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  • Hurd says he won’t sign GOP presidential debate pledge | CNN Politics

    Hurd says he won’t sign GOP presidential debate pledge | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who announced his 2024 Republican presidential campaign earlier Thursday with an anti-Donald Trump message, said he won’t sign the Republican National Committee’s pledge to back the party’s ultimate nominee in order to participate in primary debates.

    “I won’t be signing any kind of pledges, and I don’t think parties should be trying to rig who should be on a debate stage,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Thursday evening.

    “I am not in the business of lying to the American people in order to get a microphone, and I’m not going to support Donald Trump. And so I can’t honestly say I’m going to sign something even if he may or may not be the nominee,” he added.

    Hurd joins a crowded field looking to challenge Trump, the front-runner for the nomination, and he admitted it’ll be “difficult for a dark-horse candidate like me.”

    An undercover CIA officer before entering politics, Hurd has been outspoken in his criticism of Trump following his indictment on federal charges over alleged mishandling of classified documents. Asked if the former president, who has pleaded not guilty to all charges, betrayed the country, Hurd said, “100% he did.”

    Hurd told Collins that if the allegations are true, “It’s slapping the men and women who put themselves in harm’s way every single night in order to keep us safe.”

    Hurd launched his campaign earlier in the day calling for “common sense.”

    “This is a decision that my wife and I decided to do because we live in complicated times and we need common sense,” he said on CBS earlier Thursday morning.

    “There are a number of generational defining challenges that we’re faced with in the United States of America – everything from the Chinese government trying to surpass us as the global superpower, the fact that inflation is persistent at a time when technologies like artificial intelligence is going to upend every single industry, and our kids, their scores in math, science and reading are the lowest they’ve ever been in this century,” the former congressman said.

    “These are the issues we should be talking about. And to be frank, I’m pissed that we’re not talking about these things,” Hurd added in the CBS interview.

    Besides Trump, Republican presidential contenders also include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and conservative talk radio host Larry Elder.

    “Too many of these candidates in this race are afraid of Donald Trump,” Hurd said on CBS of the GOP primary field.

    Hurd added that, if elected to the White House, he would not pardon Trump should the former president be convicted, adding that he thought it was “insane” that other candidates were open to the idea.

    Ramaswamy has committed to pardoning Trump if he’s elected president. Haley, Suarez and Elder have also suggested they would be inclined to do so.

    Hurd was a rare Republican critic of Trump during his time in Congress from 2015 to 2021. Representing a swing district in Texas that covered the largest stretch of the US-Mexico border of any congressional seat, he opposed Trump’s border wall and argued it was less effective than other forms of border security.

    Hurd was one of four House Republicans in 2019 to vote in support of a resolution condemning Trump’s racist tweets targeting four Democratic congresswomen of color. He also authored a New York Times op-ed in 2018 arguing that Trump was being manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Despite his outspoken criticism, Hurd said in 2019 that he would vote for Trump the following year were he to be the GOP nominee.

    Hurd had been fueling speculation about a potential presidential run with trips to early-voting primary states in recent months. Hurd was in New Hampshire last week and told local station WMUR 9 he was evaluating whether his candidacy would have a path to the GOP nomination. In January, he spoke at the annual meeting of the New Hampshire Republican Party – the same event where Trump kicked off his 2024 campaigning. Hurd also visited Iowa for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s spring event that included several other 2024 GOP hopefuls.

    Hurd was the only Black Republican in the House when he announced in 2019 that he would not seek reelection and instead pursue opportunities outside government to “solve problems at the nexus between technology and national security.” Hurd served in the CIA for almost a decade before coming to Congress. As a congressman, he served on the House Intelligence Committee, which is charged with oversight of the US intelligence community.

    Hurd first ran for Congress in 2010, losing to Quico Canseco in a runoff for the GOP nomination. Four years later, Hurd defeated Canseco, by then a former congressman, in another primary runoff before narrowly unseating Democratic Rep. Pete Gallego in the general election. He was narrowly reelected in 2016 and 2018, defeating Gallego and Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, respectively.

    This story has been updated with Hurd’s interview on CNN.

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  • How the ‘independent state legislature’ theory, now rejected by SCOTUS, fueled chaos in 2020 and could influence 2024 | CNN Politics

    How the ‘independent state legislature’ theory, now rejected by SCOTUS, fueled chaos in 2020 and could influence 2024 | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a controversial legal theory that would’ve given partisan state lawmakers nearly unchecked power over US elections.

    Former President Donald Trump and his staunch allies used the now-rejected “independent state legislature” theory to justify their attempts to overturn the 2020 election. And many Trump critics warned that, without action from the Supreme Court, these same vulnerabilities would threaten the 2024 election.

    In a case about North Carolina redistricting, the Supreme Court ruled that state courts and other state entities can review laws passed by state legislatures setting rules for federal elections. The court’s majority – a coalition of three conservatives with the three-justice liberal bloc – rejected the GOP-backed theory that elected politicians have unreviewable authority to set election rules.

    One of the reasons Republicans might want to shift power to state legislatures is because their party has a structural advantage on that front. Republicans currently control the legislatures in four states that Joe Biden carried in 2020 – Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and New Hampshire – and they control two additional statehouses in the battleground states of North Carolina and Florida.

    States across the country adjusted their election rules in 2020, while the Covid-19 pandemic was raging and before vaccines were available. The changes included adding dropboxes in populated areas and easing the rules for when mail-in ballots can be accepted, among other things.

    Many of these tweaks were implemented by state courts, governors, secretaries of state and other state election administrators. But according to the “independent state legislature” theory, these rule changes were illegal, because they didn’t come directly from the state legislature.

    This is what formed the basis of many of Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

    Trump allies, like right-wing lawyer John Eastman, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, used this theory to argue Biden’s victories in key states were illegitimate because they “unlawfully” conducted elections or “failed to follow their own laws.”

    This legal theory fueled their unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to nullify millions of votes, and their attempt to reject Biden’s electors when Congress tallied the electoral votes on January 6, 2021.

    Still, after the 2020 debacle, conservative legal figures kept up the fight, perhaps with an eye toward 2024. Top Republicans, including Trump and House GOP leaders, continued to peddle the theory. Eastman filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the North Carolina case, urging the justices to give state legislatures full control over elections.

    “Federal courts overwhelmingly rejected those Republican arguments before and after the 2020 elections, and the Supreme Court today put the issue to bed,” said R. Stanton Jones, a lawyer who argued against the theory when the case was before the North Carolina Supreme Court.

    The high court’s ruling will have a significant impact on the 2024 presidential election, because it closes off some legal pathways for Trump to once again undermine the electoral process.

    For starters, there is now Supreme Court precedent rejecting some of the more maximalist but unsettled theories that have been championed by Eastman and other GOP lawyers. (Never mind the fact that amid the 2020 chaos, even Eastman admitted that his harebrained legal proposals would be unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court, as CNN recently reported.)

    But the somewhat limited ruling leaves plenty of avenues for future election-related challenges, regarding how districts are drawn, the deadlines for mail-in ballots, and other key questions.

    Legal scholars observed Tuesday that the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, specifically said federal courts have “a duty to exercise judicial review” over state court decisions that influence federal elections. But the majority opinion didn’t set the ground rules.

    “By not setting a clear standard for when state courts would go too far in the future, the decision leaves open a number of questions that will have to be resolved in future election-related disputes,” said Steve Vladeck, a CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

    Indeed, Adam Kincaid, who leads a national GOP redistricting group, said in a statement that Tuesday’s ruling “should serve as a warning to state courts inclined to reach beyond the constitutional bounds of judicial review,” signaling that there are plenty of lawsuits to come.

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  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says justices are ‘destroying the legitimacy’ of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says justices are ‘destroying the legitimacy’ of the Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said Sunday that some Supreme Court justices are “destroying the legitimacy of the court,” amid a lack of oversight, calling it “profoundly dangerous” for democracy.

    “We have a broad level of tools to deal with misconduct, overreach and abuse of power, and the Supreme Court has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy,” Ocasio-Cortez told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    The progressive lawmaker cited recent allegations against Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas over ethics improprieties. Her comments come as the court wrapped up its term with a slew of consequential rulings, including ending affirmative action for college admissions, clocking student loan debt relief and limiting LGBTQ protections.

    Alito did not disclose a luxury 2008 trip he took in which a hedge fund billionaire flew him on a private jet, even though the businessman would later repeatedly ask the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf, ProPublica reported. In a highly unusual move, Alito preemptively disputed the nature of the report before it published last month.

    Thomas, meanwhile, has fielded sharp criticism after a separate ProPublica report detailed his relationship with GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, including luxury travel and other lavish gifts that Thomas received from Crow, as well as Crow’s purchase from Thomas and his family the home where the justice’s mother still lives.

    The real estate transaction and the bulk of the hospitality went unreported on Thomas’ annual financial disclosures, as did Crow’s reported payments for the tuition of a grandnephew of the justice.

    Thomas has defended the omission of the Crow-financed travel from his reports, saying he was advised at the time that he was not required to report the hospitality.

    “If Chief Justice Roberts will not come before the Congress for an investigation voluntarily, I believe we should be considering subpoenas, we should be considering investigations, we should pass much more binding and stringent ethics guidelines,” Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday.

    Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, previously said his committee would mark up legislation on Supreme Court ethics after lawmakers return from their July 4 recess. Durbin had also asked Chief Justice John Roberts to appear before the Judiciary panel – a request that Roberts declined in April.

    Ocasio-Cortez on Sunday also called on the Biden administration to keep pursuing student loan cancellation after the Supreme Court blocked the president’s student loan forgiveness plan Friday, rejecting a program aimed at delivering up to $20,000 of relief to millions of borrowers.

    “People should not be incurring interest during this 12-month on-ramp period,” she said, referring to the administration’s proposal to help borrowers avoid penalties if they miss a payment during the first 12 months after student loan repayments resume in October.

    “So, I highly urge the administration to consider suspending those interest payments. Of course, we still believe in pursuing student loan cancellation and acting faster than that 12-month period wherever possible.”

    “We truly believe that the president – Congress has given the president this authority. The Supreme Court is far overreaching their authority. And I believe, frankly, that we really need to be having conversations about judicial review as a check on the courts as well,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

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  • EU blesses transatlantic data sharing deal | CNN Business

    EU blesses transatlantic data sharing deal | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The European Union on Monday gave final approval to an agreement with the US government that restores the ability for thousands of businesses to easily transfer the personal information of European citizens to servers located in the United States, and vice versa, in the face of surveillance concerns by privacy advocates.

    The decision resolves, for now, years of uncertainty about the future of transatlantic data flows that US officials say support more than $1 trillion in annual economic activity. Those data flows had been threatened when a previous EU-US agreement was struck down in 2020 by Europe’s top court over insufficient privacy protections for EU citizens.

    With the EU’s approval, the new agreement again allows businesses to transfer European data to the United States as if it were another EU member state, without requirements to implement additional privacy safeguards.

    Monday’s so-called “adequacy decision” by the European Commission paves the way for companies to sign up for the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, which entered into force the same day.

    EU officials said the new framework improves upon its predecessor by tying in an executive order signed by President Joe Biden last year limiting how US intelligence agencies may access European citizens’ personal information.

    The order also provided for the creation of a new court-like body that can force US companies to delete EU citizens’ data if an investigation determines that EU citizens’ privacy rights were violated. EU citizens will be able to file individual complaints to the Data Protection Review Court.

    In a statement, EU President Ursula von der Leyen called the US enhancements “unprecedented.”

    “Today we take an important step to provide trust to citizens that their data is safe, to deepen our economic ties between the EU and the US, and at the same time to reaffirm our shared values,” von der Leyen said. “It shows that by working together, we can address the most complex issues.”

    But civil liberties advocates on Monday sharply criticized the framework as too similar to “Privacy Shield,” the agreement struck down in 2020, signaling that the new framework is likely to be tested with its own court challenges.

    “Guess what: it is largely a copy of the old principles!” tweeted Max Schrems, the privacy activist who led the charge that resulted in Privacy Shield’s nullification.

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  • Plaintiffs in high-profile redistricting case urge judges to toss out Alabama’s controversial congressional map | CNN Politics

    Plaintiffs in high-profile redistricting case urge judges to toss out Alabama’s controversial congressional map | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Civil rights groups representing plaintiffs in a high-profile congressional redistricting case are urging a federal court in Alabama to reject a controversial new map crafted by the Republican-dominated legislature, saying it perpetuates a violation of the nation’s landmark voting rights law.

    In a late-night court filing Friday, the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund and multiple attorneys asked a three-judge panel to direct an official to devise a new map that complies with the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

    The plaintiffs in the case said legislators who drew and approved the maps didn’t comply with a court mandate to create a second congressional district where Black voters have an opportunity to elect their preferred candidates.

    Instead, they argued, lawmakers were “focused on pleasing national leaders whose objective is to maintain the Republican Party’s slim majority in the US House.”

    State officials, who have defended the map as fair, have until August 4 to respond to the new filings.

    The dispute has drawn national attention after critics accused Alabama legislators of openly defying the US Supreme Court and its directive to give Black voters more political power in the state.

    And the outcome of the legal battle in Alabama – along with court skirmishes in several other states over congressional redistricting – could help determine whether Republicans retain their slim majority in the House after next year’s elections.

    In this case, the Republican supermajority in the Alabama legislature approved a new map on July 21, weeks after the US Supreme Court said that an existing map – with just one majority-Black congressional district out of seven in a state where Black residents make up 27% of the population – likely violated the decades-old federal voting law by diluting the voting power of Black residents. The high court, by a 5-4 majority, affirmed a lower court decision that had ordered the state to redraw the congressional maps to include a second majority-Black district or “something quite close to it.”

    But the map approved this month and signed into law by Alabama’s GOP Gov. Kay Ivey instead boosted the share of Black voters in the majority-White 2nd Congressional District from roughly 30% to nearly 40%. It also reduced the Black voting-age population in the state’s only majority-Black district to around 50% from about 55%.

    Voting rights experts say the state has a history of racially polarized voting, making it harder for candidates favored by Black voters to win in a district where Black residents account for less than 50% of the voting-age population.

    “The new CD2 … does not provide Black voters a realistic opportunity to election their preferred candidate in any but the most extreme situations,” the plaintiffs argued in the new filings.

    In Alabama, most Black voters have supported Democrats. If the federal judges approve a map with a second majority-Black district, that could result in two Democrats representing the state in the House.

    House Republicans hold just a narrow edge on Democrats, and the Supreme Court’s decision in the Alabama case has given Democrats fresh optimism that their side will prevail in legal fights aimed at increasing the share of Black voters in congressional districts in Louisiana, Georgia and several other states.

    In a sign of the high political stakes, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has weighed in on the debate and told reporters that he spoke to Alabama lawmakers as they met for the special session to redraw the map to comply with the court order.

    The Justice Department filed a so-called “statement of interest” on Friday but did not side with any party in the dispute. The agency outlined factors the judges should consider in its analysis and called on the court to impose its own map if it determines that the one drawn by lawmakers violated the Voting Rights Act.

    A court hearing on objections to the legislature’s map is set for August 14.

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  • Biden’s student loan forgiveness program faces a new threat from Senate Republicans | CNN Politics

    Biden’s student loan forgiveness program faces a new threat from Senate Republicans | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program may face a new threat from Senate Republicans even before the US Supreme Court rules on whether it can be implemented.

    Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Joni Ernst of Iowa and John Cornyn of Texas are planning to introduce a resolution to overturn Biden’s debt relief program, which promises up to $20,000 of debt relief for eligible borrowers, as soon as this week.

    Biden would very likely veto the measure if it succeeds in both the Senate and House. But votes would force members of his own party, who have not all been in support of the student loan forgiveness program, to take a public stance.

    The program is currently blocked. The Supreme Court is expected to issue its ruling in late June or early July.

    “President Biden’s student loan scheme does not ‘forgive’ debt, it just transfers the burden from those who willingly took out loans to those who never went to college, or sacrificed to pay their loans off,” Cassidy said in a statement.

    The Republican senators plan to introduce their resolution using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to roll back regulations from the executive branch without needing to clear the 60-vote threshold in the Senate that is necessary for most legislation.

    It was unclear whether the Congressional Review Act would apply to Biden’s student loan forgiveness program until the Government Accountability Office made a determination on the matter earlier this month.

    Biden issued his first veto last week concerning a retirement investment resolution, which was also brought under the Congressional Review Act.

    While many key Democratic lawmakers have urged Biden to cancel some federal student loan debt, not every member of the party has been supportive.

    Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat from Nevada who won a competitive reelection race last year, has previously been critical of Biden’s forgiveness plan.

    “I’ll review the full text of the CRA when it is released, but like I said before, I disagree with President Biden’s executive action on student loans because it doesn’t address the root problems that make college unaffordable,” she said in a statement sent to CNN.

    Her statement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

    Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has previously called Biden’s student loan forgiveness program “excessive.” His office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

    Biden’s one-time student debt forgiveness program is estimated to cost $400 billion over time.

    Individual borrowers who made less than $125,000 in either 2020 or 2021 and married couples or heads of households who made less than $250,000 a year could see up to $10,000 of their federal student loan debt forgiven.

    If a qualifying borrower also received a federal Pell grant while enrolled in college, the individual is eligible for up to $20,000 of debt forgiveness. Pell grants are awarded to students from very low-income families who are more likely to struggle paying back their student loans.

    While the debt relief would help borrowers with student loans now, the program wouldn’t change the cost of college in the future – and some critics argue that it could even lead to an increase in tuition. A separate proposal from Biden, expected to take effect later this year, would create a new income-driven repayment plan that could lower monthly payments for both current and future borrowers.

    The legal challengers to the student loan forgiveness program argue that the Biden administration is abusing its power and using the Covid-19 pandemic as a pretext for fulfilling the president’s campaign pledge to cancel student debt.

    The White House has said that it received 26 million applications before a lower court in Texas put a nationwide block on the program in November, and that 16 million of those applications have been approved for relief – though no debt has been canceled yet. It’s possible the government moves quickly to forgive those debts if it gets the green light from the Supreme Court.

    If the justices strike down Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, it could be possible for the administration to make some modifications to the policy and try again – though that process could take months.

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  • Donald Trump has been indicted following an investigation into a hush money payment scheme. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics

    Donald Trump has been indicted following an investigation into a hush money payment scheme. Here’s what we know | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump’s indictment by a New York grand jury has thrust the nation into uncharted political, legal and historical waters, and raised a slew of questions about how the criminal case will unfold.

    The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has been investigating Trump in connection with his alleged role in a hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving adult film star Stormy Daniels that dates to the 2016 presidential election.

    Though the indictment – which has been filed under seal – has yet to be unveiled, Trump and his allies have already torn into Bragg and the grand jury’s decision, blasting it as “Political Persecution and Election Interference at the highest level in history.”

    Here’s what we know about Trump’s indictment so far.

    Trump faces more than 30 counts related to business fraud in the indictment, CNN has reported. It remains under seal.

    The investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office began when Trump was still in the White House and relates to a $130,000 payment made by Trump’s then-personal attorney Michael Cohen to Daniels in late October 2016, days before the 2016 presidential election, to silence her from going public about an alleged affair with Trump a decade earlier. Trump has denied the affair.

    A target in the probe has been the payment made to Daniels and the Trump Organization’s reimbursement to Cohen.

    According to court filings when Cohen faced federal criminal charges, Trump Org. executives authorized payments to him totaling $420,000 to cover his original $130,000 payment and tax liabilities and reward him with a bonus. The company noted the reimbursements as a legal expense in its internal books. Trump has denied knowledge of the payment.

    Hush money payments aren’t illegal. Ahead of the indictment, prosecutors were weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying the business records of the Trump Organization for how it reflected the reimbursement of the payment to Cohen, who said he advanced the money to Daniels. Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor in New York.

    Prosecutors were also weighing whether to charge Trump with falsifying business records in the first degree for falsifying a record with the intent to commit another crime or to aid or conceal another crime, which in this case could be a violation of campaign finance laws. That is a Class E felony and carries a sentence of a minimum of one year and as much as four years. To prove the case, prosecutors would need to show Trump intended to commit a crime.

    Trump was caught off guard by the grand jury’s decision to indict him, according to a person who spoke directly with him. While the former president was bracing for an indictment last week, he began to believe news reports that a potential indictment was weeks – or more – away.

    The former president has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the matter and continued his attacks on Bragg and other Democrats following news of the indictment.

    “I believe this Witch-Hunt will backfire massively on Joe Biden,” the former president said in a statement Thursday. “The American people realize exactly what the Radical Left Democrats are doing here. Everyone can see it. So our Movement, and our Party – united and strong – will first defeat Alvin Bragg, and then we will defeat Joe Biden, and we are going to throw every last one of these Crooked Democrats out of office so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

    The former president had first been asked to surrender Friday in New York, his lawyer said, but his defense said more time was needed and he’s expected in court on Tuesday.

    As for the former president’s initial court appearance, it’ll look, in some ways, like that of any other defendant, and in others, look very different.

    First appearances are usually public proceedings. If an arrest of a defendant is not needed, arrangements are made with them or their lawyers for a voluntary surrender to law enforcement. With their first appearance in court, defendants are usually booked and finger-printed. And if a first appearance is also an arraignment, a plea is expected to be entered.

    Trump will have to go through certain processes that any other defendant must go through when a charge has been brought against him. But Trump’s status as a former president who is currently running for the White House again will undoubtedly inject additional security and practical concerns around the next steps in his case.

    Yes. This is the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges.

    That alone makes it historic. But Trump is currently a few months into his third White House bid, and his criminal case jolts the 2024 presidential campaign into a new phase, as the former president has vowed to keep running in the face of criminal charges.

    That’s one of many big questions here. So far, a number of congressional Republicans have rallied to Trump’s defense, attacking Bragg on Twitter and accusing the district attorney of a political witch hunt.

    “Outrageous,” tweeted House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, one of the Republican committee chairmen who has demanded Bragg testify before Congress about the Trump investigation.

    Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, called the indictment “completely unprecedented” and said it is “a catastrophic escalation in the weaponization of the justice system.”

    And as part of the response to the indictment, Trump and his team will be rolling out surrogates beginning to hit Democrats, the investigation and Bragg across various forms of media as they work to shape the public narrative, according to sources close to Trump.

    Yes.

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  • Federal judge rules Google tried to ‘hide the ball’ by deleting chat logs in a big antitrust case | CNN Business

    Federal judge rules Google tried to ‘hide the ball’ by deleting chat logs in a big antitrust case | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Google intentionally sought to “hide the ball” in a high-profile antitrust case by automatically deleting employee chat messages that could have been used as evidence in the suit, a federal judge ruled Tuesday, dealing a blow to the tech giant.

    The ruling condemns Google’s document preservation practices and their impact on litigation, which could have a broader impact as the company defends a range of suits on multiple fronts.

    Google will not face immediate sanctions for its missteps apart from having to cover the legal fees that plaintiffs incurred in bringing the sanctions motion, wrote Judge James Donato in his order. A non-monetary penalty could still be imposed following further court proceedings. But Donato repeatedly criticized Google this week for trying to keep sensitive chat logs out of the record.

    “The Court concludes that Google intended to subvert the discovery process, and that Chat evidence was ‘lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation’ and ‘with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation,’” Donato wrote.

    In what Donato described as a “fundamental problem,” Google appeared to turn a blind eye to employees’ liberal use of a chat feature that deletes the logs after 24 hours, according to the ruling. The feature enabled Google employees to have conversations about topics relevant to its app store practices — and the topic of the lawsuit — with greater confidence the messages would not be used in court. Employees were also given the discretion to determine for themselves what constituted conversations that needed to be preserved, Donato wrote.

    That was “in sharp contrast” to how Google automatically preserves company emails that are subject to a litigation hold, he added, saying that Google omitted any mention of its practices surrounding chats until it was specifically forced to address the matter by the plaintiffs’ sanctions motion.

    The Justice Department has filed a similar sanctions motion against Google in an ongoing antitrust suit over Google’s search business. Though that case is unfolding in a different federal court, Donato’s ruling Tuesday could give other courts more ammunition to reach the same conclusion.

    In a statement, Google said it has endeavored to meet its discovery obligations.

    “Our teams have conscientiously worked, for years, to respond to Epic and the state AGs’ discovery requests and we have produced over three million documents, including thousands of chats,” said a Google spokexperson. “We’ll continue to show the court how choice, security, and openness are built into Android and Google Play.”

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  • Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe testifies to grand jury in January 6 probe | CNN Politics

    Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe testifies to grand jury in January 6 probe | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe testified before a federal grand jury Thursday in Washington, DC, as part of the special counsel’s criminal probe into the aftermath of the 2020 election.

    Former President Donald Trump had sought to block testimony from Ratcliffe and other top officials from his administration, but courts have rejected his executive privilege claims.

    The investigation led by special counsel Jack Smith has focused on January 6, 2021, and other efforts to overturn the presidential election.

    Ratcliffe is likely of interest to investigators because he personally told Trump and his allies that there was no evidence of foreign election interference or widespread fraud.

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  • Here’s what you can do if you lose Medicaid coverage | CNN Politics

    Here’s what you can do if you lose Medicaid coverage | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Though millions of Americans are expected to be kicked off of Medicaid in coming months, they don’t all have to be left uninsured.

    But it could take some work to regain health coverage.

    “For a lot of people, this can be a very disruptive period of time,” said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University. “There is a significant time and paperwork burden being placed on families – a lot of them very low income, a lot of them medically vulnerable.”

    States are now free to terminate the Medicaid coverage of residents they deem ineligible. States had been barred from involuntarily removing anyone for the past three years as part of an early congressional Covid-19 pandemic relief package, causing enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program to balloon to more than 92 million people.

    Of the roughly 15 million people who could lose Medicaid coverage over the next 14 months, about 8.2 million would no longer qualify, according to a Department of Health and Human Services analysis released in August.

    Some 2.7 million of these folks would qualify for enhanced federal subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies that could bring their monthly premiums to as low as $0.

    Another 5 million are expected to secure other coverage, mainly through employers.

    Some 6.8 million people, however, will be disenrolled even though they remain eligible for Medicaid.

    Check out Obamacare policies: Folks who lose their Medicaid coverage can shop for health insurance plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

    Those whose annual incomes remain below 150% of the federal poverty level – $20,385 for a single person and $41,625 for a family of four in 2023 – can obtain enhanced federal assistance to lower their premiums to as little as $0 a month. That beefed-up subsidy is in place through 2025.

    Many people with higher incomes can find subsidized policies for $10 or less.

    State Medicaid agencies are tasked with easing residents’ transfer from Medicaid to the Obamacare marketplaces, but the smoothness of the process will vary greatly by state. Once someone is determined to no longer qualify for Medicaid, the agency must assess his or her eligibility for Affordable Care Act coverage and transfer the resident’s information to the exchange.

    Some states that run their own Obamacare exchanges are taking extra steps to ensure their residents remain covered. Rhode Island, for instance, is automatically enrolling certain people in marketplace coverage. It’s also paying the first two months of premiums for some residents who actively select policies.

    Those who lose Medicaid coverage and live in the 33 states covered by the federal marketplace, healthcare.gov, can apply for Affordable Care Act policies through a special enrollment period that runs through July 2024. State-based exchanges have their own deadlines, with some mirroring the federal exchange and others providing much shorter windows.

    Navigators and insurance brokers can help consumers select plans.

    Historically, very few people who lose Medicaid coverage wind up in Obamacare plans. About 4% of adults who were terminated from Medicaid enrolled in exchange policies in 2018, according to the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission.

    The coverage differs too. Those that switch to the marketplace may have to find other doctors that are in their insurers’ networks and may face out-of-pocket costs.

    Consider job-based coverage: A number of people who are terminated from Medicaid may already be covered by their employers, particularly those who started new jobs during the pandemic. Others have the option of obtaining coverage through work, though it will almost certainly be more expensive than Medicaid since it will likely entail premiums, deductibles and copays.

    Workers may find they can afford coverage for themselves but not for their families. If the premiums for family policies cost more than 9.12% of household income, spouses and children may be able to get subsidized coverage on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

    Employees should contact their human resources departments to sign up. Typically, they’ll have to enroll within 60 days of losing Medicaid, but those who are terminated from the program between now and July 10 will have until early September to sign up.

    See if you or your children remain eligible for Medicaid: Millions of Americans who still qualify for Medicaid may lose coverage for procedural reasons. For example, they may have moved so they don’t receive the redetermination notices. Or they may not return the necessary paperwork to prove their eligibility.

    So it’s crucial that folks update their contact information with their state agencies and reply to the letters they receive about renewing their Medicaid eligibility.

    “When you get that packet in the mail, respond to it promptly,” Corlette said.

    Those who are dropped have 90 days to submit their renewal paperwork to their state agency, which is required to reinstate them if they are found eligible. Beyond that time period, people may reapply. In most states, your coverage can be made retroactive for up to three months if you were eligible and received Medicaid-covered services.

    Parents who no longer qualify and are terminated should check if their children remain eligible. As many as 6.7 million kids are at risk of losing Medicaid coverage, according to Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families.

    Nearly three-quarters of the children projected to be dropped will remain eligible for Medicaid or CHIP but will lose coverage mainly because of administrative issues. Black and Latino children and families are more likely to be erroneously terminated, according to the center.

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  • Accused January 6 rioter fired shots at police during standoff ahead of arrest, court documents say | CNN Politics

    Accused January 6 rioter fired shots at police during standoff ahead of arrest, court documents say | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Texas man facing charges in connection to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol opened fire on law enforcement officers last week when they arrived at his house in the Dallas area for a welfare check, according to an affidavit.

    Nathan Donald Pelham, who is charged with misdemeanors for entering the restricted Capitol building and disorderly conduct, now faces a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm after opening fire on authorities from Hunt County Sheriff’s Office, according to court documents.

    Politico first reported the standoff with Pelham. CNN has reached out to Pelham’s attorney for comment.

    Pelham’s father called law enforcement on April 12, warning that his son had a gun and was threatening suicide, the affidavit said. That same day, an FBI agent had called Pelham to notify him of a warrant for his arrest related to charges from the insurrection and Pelham had agreed to turn himself in the following week.

    After arriving at Pelham’s home and speaking to a neighbor, officers saw a young girl, Pelham’s daughter, walk out of the house and she was put in a patrol car for safety, according to the affidavit.

    Then authorities from the sheriff’s department heard gunshots coming from inside the house, the affidavit said.

    “Deputy J.W. reported that the gunshots were spread out in time and that they were not towards the HCSO personnel,” the agent wrote. “At approximately 9:38 p.m., Pelham’s father arrived on scene. Deputy J.W. heard another gunshot and reported that ‘the bullet from this gunshot came in so close proximity to myself that I could hear the distinct whistling sound as the bullet traveled by me and then strike a metal object to my right side.’”

    The standoff lasted until shortly after midnight when law enforcement left without arresting Pelham, according to the affidavit. Pelham was arrested on Tuesday, according to online court records.

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  • Sexual assaults in the US military increased by 1% last year | CNN Politics

    Sexual assaults in the US military increased by 1% last year | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The US military saw a 1% increase in sexual assaults last year, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual report.

    There were 7,378 reports of sexual assault against service members in 2022, according to the Fiscal Year 2022 Annual Report on Sexual Assault in the Military, released on Thursday. That is up from 7,260 reports of assault in 2021.

    All of the services aside from the Army saw an increase in reports from last year, officials said during a briefing on the report on Thursday: the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force saw a 9%, 3.6%, and 13% increase in reports, respectively. The Army, meanwhile, saw a 9% decrease.

    Overall, the number of reports of assault has consistently increased in the military since 2010.

    And while the Defense Department is working through implementing dozens of recommendations from an independent review commission on sexual assault, officials said commanders and service members on the ground still have a responsibility to do their part.

    “At the end of the day, we can only do so much at the headquarters level,” Beth Foster, director of the Office of Force Resiliency, told reporters. “But, you know, really, this is on our commanders, on our [non-commissioned officers], our frontline leaders to make sure that they are addressing this problem. And, you know, the Secretary says … we need to lead on that. And that that is for at every level of the department.”

    In addition to the 7,378 reports of assault that occurred during military service in 2022, there were also 797 Defense Department civilians who reported being assaulted by service members, and 580 service members who reported being assaulted before their military service.

    The report released Thursday looks at the number of sexual assault reports, as opposed to a separate report the Pentagon releases every other year that estimates the total number of service members experiencing sexual assault. Ideally, the Defense Department has said a sign of progress would be seeing the number of reports go up, while the prevalence of sexual assault go down.

    However, the 2021 prevalence survey – released August 2022 – showed an in increase in how many service members were estimated to have experienced assault. The Pentagon estimated that 35,875 service members experienced unwanted sexual contact in 2021.

    Also, within the report released on Thursday was data showing a decrease in how many cases of assault, which had evidence that supported the charges, were referred to court-martial by commanders. Only 37% of cases were referred to court-martial in 2022, which falls in line with a steady decrease over the last 10 years.

    Instead, there has been an increase in cases that are dealt with through administrative action and discharges of offenders. Dr. Nate Galbreath, the deputy director for the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office, told reporters on Thursday that the decrease in court-martials is in part because of support being provided to victims of military sexual assault.

    “One of the things that we’ve seen year after a year since 2015, with the addition of the Special Victims Counsel program – which are attorneys that represent victims throughout the military justice process – is that victims have made it abundantly clear that they would like to help see the department hold their offenders appropriately accountable, but they’d like to do it through nonconfrontational means, and that’s essentially what we see in the percentages with administrative actions and discharges and non-judicial punishment,” Galbreath said.

    He added, however, that the decrease in taking sexual assault cases to court is also due to victims not having faith in the military justice system to handle their cases appropriately.

    The military services’ newly appointed Special Trial Counsels, who are appointed officers that report directly to the service secretaries and have exclusive authority to prosecute sexual assault cases, will be charged with restoring “that perception of fairness back into the system.”

    Ultimately, officials reiterated that while work is ongoing, the ongoing trend of sexual assault isn’t going to change “overnight.”

    “We certainly, if we could flip a switch and make this change instantly, we would,” Foster said. “But we know this is going to take some time.”

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  • ProPublica: GOP megadonor paid private school tuition for grandnephew of Justice Clarence Thomas | CNN Politics

    ProPublica: GOP megadonor paid private school tuition for grandnephew of Justice Clarence Thomas | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A Texas billionaire and GOP megadonor paid boarding school tuition for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ grandnephew, and the justice did not report the financial assistance for the child he helped raised on his annual disclosures, according to a new ProPublica report – the latest revelation raising ethical questions around the high court.

    The ProPublica report on Thursday revealed that the billionaire Harlan Crow paid tuition for Mark Martin, who lived with Thomas’ family as a child and for whom the justice became a legal guardian. ProPublica cited a 2009 bank statement and an interview with a former administrator at the Georgia boarding school Martin attended.

    The former administrator at the school, Hidden Lake Academy, told ProPublica that Crow paid for Martin’s tuition for the year or so Martin was at the boarding school. The administrator said, according to ProPublica, that he had been told by Crow that Crow also paid for Martin’s tuition at another school, the Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia, which is Crow’s alma mater.

    A statement from Crow’s office did not address the payments for Martin’s tuition directly but said that he and his wife had “supported many young Americans through scholarship and other programs at a variety of schools, including his alma mater.”

    A friend and defender of Thomas, conservative lawyer Mark Paoletta, said on Twitter that Crow paid for the first year that Martin spent Randolph-Macon Academy and for the year he spent at Hidden Lake. Paoletta denied that Thomas ran afoul of the court’s financial disclosures rules by not reporting the payments, arguing that Martin did not qualify as a legal dependent under the federal ethics law in question.

    However, on the justice’s 2002 financial disclosure submission, Thomas reported as a gift $5,000 from another couple that was characterized as an “Education gift to Mark Martin.”

    The Supreme Court’s press office did not respond to requests seeking comment from the court and Thomas.

    ProPublica previously reported that for years, Thomas has accepted lavish trips and gifts from Crow, which have gone mostly unreported on the justice’s financial disclosures, and that Crow also purchased several real estate properties, including the home where his mother lives, from the Thomas family.

    The extent to which these transactions and hospitality should have been reported by Thomas has been the subject of debate among judicial ethics experts, who have noted that a recently-closed loophole for certain “personal hospitality” may have covered some of the luxury trips.

    Thomas has said he followed the advice of others in deciding what required disclosure, and a source close to Thomas previously told CNN that the justice plans to amend his disclosure forms to reflect the real estate transaction, which also went unreported. Thomas also said in a statement last month that Crow “did not have business before the court.”

    Nevertheless, court reforms advocates and Democratic lawmakers say that Thomas’ conduct shows that the current ethics rules for the justices – who are not subject to a code of conduct akin to the standards imposed on lower courts – are too lax.

    Amid the ethics firestorm, which included a Senate hearing this week, Chief Justice John Roberts and the other eight justices released a “Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices” last week that the court’s critics say did not go far enough to address their concerns.

    “Today’s report continues a steady stream of revelations calling Justices’ ethics standards and practices into question,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin in a statement on Thursday. “I hope that the Chief Justice understands that something must be done – the reputation and credibility of the Court is at stake.”

    Republicans have pushed back on Democrats’ calls that Congress step in to enact stricter ethics rules for the justices, but some GOP lawmakers have acknowledged they’d like to see the high court – on its own – take steps towards greater transparency.

    Asked Thursday about the latest ProPublica report, Sen. Mitt Romney said, “I hope they’ll look – they’ll evaluate.”

    “I have no way of knowing the accuracy of that report and what’s been done but it clearly justifies taking a good look at it,” the Utah Republican said.

    Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he wasn’t going to speak to the specifics of the new allegations against Thomas, “because I could sit here and talk about other instances from other justices that the fact patterns are similar.”

    “Which goes back to the point of the Supreme Court should address this and they should address it on a consensus basis,” Tillis said.

    Ethics experts who spoke to ProPublica also acknowledged that the tuition payments, if considered a gift to Martin, may not have required disclosure. But since Thomas was Martin’s legal guardian, according to ProPublica’s report, he would have had responsibility for the child’s education and the tuition could also be viewed as an unreported gift to the justice himself.

    The statement from Crow’s office said that that the tuition he and his wife has provided for young people “is given directly to academic institutions, not to students or to their families.”

    “These scholarships and other contributions have always been paid solely from personal funds, sometimes held at and paid through the family business,” the statement said. “It’s disappointing that those with partisan political interests would try to turn helping at-risk youth with tuition assistance into something nefarious or political.”

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  • E. Jean Carroll asks judge to amend lawsuit to seek further damages for what Trump said at CNN town hall | CNN Politics

    E. Jean Carroll asks judge to amend lawsuit to seek further damages for what Trump said at CNN town hall | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    E. Jean Carroll has asked a judge to amend her initial defamation case against former President Donald Trump to seek additional punitive damages after he repeated his statements at a CNN town hall.

    The request was made in a letter to the judge seeking clarity on the initial lawsuit following a civil jury verdict earlier this month finding Trump sexually abused Carroll and awarding her $5 million.

    Carroll’s attorneys said Trump’s defamatory statements repeated during the town hall earlier this month go directly to the issue of punitive damages, which are intended to punish the person found liable.

    Carroll’s initial lawsuit was held up on appeal and relates to statements Trump made in 2019 while he was president. The trial involved a statement Trump made in 2022.

    An appeals court sent the initial lawsuit back to the lower court judge just before the trial. It is up to the judge to determine whether it moves forward.

    Carroll has alleged that the former president raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s and then defamed her when he denied her claim, said she wasn’t his type and suggested she made up the story to boost sales of her book.

    Trump denied all claims brought against him by Carroll and appealed the jury’s judgment.

    While the jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll, sufficient to hold him liable for battery, the jury did not find that she proved he raped her.

    Trump was quick to jump on this aspect of the jury’s verdict at a CNN town hall hosted in New Hampshire the day after the jury came to its decision, saying “They said, ‘He didn’t rape her.’ And I didn’t do anything else either.”

    “I have no idea who this woman – this is a fake story, made up story,” Trump said, calling Carroll a “whack job” and going on a tangent about her ex-husband and pet cat.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • What the chaos at Twitter means for the future of social movements | CNN Business

    What the chaos at Twitter means for the future of social movements | CNN Business

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    Editor’s Note: The CNN Original Series “The 2010s” looks back at a turbulent era marked by extraordinary political and social upheaval. New episodes air at 9 p.m. ET/PT Sundays.



    CNN
     — 

    When thousands of Egyptians marched through the streets during the Arab Spring of 2011, they had a tool at their disposal that earlier social movements didn’t: Twitter.

    A key group of activists used the platform to form networks and organize protests against the authoritarian regime, while many more demonstrators used it to disseminate information and images from the ground for the rest of the world to see. Months later, organizers from the Occupy Wall Street movement took to Twitter to coordinate protests in New York and beyond.

    Twitter fostered public conversation around the Black Lives Matter movement after the 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and again after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. It amplified #MeToo in the aftermath of the sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, and catapulted other revolutionary movements around the world to global attention.

    “You can’t underestimate the impact of Twitter to social movements,” Amara Enyia, manager of policy and research for the Movement for Black Lives, told CNN.

    Twitter has often been heralded as a democratizing force, bringing previously marginalized voices to the forefront and giving the public a platform to demand accountability from leaders. (It has also enabled the spread of misinformation, extremist ideas and abusive content.)

    But since Elon Musk acquired Twitter last year and the platform plunged into chaos, some organizers and digital media experts have been bracing for the impact that his controversial policy changes and mass layoffs may have on social movements going forward.

    Though Twitter has often been referred to as a public square, some of Musk’s recent moves challenge that description.

    Through Twitter, organizers and political groups have had a level of direct access to policymakers and leaders that wouldn’t have been possible in person, said Rachel Kuo, an assistant professor of media and cinema studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Verified activists were able to promote certain messages that the algorithm then pushed to the top of users’ feeds, organizers could launch campaigns that caught the attention of high-profile figures and the public could follow along for real-time updates.

    “There are now issues in how people see Twitter as a source of information and a source of political community,” said Kuo, whose research focuses on race, social movements and digital technologies. “It isn’t seen in the same way anymore.”

    Elon Musk's controversial policy changes at Twitter could have implications for social movements, some activists say.

    Musk upended traditional Twitter verification and turned it into a pay-for-play system, leading to the impersonation of government accounts and the spread of fake images. For organizers who opt not to pay the monthly subscription fee for a blue check, that also means a loss of credibility and visibility, Kuo added.

    Twitter, which has cut much of its public relations team under Musk, did not respond to a request for comment.

    Twitter’s role in information-sharing has been disrupted in other ways, too.

    The platform has been plagued by technical glitches after mass layoffs and departures at the company, frustrating many users. People have also reported that the “for you” timeline is showing them content they aren’t interested in.

    As a result of these issues and others, some are leaving Twitter altogether – more than 32 million users are projected to exit the platform in the two years following Musk’s takeover, according to a December 2022 forecast from the market research agency Insider Intelligence. (Twitter reported having 238 million monetizable daily active users last year before Musk acquired it.)

    With fewer people on Twitter, the platform becomes less centralized and the information landscape more fractured, said Sarah Aoun, a privacy and security researcher who works on cybersecurity for the Movement for Black Lives. That makes it harder for activists to connect, exchange tactics and build solidarity in the way they once did.

    Protesters in Cairo gather in Tahrir Square in November 2011.

    Musk’s approach to content moderation has also made Twitter a more hostile environment, Aoun said. Twitter has never been a completely safe space for marginalized voices – women, people of color, LGBTQ people and other vulnerable groups have long been targets of online harassment and abuse – but reports from the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Defamation League indicate an increase in hate speech on the platform under Musk’s leadership. (Musk has previously pushed back at that characterization by focusing on a different metric.)

    Some are also disillusioned over Musk’s decision to reinstate users who were previously suspended for violating the platform’s rules, including former President Donald Trump and GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

    “The lack of verification, the mass exodus, the inability to coordinate the way that we used to be able to coordinate and the content moderation (gutting) makes it a very difficult platform to be on at the moment,” Aoun said.

    Musk has stepped back as Twitter’s CEO, a role now held by former NBCUniversal marketing executive Linda Yaccarino. But he will maintain significant control over the platform as the company’s owner, executive chairman and chief technology officer.

    The changes at Twitter have prompted some activists and organizers to reassess their relationships with the platform.

    Rich Wallace, executive director of the Chicago-based organization Equity and Transformation (EAT), said that previously, he used to see robust engagement on tweets about social injustice or racial inequity, whether it was from those who agreed with him or didn’t. Now, he finds that substantive posts barely get traction as opposed to tweets he considers more mundane.

    Wallace said his organization, which seeks to build social and economic equity for Black workers in the informal economy, still shares information about community events on Twitter, but the potential to find new allies or engage in meaningful conversation on the platform is largely a thing of the past.

    Twitter is no longer a space for education and community building that it once was, Wallace said. It’s a shift in how he once viewed the platform, but he isn’t especially concerned. For his organization, it simply means a re-emphasis on the grassroots, in-person work they were already doing.

    People raise their fists in June 2020 as they protest the police killing of George Floyd.

    “As organizers, we’ve been creative in how we organize around barriers,” he said. “This is just one of the newer barriers that we have to assess and organize through.”

    As Kuo sees it, the ways that the changes at Twitter will affect organizing and activism will vary widely. Hyperlocal community organizers or those who work with populations that don’t speak English aren’t typically using Twitter in their day-to-day work, and so the recent shifts likely won’t affect them drastically. But she predicts that mid-to-large nonprofit organizations with communications staff might be rethinking their strategy on the platform.

    “It’s very dependent on organizational structure, form, strategies for change and political vision,” Kuo said.

    Enyia said that on a personal level, she finds that she’s engaging with people on Twitter less often and moreso using the platform to keep up with news. But in her advocacy work with the Movement for Black Lives, it remains an important tool.

    “For us, its utility is in the fact that it creates more access points to our policy platform, to the issues that we’re advocating on,” she said. “And in that regard, it’s still very, very useful.”

    When Musk first took over Twitter, some organizers and activists flocked to other alternatives, such as Mastodon or Bluesky (an app backed by Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey).

    Neither appears to be fulfilling the same purpose that Twitter once did, Aoun and others said. Mastodon and Bluesky are decentralized and fewer people are using them, making it more difficult to build community. And while their numbers are growing, they’re still far smaller than Twitter.

    The Bluesky app is seen on a phone and laptop in June 2023.

    In the case of Mastodon, there are privacy and security issues that concern some activists. Because the social network allows users to join different servers run by various groups and individuals, Aoun said “the privacy, security and content moderation is basically as good as the person behind the server.” Twitter – at least before Musk took over – had dedicated privacy and security teams, offering more transparency about how their systems worked.

    Some activists are using popular social networks such as Instagram and TikTok, but the visual nature of those platforms versus the text-based medium of Twitter changes how people are able to interact and engage with each other, Kuo said.

    Twitter has been an incredibly powerful tool for social movements, Enyia said. But ultimately, the platform is just that – a tool.

    “There is no panacea for just the nuts and bolts work that it takes to meet people, to engage people, to organize and talk to people,” Enyia said. “So even if we recognize that social media is a tool, we don’t put all of our eggs in that basket.”

    Social media platforms come and go, and the same could happen to Twitter. So while Enyia’s organization continues to use the platform for its own ends, it’s prepared for a reality in which Twitter is less relevant.

    “We have to stay on top of it to make sure that the tools are serving their purpose as it relates to our work,” Enyia said. “But then we have to be ready to evolve or to move on or to adapt to different tools when it becomes clear that that’s the direction we have to go.”

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  • A lawsuit by TikTok users challenging Montana’s ban is being funded by the social media company itself | CNN Business

    A lawsuit by TikTok users challenging Montana’s ban is being funded by the social media company itself | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    A high-profile lawsuit brought by TikTok users and creators last month challenging Montana’s statewide ban against the short-form video app is being funded by the social media giant itself, the company told CNN on Wednesday.

    TikTok has been covering legal fees for the group of five TikTok creators, said Jodi Seth, a TikTok spokesperson, separately from the company’s own lawsuit to block the state’s new law targeting the app over national security concerns.

    “We support our creators through various programs and have an ongoing dialogue about their presence on TikTok,” Seth said in a statement. “Throughout this process, many creators have expressed major concerns both privately and publicly about the potential impact of the Montana law on their livelihoods. We will support our creators in fighting for their constitutional rights.”

    TikTok’s involvement in the creators’ suit was first reported this week by The New York Times, weeks after the initial court case was filed. The company’s role in the litigation had not been previously known.

    The suit by the TikTok creators was the first to challenge Montana’s law banning TikTok from being offered within state lines and establishing penalties for the company and for app stores that violate the law. Legal experts have said the legislation, which is not set to take effect until January, raises constitutional issues and may well be practically unenforceable even if the law is upheld.

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  • Buttigieg says Supreme Court case was designed for ‘clear purpose of chipping away’ at LGBTQ equality | CNN Politics

    Buttigieg says Supreme Court case was designed for ‘clear purpose of chipping away’ at LGBTQ equality | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday slammed the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of a Christian web designer in Colorado who refuses to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings out of religious objections, saying the case was designed “for the clear purpose of chipping away” at LGBTQ equality.

    “It’s very revealing that there’s no evidence that this web designer was ever even approached by anyone asking for a website for a same-sex wedding,” Buttigieg, the first out Cabinet secretary confirmed by the Senate, told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

    The Supreme Court’s conservative majority, in a 6-3 opinion, ruled Friday for Lorie Smith, the Colorado web designer, on free speech grounds, with Justice Neil Gorsuch writing, “All manner of speech – from ‘pictures, films, paintings, drawings, and engravings,’ to ‘oral utterance and the printed word’ – qualify for the First Amendment’s protections.”

    Smith said in court filings that a man had inquired about her services for his same-sex wedding. But as CNN previously reported, the man in question says that he never reached out to Smith – and that he’s straight and married to a woman.

    “There’s something in common between this Supreme Court ruling and what we’re seeing happening in state legislatures across the country, which is kind of a solution looking for a problem,” Buttigieg said Sunday. “In other words, sending these kinds of things to the courts and sending these kinds of things to state legislatures for the clear purpose of chipping away at the equality and the rights that have so recently been won in the LGBTQ+ community.”

    Two contenders for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination took a different stance on the Supreme Court ruling in separate interviews Sunday on “State of the Union.”

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the decision “protects all of our First Amendment rights,” adding that “the government doesn’t have the right to tell a business the nature of how they need to use their expressive abilities.”

    Former Texas Rep. Will Hurd acknowledged that the ruling made him “uncomfortable because we’re protecting speech that I don’t agree with. And I don’t agree with an anti-LGBTQ sentiment.”

    “But we have to be protecting the speech even if we don’t like or agree with the speech. That’s a foundational element in our country,” Hurd said.

    In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested that the court’s decision in the Colorado case would be more far-reaching.

    “The decision’s logic cannot be limited to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity,” she wrote.

    “The decision threatens to balkanize the market and to allow the exclusion of other groups from many services,” Sotomayor said, adding that “a website designer could equally refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, for example.”

    Christie pushed back Sunday on that characterization.

    “What Sonia Sotomayor … was saying in her opinion was that … this decision could be used to deny people of LGBTQ backgrounds the ability to access this business. That’s simply not true,” he told Bash.

    “They can access this business. They just can’t force the owner to do something that is against her personal religious beliefs. And so, if they want to come in and they want a web design for their business, they want a web design for a charity, they want a web design for anything else that they’re doing, they could certainly do that,” he added.

    Meanwhile, Buttigieg was asked about a recent video shared by a campaign Twitter account for Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential bid that attacked rival Donald Trump over his past promises to protect LGBTQ rights and highlighted measures championed by the Florida governor to curb such protections.

    After cautioning that he was “going to choose my words carefully, partly because I’m appearing as secretary, so I can’t talk about campaigns,” Buttigieg said the bigger issue when sees such videos was: “Who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off?”

    “I just don’t understand the mentality of somebody who gets up in the morning thinking that he’s going to prove his worth by competing over who can make life hardest for a hard-hit community that is already so vulnerable in America,” the secretary said.

    The DeSantis campaign has come under criticism for marking the end of Pride Month by re-posting the video from the DeSantis War Room Twitter account. Both Christie and Hurd on Sunday also criticized the sharing of the video.

    In response to the online criticism, Christina Pushaw, the rapid response director for the DeSantis campaign, said Pride Month was “unnecessary, divisive, pandering.”

    “Opposing the federal recognition of ‘Pride Month’ isn’t homophobic,” Pushaw said in a tweet. “We wouldn’t support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either.”

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  • TikTok ‘stress test’ shows it’s not ‘fully ready’ for looming EU social media rules, commissioner says | CNN Business

    TikTok ‘stress test’ shows it’s not ‘fully ready’ for looming EU social media rules, commissioner says | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    TikTok has “more work” to do to meet tough new European standards that are coming for social media and content moderation, according to a top EU official who performed a “stress test” of the company this week.

    The report by EU Commissioner Thierry Breton comes ahead of a looming Aug. 25 deadline for platforms such as TikTok to comply with the Digital Services Act (DSA) — a package of regulations aimed at battling misinformation, potential privacy abuses and illegal content, among other things.

    European Commission staff conducted the TikTok test on Monday at the company’s Dublin offices, according to a statement from the commissioner, and Breton outlined the results of the voluntary inspection to CEO Shou Chew on Tuesday.

    “TikTok is dedicating significant resources to compliance,” Breton said, pointing to changes TikTok has made to its recommendation algorithms and its transparency procedures as evidence the company appears to be taking its obligations seriously.

    But, he added, the test results also showed “more work is needed to be fully ready for the compliance deadline.”

    “Now it is time to accelerate to be fully compliant,” Breton said, indicating that officials will be revisiting at the end of the summer whether TikTok has closed the gap.

    TikTok didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the test results.

    TikTok isn’t the only large tech platform to submit to an EU stress test. Last month, European officials evaluated Twitter’s platform for DSA compliance and also announced plans to stress test Facebook-parent Meta’s services.

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  • Democratic senator calls Samuel Alito ‘stunningly wrong’ on Supreme Court ethics controversy | CNN Politics

    Democratic senator calls Samuel Alito ‘stunningly wrong’ on Supreme Court ethics controversy | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut on Sunday called Justice Samuel Alito “stunningly wrong” in his contention that Congress should stay out of the Supreme Court’s business and stop trying to impose ethics rules.

    “It is just wrong on the facts to say that Congress doesn’t have anything to do with the rules guiding the Supreme Court. In fact, from the very beginning, Congress has set those rules,” Murphy told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on “State of the Union.”

    “But it is even more disturbing that Alito feels the need to insert himself into a congressional debate. And it is just more evidence that these justices on the Supreme Court, these conservative justices, just see themselves as politicians. They just see themselves as a second legislative body that has just as much power and right to impose their political will on the country as Congress does.”

    Spurred by a string of stories about alleged ethics violations by justices, Senate Democrats have advanced legislation meant to create a code of ethics for the Supreme Court.

    But Alito, a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush, maintained in an interview published in The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section Friday that “Congress did not create the Supreme Court” and doesn’t have the authority to regulate it.

    “I marvel at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year,” Alito said in the interview, adding that “the traditional idea about how judges and justices should behave is they should be mute.”

    The high court has repeatedly evaded requests in recent months to adopt a binding code of conduct, instead responding to allegations of ethical improprieties by releasing statements outlining and defending its current procedures.

    That has failed to satisfy critics in the wake of an array of media reports shining a spotlight on how the justices are leading their lives off the bench, triggering questions about whether they are improperly benefiting from their positions.

    “They are going to bend the law in order to impose their right-wing view of how the country should work on the rest of us,” Murphy said Sunday of the court’s conservative justices.

    “And it’s why we need to pass this commonsense ethics legislation to at least make sure we know that these guys aren’t in bed having their lifestyles paid for by conservative donors, as we have unfortunately seen in these latest revelations,” Murphy said.

    The ethics legislation is not expected to get the 60 votes required to advance on the floor of the Democratic-controlled Senate. And even if it did, the GOP-led House is unlikely to take it up.

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  • Key Senate Dems want Supreme Court funding tied to an ethics code for justices | CNN Politics

    Key Senate Dems want Supreme Court funding tied to an ethics code for justices | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Key Senate Democrats are calling for next year’s funding for the Supreme Court to be conditioned on the creation of an ethics code for the justices.

    Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat who leads the appropriations subcommittee charged with writing the annual funding bill for the judiciary, has expressed support for the idea, but doing so will ultimately need the backing of GOP lawmakers, and the top Republican on the subcommittee is signaling opposition to the proposal.

    Van Hollen is weighing in as 15 other members of the Democratic caucus – including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary subcommittee that oversees the federal bench – are proposing language to be attached to next year’s funding bill that would require the Supreme Court to adopt more transparent processes for recusals and for investigating ethics allegations lodged against the justices.

    They did so in a new letter, obtained by CNN, to Van Hollen and Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty, who is the top Republican on the appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the judiciary.

    “It is unacceptable that the Supreme Court has exempted itself from the accountability that applies to all other members of our federal courts, and I believe Congress should act to remedy this problem,” Van Hollen said in a statement shared with CNN Monday. His comments were first reported by The Washington Post.

    Democrats’ interest in leveraging the funding Congress appropriates to the high court is the latest volley in the debate over whether a stronger code of conduct is needed at the Supreme Court, which is not beholden to many of the ethics procedures imposed on lower court judges.

    Van Hollen noted that including an ethics code requirement in the annual appropriations bill will require bipartisan support given the current make-up of Congress, but said he didn’t “see any reason why ensuring that the Supreme Court establish a code of ethics should be a partisan issue.”

    A spokesperson for Hagerty said that an ethics code is a “policy question that is separate from the funding levels for Supreme Court operations and security.”

    “Moreover, Senator Hagerty strongly believes in preserving the independence of the Judicial Branch from political interference intended to force the Court to change its rulings or policies,” the spokesperson said in a statement Monday evening. “Threats to hold the personal security of the justices and their families hostage in exchange for favored policies are no different from court-packing proposals or protests outside the homes of Justices.”

    Some Republicans in the House have indicated openness in the past to pushing for an ethics code for the justices, but congressional GOP leaders have defended conservative justices in the face of claims that they had run afoul of ethical norms.

    The new letter from the Democrats pointed to recent reports that have raised questions about potential conflicts-of-interests issues with the political activities of Justice Clarence Thomas’ spouse, and about an alleged well-financed, secret campaign seeking to influence the high court’s conservatives.

    “The Supreme Court has the tools and authority it needs to develop and implement these changes, including adopting a code of conduct, creating fairer and more transparent recusal rules, and setting up procedures – based on longstanding procedures in the lower courts – to receive and investigate complaints of judicial misconduct,” the letter said. “The only obstacle keeping the Court from adopting these reforms is the Court’s own unwillingness to see them through.”

    They argued that the annual funding bill should withhold $10 million of the Supreme Court’s funding unless the justices adopted an ethics code. The Supreme Court is asking for nearly $151 million in the coming appropriations process for 2024.

    The ethics language the new letter is proposing for the annual appropriations legislation would create more concrete standards for when a justice must disqualify him or herself from a case, as well as a system “for receiving and investigating complaints alleging violations of such public code of ethics or other misconduct by justices of the Court.”

    Currently, justices decide for themselves whether they must recuse themselves from a case. It is unclear what procedures, if any, the Supreme Court uses to review ethics allegations brought against the justices.

    In the past, Chief Justice John Roberts has written that the justices have taken the steps necessary to maintain transparency and the public’s trust.

    “I have complete confidence in the capability of my colleagues to determine when recusal is warranted,” he wrote in a 2011 year-end report. His 2021 report stressed the need for the judicial branch to have “institutional independence,” while implying that the federal bench could be trusted to police itself without the interference of Congress.

    With the Democrats’ new letter to the appropriators, the senators countered that “Congress has broad authority to compel the Supreme Court to institute these reforms, which would join other requirements already legislatively mandated.”

    “And Congress’s appropriations power is one tool for achieving these changes,” the Democrats’ letter said, while citing DC Circuit cases where judges – including Republican appointees – asserted that Congress could use the power of the purse to pressure the Executive Branch to make certain changes.

    The Supreme Court’s press office did not immediately respond to CNN’s inquiry about the funding bill proposal.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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