A federal judge ruled that multiple parts of a voting law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year are unconstitutional, striking down various provisions and prohibiting the Legislature from passing future forms of voter laws without first getting approval from a court,” the Tampa Bays Times reports.
In a sweeping 288-page order declaring the right to vote ‘under siege’ based on the Legislature’s record on voting laws, the U.S. District Judge Mark Walker on Thursday forbade lawmakers from passing future laws involving drop boxes, third-party voter registration or efforts to limit ‘line warming’ activities at polling sites without the court’s approval for the next 10 years.
Finally, someone is paying attention to Republican efforts to disenfranchise American voters.
The slap got the headlines, occurring as it did on live television, but Oscars night saw another celebrity moment that deserves attention. Jay-Z held his Oscars party at legendary Hollywood hotel Chateau Marmont, as he had pre-pandemic. The difference is that this year there was an active boycott of the hotel, and the stars attending Jay-Z’s party did so by crossing a picket line. Now, one star has said she wasn’t aware of the boycott and will honor it from now on.
The union appealed to Jay-Z asking him to find a different location for his party, but the party went on at Chateau Marmont, with heavy security as union members and allies picketed.
Workers have said that in addition to the layoffs with no severance during the pandemic, Chateau Marmont practiced racial discrimination, with Black and Latino workers less likely to be promoted and some managers making racist remarks. Workers also described being expected to tolerate routine unwanted touching by guests. Balazs himself has been accused of sexually inappropriate behavior.
What’s really disappointing is the number of stars who crossed that picket line. Inside the party, fresh off his Oscar win for Summer of Soul, Questlove was DJing. “Snoop Dogg, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Winnie Harlow, Jon Hamm, French Montana, Zoe Kravitz, P Diddy, DJ Khaled, and Oscar winner Troy Kotsur were all met by protesters before entering the bash,” Page Six reported, and “Chris Pine, Jessica Alba, Justin Timberlake, Vin Diesel, Lupita Nyong’o and Rosario Dawson also attended the bash.” Many of these—though definitely not all—are people you’d expect to see supporting workers instead of crossing picket lines.
Dawson, who has served as a campaign surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders in the past, claimed on Twitter that the picketers were gone by the time she arrived and she did not know about the boycott, pledging to respect it in future. The union called on others to join her:
But let it be noted that many celebrities had already publicly supported the boycott, including Jane Fonda, Spike Lee, Issa Rae, Gabrielle Union, Samira Wiley, Robin Thede, Ashley Nicole Black, and Alfonso Cuarón. Being the Ricardos and The Offerpulled out of plans to film at Chateau Marmont due to the boycott. This wasn’t well-hidden information that no one had previously heard about.
It is disappointing and frustrating that Jay-Z, Michael B. Jordan, Rihanna, DJ Khaled, Zoë Kravitz and other Hollywood elites chose to prioritize their party, and their fame, over real people,” said Keisha Banks, a former Chateau Marmont worker. “It might just be one party to them but these are people’s livelihoods. They could be using their celebrity to get someone like Andre Balazs to listen to his workers. Why would they want to be associated with a hotel that discriminates and cheats its employees?”
New details from White House documents provided to the House panel investigating the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, show a 7-hour gap in records of calls made by Donald Trump on the day of the riot. https://t.co/hXWt9y3Wf9
CNN is reporting that former president, Donald Trump, has openly asked the most despised man in the world, the president of Russia, to release any damaging information he has on the Biden family. You would think, by now, Trump would be grateful for all the help Russia has provided over the years. Of course, were it not for Russia, he never would have been elected president. Even after that, he continues to kiss-up to the Russian government begging for favors, and opposition research against the duly-elected President of the United States, Joseph R. Biden.
I guess anything is considered fair play in politics, but again it strikes me as treacherous that an American citizen would stoop as low as begging a foreign government to dig up (or manufacture) dirt on an American citizen. In this case we’re talking about Trump, so of course, no action is considered too low, or too treacherous.
Trump has lost his mind, and doesn’t care who knows it. His followers will believe everything he says, until his dying day. He knows that nearly half the American people are cheering for his return to power and nothing can be done to dissuade them. I guess if you know your actions have no consequences, there’s really no risk.
Just imagine this — if Trump had won the 2020 election, there’s a very real possibility the American military would be in Ukraine — supporting the Russian army!
There is something deeply broken in anyone who thinks this is justifiable or even just survivable. A SCOTUS justice’s wife was text buddies with POTUS’s chief of staff, topic: trying to interfere with the transfer of power to the next elected president. Nothing here is ok. https://t.co/BKlW5LuRhs
Pomerantz’ letter to recently elected District Attorney for New York County, Alvin Bragg.
Dear Alvin:
I write to tender my resignation as a Special Assistant District Attorney and to explain my reasons for resigning.
As you know from our recent conversations and presentations, I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the Penal Law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual Statements of Financial Condition. His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people. The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did.
Mark Pomerantz in his resignation letter
In late 2021, then-District Attorney Cyrus Vance directed a thorough review of the facts and law relating to Mr. Trump’s financial statements. Mr. Vance had been intimately involved in our investigation, attending grand jury presentations, sitting in on certain witness interviews, and receiving regular reports about the progress of the investigation. He concluded that the facts warranted prosecution, and he directed the team to present evidence to a grand jury and to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump and other defendants as soon as reasonably possible.
This work was underway when you took office as District Attorney. You have devoted significant time and energy to understanding the evidence we have accumulated with respect to the Trump financial statements, as well as the applicable law. You have reached the decision not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges at the present time. The investigation has been suspended indefinitely. Of course, that is your decision to make. I do not question your authority to make it, and I accept that you have made it sincerely. However, a decision made in good faith may nevertheless be wrong. I believe that your decision not to prosecute Donald Trump now, and on the existing record, is misguided and completely contrary to the public interest. I therefore cannot continue in my current position.
In my view, the public interest warrants the criminal prosecution of Mr. Trump, and such a prosecution should be brought without any further delay. Because of the complexity of the facts, the refusal of Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization to cooperate with our investigation, and their affirmative steps to frustrate our ability to follow the facts, this investigation has already consumed a great deal of time. As to Mr. Trump, the great bulk of the evidence relates to his management of the Trump Organization before he became President of the United States. These facts are already dated, and our ability to establish what happened may erode with the further passage of time. Many of the salient facts have been made public in proceedings brought by the Office of the Attorney General, and the public has rightly inquired about the pace of our investigation. Most importantly, the further passage of time will raise additional questions about the failure to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his criminal conduct.
To the extent you have raised issues as to the legal and factual sufficiency of our case and the likelihood that a prosecution would succeed, I and others have advised you that we have evidence sufficient to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and we believe that the prosecution would prevail if charges were brought and the matter were tried to an impartial jury. No case is perfect. Whatever the risks of bringing the case may be, I am convinced that a failure to prosecute will pose much greater risks in terms of public confidence in the fair administration of justice. As I have suggested to you, respect for the rule of law, and the need to reinforce the bedrock proposition that “no man is above the law,” require that this prosecution be brought even if a conviction is not certain.
I also do not believe that suspending the investigation pending future developments will lead to a stronger case or dispel your reluctance to bring charges. No events are likely to occur that will alter the nature of the case or dramatically change the quality or quantity of the evidence available to the prosecution. There are always additional facts to be pursued. But the investigative team that has been working on this matter for many months does not believe that it makes law enforcement sense to postpone a prosecution in the hope that additional evidence will somehow emerge. On the contrary, I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating.
I fear that your decision means that Mr. Trump will not be held fully accountable for his crimes. I have worked too hard as a lawyer, and for too long, now to become a passive participant in what I believe to be a grave failure of justice. I therefore resign from my position as a Special Assistant District Attorney, effective immediately.
(Statement from former president, Donald J. Trump on ‘Save America’ letterhead)
Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went “woke” and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, “Put that behind you, put that behind you” despite the fact that the Election was rife with fraud and irregularities. If we forget, the Radical Left Democrats will continue to Cheat and Steal Elections. Just look at what is happening in Wisconsin, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and elsewhere, but tremendous progress has been made that will help us in 2022 and 2024. The 2020 Election was rigged, and we can’t let them get away with it.
When I endorsed Mo Brooks, he took a 44-point lead and was unstoppable. He then hired a new campaign staff who “brilliantly” convinced him to “stop talking about the 2020 Election.” He listened to them. Then, according to the polls, Mo’s 44-point lead totally evaporated all based on his “2020” statement made at our massive rally in Cullman, Alabama. When I heard his statement, I said, “Mo, you just blew the Election, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Very sad but, since he decided to go in another direction, so have I, and I am hereby withdrawing my Endorsement of Mo Brooks for the Senate. I don’t think the great people of Alabama will disagree with me. Election Fraud must be captured and stopped, or we won’t have a Country anymore. I will be making a new Endorsement in the near future!
############
Of course, as any who follows this election knows, Brooks was going to lose this election, anyway. Trump will now take credit for endorsing whoever appears to be the likely winner and insist Brooks would have won with his support. In fact, polling completed shortly before Trump withdrew his endorsement showed Brooks in a distant third place behind Katie Britt and Mike Durant. Brooks wasn’t going to win with Trump’s endorsement, and he certainly isn’t going to win without it.
Another Republican discarded when they no longer served the needs of their fearless leader. Hopefully Mo can enjoy some time down in Alabama reminiscing with his friend, Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions III, the former Attorney General who met a similar fate.
The group of allegedly unaffiliated truck drivers who recently converged on the Washington, D.C. beltway, via Hagerstown, Maryland, claims to be protesting vaccine mandates (efforts to keep people healthy and safe), but at closer look, it seems their motivation have less to do with their stated passion of-the-day, and instead just more of the same grievances poorly-educated whites have had for centuries. It’s not they’ve tried to hide it. Or, if they have, they’ve door a very poor job of it.
For example, take a speaker at their gathering place at the Hagerstown Speedway.
On Friday morning, a man onstage at the rally site launched into a verbal attack against Black Lives Matter Plaza, urging the crowd to go into D.C and vandalize it. “Everybody needs to go to D.C. now,” the man, who did not identify himself, said Friday.
“Black Lives Matter Street, we’re gonna take it back. All that paint’s coming off that street. Before I get put in my grave, it’s going to get tar and feathers, and then we’re going to tar and feather all our delegates,” the man said. That afternoon, members of the convoy drove their bobtail trucks through Black Lives Matter Plaza.
So, don’t be mislead. This isn’t about vaccine mandates, which are expiring as these idiots drive their fuel-guzzling trucks in a circle around metropolitan Washington, D.C.. This is more to do with a problem that Americans have dealt with before this country was founded. They prove it every day.
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