.
The worst-hit areas include Barre, Ludlow, Londonderry, Andover and the state capital, Montpelier.
The state's governor estimated Wednesday that thousands of lives have been upended.
"I know thousands of Vermonters have lost homes, businesses and more," Gov. Phil Scott said. "The devastation is far-reaching."
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for the state, and the state's public safety commissioner, Jennifer Morrison, said the recovery could take "years — if not a decade."
Here are some of the stories that made headlines over the past week, as well as some photos that caught our eye.
People look over a railing as the Ottauquechee River rises in Quechee, Vermont, on Monday, July 10.
Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Revelers stand around a cow as it enters a bull ring during the San Fermin festival in Pamplona, Spain, on Monday, July 10. The cows are released at the end of the traditional running of the bulls. They are smaller than the bulls and have padded horns. Alvaro Barrientos/AP
Lava emerges from a fissure of the Fagradalsfjall volcano near the Litli-Hrútur mountain, some 30 kilometers (19 miles) southwest of Reykjavik, Iceland, on Monday, July 10. Marco Di
Giant panda Ai Bao holds one of her babies in her mouth on Tuesday, July 11, after giving birth to twins at a theme park in Yongin, South Korea. Samsung C&T/Yonhap/Reuters
People rest at a train station in Amritsar, India, after rail services were disrupted following heavy rainfall on Tuesday, July 11. Narinder Nanu/AFP/Getty Images
. . .
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/13/world/gallery/photos-this-week-july-6-july-13-ctrp/index.html
And....I will laugh myself to sleep tonight!!!!
Mike Lindell Reveals MyPillow Has Lost $100M as He Auctions Off Equipment
BY JAMES BICKERTON ON 7/11/23 AT 9:29 AM EDT
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has claimed the company "lost $100 million" after major retailers stopped stocking its products in response to his vocal support for the discredited conspiracy theory that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. .. https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-huge-amount-hes-spent-trying-overturn-election-1800182
Due to its difficult financial situation, the company is currently selling hundreds of pieces of surplus equipment on the online auction site K-Bid, and subleasing manufacturing space.
Trump is continuing to insist the 2020 presidential contest was rigged against him, despite the claim being repeatedly rejected in court and by independent and even Republican-leaning legal experts. Special Counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether Trump broke the law in his bid to overturn the election, including his role in the January 6, 2021, storming of Congress by Trump supporters.
Speaking to the Minnesota-based newspaper Star Tribune, Lindell said MyPillow was hit with a "massive, massive cancellation" after his election fraud claims.
https://www.startribune.com/mypillow-is-auctioning-off-equipment-after-losing-many-retailers-mike-lindell-minn-2020-election/600288705/
[...]
https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-mypillow-lost-100-million-auctioning-equipment-1812211
AP Investigation
' The importance of staying angry at the Supreme Court '
Justices teach when the Supreme Court isn’t in session. It can double as an all-expenses-paid trip
By BRIAN SLODYSKO
Published 4:20 AM CDT, July 11, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-teaching-paradise-travel-46c7d9ed41a5fabc5c64579b45abdd98
--------------
Senators call for Supreme Court to follow ethics code like other branches of government
By CHRIS MEGERIAN, ERIC TUCKER and BRIAN SLODYSKO
Published 4:30 PM CDT, July 11, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-ethics-congress-durbin-john-roberts-5d357f00cfdf42b6515f2cb80db4166b
--------------
Supreme Court justices and donors mingle at campus visits. These documents show the ethical dilemmas
By BRIAN SLODYSKO and ERIC TUCKER
Published 4:05 AM CDT, July 11, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-ethics-donors-politics-4b6dc4ae23aac75d4fccb1bcff0b7e0b
--------------
Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books
By BRIAN SLODYSKO and ERIC TUCKER
Published 4:14 AM CDT, July 11, 2023
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-sotomayor-book-sales-ethics-colleges-b2cb93493f927f995829762cb8338c02
--------------
Inside the AP’s investigation into the ethics practices of the Supreme Court justices
By ERIC TUCKER and BRIAN SLODYSKO
Published 4:30 AM CDT, July 11, 2023
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Associated Press examination. .. https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-ethics-donors-politics-4b6dc4ae23aac75d4fccb1bcff0b7e0b .. of the ethics practices of the U.S. Supreme Court relied on documents obtained from more than 100 public records requests to .. https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-teaching-paradise-travel-46c7d9ed41a5fabc5c64579b45abdd98 .. public colleges, universities and other institutions that have hosted the justices over the past decade.
Here’s a look at how the reporting was done:
To conduct its review, the AP surveyed local news stories and social media and obtained data from ScotusTracker, a website that logged justices’ activities, to develop a list of appearances over the past 10 years.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-ethics-documents-conflicts-9fa2847e60e11601c872c3ba3eea12a3
US says it no longer deems Donald Trump immune from E. Jean Carroll lawsuit
By Jonathan Stempel
July 11, 20235:19 PM CDT Updated 2 hours ago
E. Jean Carroll reacts as she exits the Manhattan Federal Court following the verdict in the civil rape accusation case against former U.S. President Donald Trump, in New York City, U.S., May 9, 2023. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo
The United States Department Of Justice
NEW YORK, July 11 (Reuters) - Donald Trump suffered a legal defeat on Tuesday as the U.S. government reversed its earlier position that the former president could be immune from the writer E. Jean Carroll's $10 million defamation lawsuit against him.
In a letter to Trump's and Carroll's lawyers, the U.S. Department of Justice said it no longer believed Trump acted within the scope of his office and employment as president in June 2019, when he denied having raped Carroll in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s.
[...]
https://www.reuters.com/legal/e-jean-carroll-asks-judge-throw-out-donald-trumps-defamation-counterclaim-2023-07-11/