“Two years after John Roberts’ confirmation as the Supreme Court’s chief justice in 2005, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, made a pivot. After a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, she refashioned herself as a legal recruiter, a matchmaker who pairs job-hunting lawyers up with corporations and firms,” Insider reports.
“Roberts told a friend that the change was motivated by a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given that her husband was now the highest-ranking judge in the country…”
“And life was indeed good for the Robertses, at least for the years 2007 to 2014. During that eight-year stretch, according to internal records from her employer, Jane Roberts generated a whopping $10.3 million in commissions, paid out by corporations and law firms for placing high-dollar lawyers with them.”
“The Supreme Court is speaking with one voice in response to recent criticism of the justices’ ethical practices: No need to fix what isn’t broken,” the AP reports.
“The justices’ response on Tuesday struck some critics and ethics experts as tone deaf at a time of heightened attention on the justices’ travel and private business transactions. That comes against the backdrop of a historic dip in public approval as measured by opinion polls.”
“Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito says that he might know who leaked a draft of the opinion overturning Roe v. Wade — but doesn’t have enough proof to name them,” Insider reports.
A 2018 Senate investigation that found there was “no evidence” to substantiate any of the claims of sexual assault against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh contained serious omissions, according to new information obtained by The Guardian.
Also interesting: “A new documentary – an early version of which premiered at Sundance in January, but is being updated before its release – contains a never-before-heard recording of another Yale graduate, Max Stier, describing a separate alleged incident in which he said he witnessed Kavanaugh expose himself at a party at Yale.”
Peter Wehner: “Some of us have spent the better part of eight years warning about the incalculable damage that would be done to the United States, to its politics and culture, and to the Christian witness by those who embraced a Trumpian ethic, defined by cruelty, lawlessness, the shattering of norms and traditional boundaries, and an eagerness to annihilate truth and trust in institutions. Those warnings have been validated, those concerns vindicated. What happened on January 6 wasn’t an anomaly; it was an apotheosis.”
“Now this movement, which has taken such delight in aiming its nihilistic arrows at the Democratic Party and the Republican establishment, at media outlets and scientists, is in the process of devouring itself…”
“Lack of restraint is the essence of the Trump movement. Shattering guardrails is what they find thrilling. But what MAGA adherents forget is that those guardrails exist to protect not only others, but also ourselves from excess, self-indulgence, and self-harm.”
“Donald Trump cannot block his former vice president from testifying before a grand jury investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday,” the Washington Post reports.
“The ruling helps clear the way for Mike Pence to speak under oath about the pressure Trump put him under to declare the 2020 election results invalid. While Trump could seek to further forestall that testimony by appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, other people in the president’s orbit have testified after similar losing battles in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.”
Less than 24 hours after winning an appeals court ruling, Special Counsel Jack Smith brought former Vice President Mike Pence before a federal grand jury to testify on Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Pence has — at least publicly — appeared reluctant to testify. But some have suggested he needed the legal cover of being forced to testify. We still haven’t learned the details of what Pence told the grand jury. But his testimony suggests the investigation is coming to an end.
New York Times: “Mr. Pence is considered a key witness, given the pressure campaign that Mr. Trump engaged in to try to convince him to play a critical role in blocking or delaying congressional certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory.”
A few questions remain for Smith:
- Will he seek guilty pleas from those in Trump’s inner circle and get them to cooperate?
- Will he indict Trump before the 2024 election campaign heats up?
- Will he just drop the investigation?
Special Counsel Jack Smith has expressed interest in the 90 audio tapes recorded by former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg while she worked at the right-wing network, CNN reports. New audio shows Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) selling his plan to overthrow the 2020 election to Fox News host Maria Bartiromo — four days before the Capitol riot, the Daily Beast reports.
Two of Donald Trump’s defense lawyers now believe that classified briefings of phone calls with foreign leaders were among “all manner of documents” in 15 boxes that Trump returned to the National Archives a year after he left the presidency, CNN reports.
Washington Post: “Ken Block, founder of the firm Simpatico Software Systems, studied more than a dozen voter fraud theories and allegations for Trump’s campaign in late 2020 and found they were ‘all false.’” Said Block: “No substantive voter fraud was uncovered in my investigations looking for it, nor was I able to confirm any of the outside claims of voter fraud that I was asked to look at. Every fraud claim I was asked to investigate was false.”
“Block said he recently received a subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith’s office and met with federal prosecutors in Washington, but he declined to discuss his interactions with them. Block said he contemporaneously sent his findings disputing fraud claims in writing to the Trump campaign in late 2020.”
“Whispers are growing louder among Republicans that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has miscalculated in his battle with Disney — a struggle that has already gone on for more than a year and has no end in sight,” The Hill reports.
“There are real dangers, they say, of his fight with the corporation becoming a distraction from his likely presidential campaign — and one that could make him seem petty and vindictive rather than strong or decisive.”
“The fight between Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and the Walt Disney Company is headed to court,” the New York Times reports.
“On Wednesday, a board appointed by Mr. DeSantis to oversee government services at Disney World voted to nullify two agreements that gave Disney vast control over expansion at the 25,000-acre resort complex. Within minutes, Disney sued Mr. DeSantis, the five-member board and other state officials in federal court, claiming ‘a targeted campaign of government retaliation.’”
CNBC: “The lawsuit dramatically escalates the drawn-out feud between DeSantis, who is expected to become a top Republican contender for the 2024 presidential race, and Disney, Florida’s largest employer.”
A new Reuters/Ipsos poll finds 44% of Republican respondents said they had a more favorable view of Gov. Ron DeSantis because of his fight with Disney However, 73% of respondents — including 82% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans — said they were less likely to support a political candidate who backs laws designed to punish a company for its political or cultural stances.
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his GOP allies have moved to shield the Republican leader from the state’s notoriously robust public records laws as he prepares to launch a campaign for the White House,” CNN reports.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) “brushed off legal action taken against him by Walt Disney Co (DIS.N), describing it as politically motivated and accusing the global entertainment giant of lacking accountability and transparency,” Reuters reports. Said DeSantis: “I don’t think the suit has merit, I think it’s political.”
Nikki Haley trolled Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by suggesting Disney to move its theme park to South arolina, Insider reports. Said Haley: “We’ve got great weather, great people, and it’s always a great day in South Carolina! SC’s not woke, but we’re not sanctimonious about it either.”
Associated Press: “Facing questions this week about his standing within the GOP and his fight with Disney, he’s sometimes appeared agitated, reinforcing concerns within corners of his own party about his readiness for the rigor of presidential politics.”
“New details about the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman accused of leaking a trove of classified documents online reveal how multiple red flags went unheeded and weren’t enough to prevent the Pentagon from granting him a top-secret security clearance,” CNN reports.
“Officials across the government are now scrambling to figure out why.”
“The US government has spent years and vast sums of money overhauling the way it vets and monitors people with access to government secrets. But that didn’t stop the Pentagon from granting a top-secret security clearance to Jack Teixeira, who prosecutors say had an arsenal of weapons at home and a history of violent online rhetoric.”
“Federal prosecutors asked a judge Wednesday to continue the detention of the Air National Guardsman accused of posting a trove of classified documents to social media, saying that he posed a flight risk and that the government was still grappling with the amount of stolen classified information,” CNN reports.
“In a court filing Wednesday evening, prosecutors said that the information Jack Teixeira allegedly took ‘far exceeds’ what has been reported, and that releasing him from jail could pose a grave threat to national security.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) acknowledged the Senate has “had a little setback with Dianne” when it comes to confirming judicial nominees, but he insisted Democrats would keep up the pace despite her lengthy absence, Punchbowl News reports.
“Every single Senate Republican and Joe Manchin voted explicitly to make our air dirtier—and Dianne Feinstein helped them do it,” the New Republic reports.
“On Wednesday, by a vote of 50-49, Senate Republicans and Manchin passed a resolution to nullify an Environmental Protection Agency rule that seeks to reduce toxic air pollution from heavy-duty vehicles.”
“The EPA estimates the rule will prevent up to 2,900 deaths, 6,700 hospital and emergency room visits, and 18,000 cases of childhood asthma… And because of Feinstein’s absence, and Manchin’s continued cowardice, corporate-wedded Republicans were able to advance the bill to cancel all those benefits.”
Wall Street Journal: “Several weeks ago, as Fox News lawyers prepared for a courtroom showdown with Dominion Voting Systems, they presented Tucker Carlson with what they thought was good news: They had persuaded the court to redact from a legal filing the time he called a senior Fox News executive the c-word.”
“Mr. Carlson, Fox News’s most-watched prime-time host, wasn’t impressed. He told his colleagues that he wanted the world to know what he had said about the executive in a private message…”
“Inside Fox News, there has been a growing sense that Mr. Carlson couldn’t be managed, and viewed himself as untouchable, people familiar with the company said. Legal documents also revealed Mr. Carlson was unafraid to run roughshod over those whose views or actions he opposed.”
“Fox News has agreed to give voting technology company Smartmatic additional documents about Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch and other senior corporate executives. Smartmatic is suing the right-wing network for $2.7 billion over its airing of 2020 election lies,” CNN reports.
Tucker Carlson told the Daily Mail that “retirement is going great so far” just days after his firing from Fox News.Said Carlson: “I haven’t eaten dinner with my wife on a weeknight in seven years.”
“Viewership for the 8 p.m. hour of Fox News, a prime-time television spot occupied by Tucker Carlson for years, has plummeted by half in the days since the anchor was suddenly fired Monday,” Insider reports.
New York Times: “Private messages sent by Mr. Carlson that had been redacted in legal filings showed him making highly offensive and crude remarks that went beyond the inflammatory, often racist comments of his prime-time show and anything disclosed in the lead-up to the trial.”
“Despite the fact that Fox’s trial lawyers had these messages for months, the board and some senior executives were now learning about their details for the first time, setting off a crisis at the highest level of the company.”
New York Times: “Viewership of Newsmax remains far below that of Fox News. But its audience at certain hours has doubled, and in some time slots tripled, in the immediate aftermath of Mr. Carlson’s exit — an abrupt spike that has turned heads in conservative circles and the cable news industry.”
CBS News: What’s next for Fox News following Tucker Carlson’s unceremonious exit?
Tucker Carlson posted a cryptic video message on Twitter saying that he had realized after “stepping outside the noise for a few days” how many “genuinely nice people there are in this country.”
He added: “The other thing you notice when you take a little time off is how unbelievably stupid most of the debates on television are. They’re completely irrelevant. They mean nothing. In five years, we won’t even remember we had them. Trust me as someone who has participated in them.”
Newsmax “is doing everything it can to sweeten the deal” for Tucker Carlson to join the fledgling network — “including floating the idea of letting him program the whole channel, not just his own show,” TMZ reports.
Brian Stelter: “[Tucker Carlson and CNN’s Don Lemon] have been texting back and forth in the past few days, according to two sources with knowledge of the relationship. By ‘relationship,’ I do not mean friendship. Far from it. The two men have never met, and they likely didn’t have much to discuss until recently.”
“Whatever news gods decided that the cable television stars Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon should be fired the same week that President Biden was scheduled to give a funny speech ribbing the news media certainly were generous in providing fresh material. And Mr. Biden took advantage on Saturday night as he gleefully mocked some of his favorite foils,” the New York Times reports.
“Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, two longtime hosts and Donald Trump allies, have told friends they’re concerned they could be sacked next,” Rolling Stone reports.
“It’s not just hosts who are anxious. Other sources at and close to the network say that, in the wake of Carlson’s ouster, some Fox brass have grilled certain staff about whether they or their teams had recently blabbed to the press about Carlson’s abrupt dismissal.”
“The grilling has not stopped a steady stream of Carlson-related leaks, and Fox staff are taking steps to avoid getting caught communicating without outside sources.”
“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke Wednesday with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Moscow’s most important diplomatic partner, in the first phone call between the two leaders since the start of Russia’s invasion,” CNN reports.
“The United States is wiring Ukraine with sensors that can detect bursts of radiation from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and can confirm the identity of the attacker,” the New York Times reports.
“In part, the goal is to make sure that if Russia detonates a radioactive weapon on Ukrainian soil, its atomic signature and Moscow’s culpability could be verified.”
Wall Street Journal: “The decision to put more powerful weapons on a squadron of A-10 Warthogs was designed to give pilots a greater chance of success in destroying ammunition bunkers and other entrenched targets in Iraq and Syria, where U.S. forces have been repeatedly targeted by Iran-backed fighters.”
“The U.S. has agreed to give Seoul a greater voice in consultations on a potential American nuclear response to a North Korean attack in return for swearing off developing its own nuclear weapons,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The accord would grant South Korea’s leadership a long-sought place at the table on the use of U.S. nuclear forces to defend the country, though the U.S. would still retain control over targeting and the execution of nuclear operations.”
Associated Press: US to send nuclear ballistic submarines to Korean Peninsula.
“The writer E. Jean Carroll took the witness stand Wednesday to tell a Manhattan jury her story of how former President Donald Trump raped her one evening nearly 30 years ago in a Manhattan department store dressing room,” the New York Times reports.
Said Carroll: “I’m here because Donald Trump raped me and when I wrote about it, he said it didn’t happen. He lied and shattered my reputation, and I’m here to try and get my life back.”
“The federal judge overseeing the civil trial in which Donald Trump is accused of rape admonished the former president for a social media post in which he called the lawsuit ‘a made up SCAM,’” Politico reports.
“Trump could be ‘tampering with a new source of potential liability,’ U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan told one of Trump’s lawyers in court on Wednesday.”
Donald Trump claimed that he is under “total assault” because of his lead in the polls among current and potential GOP presidential candidates, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “DeSanctis is failing badly… It’s amazing what being 40 down does.”
He added: “The donors are largely leaving him now. What’s happening is the donors are calling me now because the donors follow the polls.”
New York Times: “Since Mr. Trump was indicted last month in a criminal case brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, his legal travails and his third presidential campaign have played out on a split screen. The courtroom dramas have taken place without news cameras present, even as the race has returned Mr. Trump to the spotlight that briefly dimmed after he left the Oval Office.”
“Ms. Carroll’s harrowing testimony, a visceral demonstration of Mr. Trump’s legal peril, has emphasized the surreal nature of the divide. Mr. Trump is the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But he has also been indicted on 34 felony false records charges, and in Ms. Carroll’s case faces a nine-person jury that will determine whether he committed rape decades ago.”
“And then there are the other investigations: for election interference, mishandling sensitive documents and his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.”
Republicans in the Montana House of Representatives voted to bar state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) from the House floor — silencing her for the rest of the 2023 session, Montana Public Radio reports.
Zephyr, who is transgender, has been blocked from speaking since last Tuesday when she told supporters of a bill to ban gender-affirming care for minors that she hoped they would see “blood on their hands.”
“Silenced by her Republican colleagues, Montana state Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) looked up from the House floor to supporters in the gallery shouting ‘Let her speak!’ and thrust her microphone into the air — amplifying the sentiment the Democratic transgender lawmaker was forbidden from expressing,” the AP reports.
“It was a brief moment of defiance and chaos. While seven people were arrested for trespassing, the boisterous demonstration was free of violence or damage. Yet later that day, a group of Republican lawmakers described it in darker tones, saying Zephyr’s actions were responsible for ‘encouraging an insurrection.’ It’s the third time in the last five weeks — and one of at least four times this year — that Republicans have attempted to compare disruptive but nonviolent protests at state capitols to insurrections.”
Montana state Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe (R), who recently sponsored a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors, suggested that she had blocked the treatment for her own daughter, even as her daughter was suicidal, the Daily Beast reports.
Said Seekins-Crowe: “Someone once asked me, ‘Wouldn’t I just do anything to help save her?’ And I really had to think and the answer was, ‘No.’”
She went on to call her daughter’s suicidal tendencies “emotional manipulation.”
President Biden said that he was “happy to meet” with Speaker Kevin McCarthy but added that raising the debt ceiling is “not negotiable” as House Republicans prepare to pass a bill that would pair a debt limit increase with government spending cuts, The Hill reports.
Politico: “While Republicans believed the plan they passed Wednesday would force Biden to the table, the White House and most congressional Democrats have brushed it off and made clear they won’t entertain the GOP’s demands.”
“Instead, both sides have retreated further into their corners, with each party planning to spend the coming days talking almost entirely to its respective base voters.”
Politico: “In the aftermath of the vote, Biden allies and advisers privately acknowledged that there’s no clear endgame to the debt ceiling standoff — and that McCarthy’s victory makes it more difficult to convince moderate Republicans to back a clean debt ceiling increase for fear of economic disaster…”
“There is recognition that the bill’s passage means Biden’s “show us your plan” dismissals will no longer cut it. Aides downplayed the idea that a meeting with Biden represents a direct reward for passing his bill, and stressed that any sitdown would include other congressional leaders.”
Associated Press: “What has become apparent, though, is that Biden’s refusal to negotiate may not be a tenable position for the White House as the deadline nears for action. While the White House is taking the long view, preparing to slam the Republicans for what Biden calls “wacko” ideas that will harm Americans, at some point the president, and the Democratic-led Senate, will need to respond to the House.”
New York Times: “This week’s vote by House Republicans to couple deep spending cuts with an agreement to raise the debt limit for one year has put President Biden on the defensive, forcing him to confront a series of potentially painful choices at a perilous economic moment…”
Playbook: “There was a time when many House watchers — us included — speculated that McCarthy was a dead man walking. After all, he’d become speaker in the most humiliating way imaginable, begging conservatives to give him a shot at his dream job over the course of 15 ballots.”
“Now, nearly four months in, McCarthy appears to have proven his naysayers wrong — at least for now. By passing a debt ceiling increase with Republican votes yesterday, he clinched a major victory that eluded his GOP predecessors Paul Ryan and John Boehner, who struggled mightily to navigate internal tensions between conservatives and moderates…”
“What’s been just as astounding is the praise McCarthy’s gotten from the members who drove the hardest bargain during the gavel fight — and stand ready to expel him should he take a false step. The plaudits continued yesterday, even after McCarthy engaged in the kind of late-night, closed-door, last-minute dealmaking that they’d demanded an end to.”
House Republicans are putting their money where their mouths are with a new ad attacking Democrats for voting against Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s debt ceiling bill, Axios reports.
“After House Republicans barely passed their debt bill, House Democrats are getting ready to pull out the playbook that worked for them in 2018 to win back the majority in 2024,” Politico reports.
“In those midterm elections, Democrats hammered Republicans over tough votes that swing seat lawmakers made on repealing Obamacare and enacting tax cuts. This time, Democrats think they’ll be able to hitch vulnerable Republicans to Wednesday’s vote pairing a debt limit hike with spending cuts.”
Paul Kane: “Washington is lurching dangerously close to a self-induced financial calamity. It’s so bad no one even agrees whether they should negotiate on raising the government’s borrowing authority…”
“One missing ingredient to all this bluster is an official deadline, something that will hopefully come very soon from Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen. Once analysts have finished the incoming and outgoing cash flows of tax season, Yellen can issue what insiders call the X date for the deadline when Treasury will run out of budget gimmicks for handling the more than $31 trillion national debt.”
“Two bills severely restricting abortion in South Carolina and Nebraska’s Republican-dominated legislatures both failed to pass on Thursday,” Axios reports.
“The results mean abortions remain legal in the two states until 22 weeks of pregnancy.”
New York Times: “Both states would have joined a growing list of Republican-dominated states with severe restrictions on abortion. So far, 14 states have active bans on nearly all abortions, though some allow exceptions for rape and danger to the life of the mother. Georgia and Florida also ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, but Florida’s ban is on hold pending a court challenge.”
“Republican legislators in Kansas have enacted what may be the most sweeping transgender bathroom law in the U.S. on Thursday, overriding the Democratic governor’s veto of the measure without having a clear idea of how their new law will be enforced,” the AP reports.
“At least eight other states have enacted laws preventing transgender people from using the restrooms associated with their gender identities, but most of them apply to schools. The Kansas law applies also to locker rooms, prisons, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers.”
“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a strict abortion ban hours after it overwhelmingly passed the Republican-led legislature this month — yet whether the law can take effect hinges on a case before the state Supreme Court,” the Washington Post reports.
“At issue is a provision in the Florida Constitution intended to protect the right to privacy, added by voters decades ago and long interpreted as a safeguard against abortion restrictions in the third most populous state.”
“But while the state’s high court has been transformed by DeSantis into a conservative stronghold, even the chief justice — whose nomination was cheered by antiabortion activists — has acknowledged that the privacy clause protects abortion.”
“Well, you can make a poster and stand out on the street, but at the end of the day all you have is a sunburn. You didn’t move the needle. You didn’t make a difference.”— Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), in an interview with The Atlantic, describing her journey from being a progressive activist in her youth to a Washington conservative.
From a profile of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) in The Atlantic: “Even in her private life, she tells me, she’s prone to slow, painstaking deliberation. I ask for an example. ‘It took me eight years to decide what to get for my first tattoo’ she offers. So what did you decide on? I ask. ‘I don’t actually want to share that.’”
“Barely a year after Democratic justices on the North Carolina Supreme Court said new maps of the state’s legislative and congressional districts were partisan gerrymanders that violated the State Constitution, a newly elected Republican majority on the court reversed course on Friday and said the court had no authority to overturn those maps,” the New York Times reports.
“The practical effect is to enable the Republican-controlled State Legislature to scrap the court-ordered State Senate and congressional district boundaries that were used in elections last November, and draw new maps skewed in their favor for elections in 2024.”
“Overturning such a recent ruling by the court was a highly unusual move, particularly on a pivotal constitutional issue in which none of the facts had changed.”
Politico: “This sets up a process that allows national Republicans to expand their majority in the House of Representatives by as many as four seats.”
“West Virginia political observers were not surprised when Sen. Joe Manchin appeared on Fox News on Monday to make a stunning threat: He could be persuaded to vote to repeal his own bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, if the Biden administration pushed him far enough,” CNN reports.
“The conservative Democratic senator reiterated this to CNN, saying he would ‘look for every opportunity to repeal my own bill’ if the administration continued to use the IRA to steer the US quickly towards the clean energy transition and away from fossil fuels.”
Punchbowl News: “Manchin hasn’t officially declared whether he’ll run for reelection in 2024, but lately he’s been acting more and more like a candidate.”
“In public statements and floor votes, Manchin is consistently breaking with his party and President Joe Biden, using language one would expect to hear from a Republican. This week, Manchin even threatened to vote to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, a law he helped craft. Manchin has been infuriated by the Biden administration’s implementation of the legislation, arguing federal agencies are ignoring clear congressional intent.”
Spain’s former King Juan Carlos had a “secret” daughter whom he tried to keep from “falling in love” with his son when the two didn’t know they were related, the Daily Beast reports.
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suspended election campaigning after he fell ill during a live TV interview in which the broadcast was abruptly brought to a halt,” the BBC reports.
“After a 20-minute break, he returned to say he had ‘serious stomach flu’ after two days of intense campaigning.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) announced on Thursday that he has received a “preliminary diagnosis of being ‘in remission’ from diffuse large B-cell lymphoma” and has finished chemotherapy, CNN reports.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is facing criticism from her Democratic colleagues after telling a stepmother she’s “not a mother,” USA Today reports.
The Texas Department of Agriculture is ordering its employees to comply with a new dress code, mandating they abide by it in a “manner consistent with their biological gender,” the Texas Observer reports.
“A federal judge in Iowa has ruled against former U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, who filed lawsuits claiming he was defamed by articles published by Esquire magazine about his family’s Iowa dairy farm,” the AP reports.
“Lawyers for Hunter Biden met with Justice Department officials on Wednesday to discuss the long-running criminal investigation into the president’s son,” CNN reports.
“Ivanka Trump replaced the lawyers defending her in a fraud suit against the New York attorney general,” Forbes reports.“Her former attorneys are still representing her brothers, Don Jr. and Eric.”
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