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  • Sudan’s Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces sign agreement intended to lay groundwork for humanitarian assistance in Sudan, say US officials | CNN Politics

    Sudan’s Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces sign agreement intended to lay groundwork for humanitarian assistance in Sudan, say US officials | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The warring Sudanese parties have signed an agreement intended to lay the groundwork for humanitarian assistance to resume in Sudan, senior US State Department officials said Thursday.

    The agreement signed in Jeddah by representatives from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is not a ceasefire, but rather “a declaration of commitment to protect the civilians of Sudan.”

    The purpose of the declaration “is to guide the conduct of the two forces so that we can get in humanitarian assistance, help begin the restoration of essential services like electricity and water, to arrange for the withdrawal of security forces from hospitals and clinics, and to perform the respectful burial of the dead,” one of the officials explained.

    The next step will be to negotiate a ceasefire which would allow those actions to take place, the official told reporters, and talks on that could begin as early as Friday.

    Children caught in the crossfire as rival factions fight in Sudan

    “We will move as fast as we can with the parties to get to actual actions. We’ve already made specific recommendations to each side to take actions and some of that is happening,” the official told reporters on a call.

    A ceasefire monitoring mechanism has been developed to “help hold the parties accountable to what they’ve agreed to do,” the official said.

    The declaration, the name of which was “requested by the parties to emphasize that they’re interested in trying to help the civilians who are suffering from this fighting,” was signed following days of “pre-negotiation talks” which have been mediated by the United States and Saudi Arabia.

    Those talks began this weekend in Jeddah, weeks after the outbreak of fighting in Sudan that has left hundreds dead and thousands injured, caused tens of thousands to flee their homes and left the country on the brink of civil war and a massive humanitarian catastrophe.

    A second senior State Department official said that it took longer than expected to get an agreement on the declaration, and “the negotiations were very tough,” particularly given “the depth of enmity” between the RSF and the SAF.

    The first official said that the SAF and RSF negotiators “with the support of the Saudi and American mediators,” will now “begin to negotiate an actual short term ceasefire.”

    The goal is to reach a ceasefire of up to 10 days, they said, “but we’ll have to see what’s possible to facilitate those activities.”

    A ceasefire monitoring mechanism, which will be supported by the United Nations, Saudi Arabia, the US, “and other members of the international community,” has been developed. The second official said the mechanism includes “overhead imagery, including satellite data,” social media analysis, and on the ground reporting from Sudanese civil society members.

    The official noted that “we’ve seen violations by both sides in all the ceasefires to date and don’t expect that to change.”

    They said they intend to establish a committee that the ceasefire monitoring mechanism would report to, which would include representatives from the RSF, SAF, and international community. Asked about punitive measures, the official said that “the biggest one here would frankly be public attribution where possible,” which would help combat propaganda and misinformation about who was responsible for the violations.

    The first official noted that this was just the initial phase of talks, telling reporters, “this is going to be a process so we are just at the first stage.”

    “We did this in partnership with the Saudis, at the request of the two sides,” the first official said of the talks in Jeddah. “The two sides asked us to help them out with this, but there is every expectation that this process will be expanded to include, first and most importantly, Sudanese civilians, and secondly, regional partners in Africa and in the Arab world, and then the international community.”

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  • What to know about Florida’s challenge to the immigration parole policy | CNN Politics

    What to know about Florida’s challenge to the immigration parole policy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal judge late Thursday night temporarily blocked one of the Biden’s administration’s key tools to try to manage the number of migrants in US Customs and Border Protection custody.

    The ruling came just before Title 42 expired, and administration officials say it will make their job more difficult amid the expected influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border. An appeal is expected.

    Here’s what to know:

    The plan, released Wednesday, allowed the release of migrants from CBP custody without court dates, or, in some cases, releasing them with conditions.

    As number of migrants increases at the border, the Department of Homeland Security said its plan would help release the immense strain on already overcrowded border facilities. As of Wednesday, there were more than 28,000 migrants in Border Patrol custody, stretching capacity.

    The administration previously released migrants without court dates when facing a surge of migrants after they’re screened and vetted by authorities. The plan would have allowed DHS to release migrants on “parole” on a case-by-case basis and require them to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    Florida sued to halt the policy, and District Judge T. Kent Wetherell, agreed to block the plan for two weeks.

    Wetherell, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, said the administration’s explanation for why its policy was only unveiled on Wednesday, when the end of Title 42 was anticipated for months, was lacking. He also said the Biden administration simply failed to prepare.

    “Putting aside the fact that even President Biden recently acknowledged that the border has been in chaos for ‘a number of years,’ Defendants’ doomsday rhetoric rings hollow because … this problem is largely one of Defendants’ own making through the adoption and implementation of policies that have encouraged the so-called ‘irregular migration’ that has become fairly regular over the past 2 years.”

    Wetherell added: “Moreover, the Court fails to see a material difference between what CBP will be doing under the challenged policy and what it claims that it would have to do if the policy was enjoined, because in both instances, aliens are being released into the country on an expedited basis without being placed in removal proceedings and with little to no vetting and no monitoring.”

    Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, speaking on “CNN This Morning,” called the ruling “very harmful” and said the administration is considering its options.

    “The practice that the court has prevented us from using (is) a practice that prior administrations have used to relieve overcrowding,” Mayorkas said. “What we do is we process screen and vet individuals and if we do not hold them, we release them so that they can go into immigration enforcement proceedings, make whatever claim for relief, they might and if they don’t succeed, be removed.”

    Assistant secretary for border and immigration policy Blas Nuñez-Neto said the ruling “will result in unsafe overcrowding at CBP facilities and undercut our ability to efficiently process and remove migrants, which will risk creating dangerous conditions for Border Patrol agents as well as non-citizens in our custody.”

    Wetherell’s ruling will block the policy for two weeks. A preliminary injunction hearing has been scheduled for May 19.

    The Justice Department has requested a stay on the court ruling, according to a Friday filing. The filing addresses two separate rulings in the case, both of which have to do with the release of migrants. If the request is not granted, the Justice Department said it intends to seek emergency relief from the Eleventh Circuit by Monday afternoon.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • Democratic congressman’s staff attacked by man with baseball bat | CNN Politics

    Democratic congressman’s staff attacked by man with baseball bat | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Virginia Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly said two staffers were injured Monday by a man wielding a bat who came into his district office in Fairfax.

    Connolly told CNN that the assailant who entered his office and attacked two of his aides did so with a metal bat. The attacker struck one senior aide in the head with the metal bat, he said. The attacker also hit an intern – on her first day on the job – in the side with the bat.

    In a statement earlier Monday, Connolly said that both aides were taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, and City of Fairfax Police Department arrested the man.

    Lawmakers on Capitol Hill facing unprecedented number of threats

    The suspect, whom US Capitol Police identified as 49-year-old Xuan Kha Tran Pham of Fairfax is facing charges for one count of aggravated malicious wounding and one count of malicious wounding, USCP stated.

    “At this time, it is not clear what the suspect’s motivation may have been,” USCP said in their statement. “Based on what we know right now, investigators do not have any information that the suspect was known to the USCP.”

    Pham suffers from schizophrenia, his father said in an interview with CNN, and had previously been charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer before the charge was subsequently dropped, records show.

    The attacker, who is a constituent from his district but who Connolly said he doesn’t know, caused wide damage in his office, shattering glass in a conference room and breaking computers along the way. “He was filled with out of control rage,” Connolly told CNN in a phone interview.

    Connolly said later Monday that the man had contacted his office in the past.

    “He had contacted our office, soliciting help on something, and my staff were helping him,” Connolly told CNN. “But there is no indication today that the two were related at all. And my staff did sense in talking to him that he engaged in bizarre statements. Never threatening, however.”

    The Virginia Democrat said he didn’t “think there’s a motivation” for the incident, adding: “I think we are talking about real mental illness.”

    Connolly said he was at a ribbon cutting at the time for a food bank when the assailant drove to his office and entered the building. The congressman estimates it took police about five minutes to respond to the emergency call for help.

    Neighbors identified Pham as a person captured on a home security camera Monday morning wielding a bat and chasing a woman in his neighborhood.

    The security video, provided to CNN by a homeowner who lives near the suspect, shows a woman screaming as she flees from the man with the bat. The recording was timestamped as occurring at 10:34 a.m., before the attack at the congressional office.

    A law enforcement source confirmed that prior to the attack in the congressional office, the suspect confronted a woman in Fairfax County. He damaged her vehicle with a baseball bat, the source said.

    Pham’s father, Hy Xuan Pham, told CNN his son is schizophrenic and hadn’t taken his medication for three months. He said that he last saw him Monday morning, and later heard from police that he had been arrested.

    “He is in a really bad condition,” the father said in an interview. “All day and all night, he mumbles … he talks and looks like he talks with someone in his brain, and suddenly, he is shouting angrily.”

    The suspect’s father said that he had tried to get his son mental health treatment but hadn’t been able to.

    Virginia court records show that Pham was previously charged in January 2022 in Fairfax with felony assault on a law enforcement officer, several charges of attempted disarmament of a law enforcement officer’s stun gun, and obstructing justice or resisting arrest. The case’s disposition was listed as “nolle prosequi,” which generally means that the district attorney declined to prosecute it. No further details about the case were immediately available Monday afternoon.

    Last year, someone with the same name and city of residence as Pham filed a federal lawsuit against the CIA, alleging in a short handwritten complaint that the agency was guilty of “wrongfully imprisoning me in a lower perspective based on physics called the book world since 1975,” and “brutally torturing me with a degenerating disability consistently since 1988 till the present from the fourth dimension.”

    The CIA moved to dismiss the case, which Pham filed without a lawyer, earlier this year, calling his claims “facially implausible.” The motion is pending.

    Monday’s attack comes amid a string of incidents where members of Congress, their staff and their families have been attacked in recent months.

    In March, a staffer for Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was stabbed in Washington, DC. In February, a man assaulted Democratic Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota in the elevator of her apartment building also in Washington. In October, a man attacked Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, hospitalizing him after hitting Paul Pelosi with a hammer in the couple’s home in San Francisco.

    Connolly said Monday that there needs to be more security funding for members’ offices in their districts.

    “I think we’re gonna have to reassess the security we provide or don’t provide district offices,” Connolly said. “So if you’re a member of Congress and your office happens to be in a federal building, in the courthouse, you’re gonna have security. But if you’re in a commercial office space like me, you have no security. None. And what could go wrong with that? Well, we learned the answer to that this morning.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • DeSantis expected to enter 2024 presidential race next week | CNN Politics

    DeSantis expected to enter 2024 presidential race next week | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to enter the 2024 GOP presidential race next week, two Republicans familiar with the matter told CNN, initiating his much-anticipated bid to wrestle the future of the party from former President Donald Trump.

    DeSantis will file paperwork declaring his candidacy next week with the Federal Election Commission, one Republican said, with a formal announcement expected the following week in his Florida hometown of Dunedin. DeSantis is likely to soft-launch the campaign as early as Wednesday to coincide with the filing of the paperwork, according to a Republican consultant close to the governor’s political team.

    However, another source cautioned that the planning remains a moving target, and DeSantis is known to surprise even his closest allies and advisers with last-minute changes. DeSantis, who often boasts that he runs an operation free of leaks, may be further motivated to throw out the script to vex the media outlets who have preempted his announcement, the source said.

    “With him, it’s always a possibility,” the source added.

    But the machinery for a launch is already in motion as dozens of his top fundraisers and donors have been summoned to South Florida under the assumption they will be asked to begin building up a war chest for a DeSantis presidential campaign. By officially submitting his paperwork, his supporters can begin soliciting donations on his behalf.

    About 100 hotel rooms have been reserved at the Four Seasons in Miami, which will host receptions for donors, briefings with DeSantis’ political team and sessions where attendees will dial for dollars, according to two sources familiar with the details. The goal is for each fundraiser to bring in between $100,000 and $150,000.

    A spokesman for DeSantis’ political operation did not respond to a request for comment.

    An announcement around the Memorial Day weekend is on the earlier side of the timeline that the governor’s political operation had targeted six months ago when it eyed a launch after Florida’s legislative session. This suggests DeSantis is responding to donors and supporters anxious to see him get in the race and more directly challenge Trump. Polling shows the former president remains firmly in the lead while DeSantis has lost some momentum during the belabored rollout of his expected campaign, which has included a book release and tour, a dozen appearances at local GOP fundraisers, an international trip, the creation of a super PAC, a donor retreat near Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and a blitz through conservative media.

    Along the way, DeSantis has stumbled at times, drawing poor reviews for his oscillating takes on the Russia-Ukraine war, prolonging his clash with Disney into a second year and getting caught flat-footed as Trump unveiled endorsements from Florida Republicans in Congress just before the governor visited Washington to build support.

    However, DeSantis’ allies believe the trajectory of the race will change significantly once he is officially a candidate and responds to Trump’s broadsides and more vigorously shares his vision for the country.

    According to The New York Times, DeSantis told donors and supporters during a call Thursday that there were only three credible candidates in the race – himself, President Joe Biden and Trump – and that only he and Biden had a chance of winning the general election.

    DeSantis said on the call, which was organized by Never Back Down, a super PAC closely aligned with the governor, that data from swing states was “not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him,” the Times reported.

    DeSantis has spent the last couple of weeks tying up loose ends – rapidly signing dozens of bills that have reached his desk, meeting with donors in Tallahassee and South Florida, and shoring up endorsements to boost his launch. He spent Saturday in Iowa, where he appeared to one-up Trump, making an unannounced visit to a BBQ joint in Des Moines – minutes from where the former president had canceled a rally due to threat of weather. While in the state, DeSantis laid the framework for his case against Trump.

    “If we make 2024 a referendum on Joe Biden and his failures and we provide a positive alternative for the future of this country, Republicans will win across the board,” DeSantis told Iowa caucus voters in Sioux Center. “If we do not do that, if we get distracted, if we focus on the election in the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again, and I think it will be very difficult to recover from that defeat.”

    On Friday, DeSantis will travel to another early nominating state, New Hampshire, to meet with state lawmakers – many of whom endorsed him earlier this week – for a policy round table, according to three sources familiar with the planning.

    Never Back Down has in recent weeks rolled out dozens of key endorsements for the governor in Iowa and New Hampshire. On Wednesday, the super PAC also announced endorsements from 99 Florida lawmakers – a show of force from the rank-and-file Republicans who helped push DeSantis’ agenda through the state legislature this spring.

    “Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature have worked together to achieve historic results and produce conservative victories for the people of Florida – turning the state into a beacon of freedom and the fastest growing state in the nation,” Never Back Down spokeswoman Erin Perrine said.

    Trump’s campaign dismissed the Florida endorsements as politically motivated, noting that DeSantis had not yet signed the state budget, for which he has line-item veto power over the pet projects of state lawmakers.

    “There are some brave legislators who have stood up to DeSantis’ Swamp-like behavior and resisted his intimidation tactics in order to do what is right for Florida and the country,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said. “Those who he can’t control – including almost the entirety of the Florida federal congressional delegation – have endorsed President Trump because he’s the only candidate who can beat Joe Biden and take back the White House.”

    This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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  • How the CEO behind ChatGPT won over Congress | CNN Business

    How the CEO behind ChatGPT won over Congress | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seems to have achieved in a matter of hours what other tech execs have been struggling to do for years: He charmed the socks off Congress.

    Despite wide-ranging concerns that artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT could disrupt democracy, national security, and the economy, Altman’s appearance Tuesday before a Senate subcommittee went so smoothly that viewers could have been forgiven for thinking the year was closer to 2013 than 2023.

    It was a pivotal moment for the AI industry. Altman’s testimony on Tuesday alongside Christina Montgomery, IBM’s chief privacy officer, promised to set the tone for how Washington regulates a technology that many fear could eliminate jobs or destabilize elections.

    But where lawmakers could have followed a familiar pattern, blasting the tech industry with hostile questioning and leveling withering allegations of reckless innovation, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee instead heaped praise on the companies — and often, on Altman in particular.

    The difference seemed to come down to OpenAI calling for proactive government regulation — and persuading lawmakers it was serious. Unlike the long list of social media hearings in recent years, this AI hearing came earlier in OpenAI’s lifecycle and, crucially, before the company or its technology had suffered any high-profile mishaps.

    Altman, more than any other figure in tech, has emerged as the face of a new crop of powerful and disruptive AI tools that can generate compelling written work and images in response to user prompts. Much of the federal government is now racing to figure out how to regulate the cutting-edge technology.

    But after his performance on Tuesday, the CEO whose company helped spark the new AI arms race may have maneuvered himself into a privileged position of influence over the rules that may soon govern the tools he’s developing.

    Altman’s easy-going, plain-spoken demeanor helped disarm skeptical lawmakers and appeared to win over Democrats and Republicans alike. His approach contrasted with the wooden, lawyerly performances that have afflicted some other tech CEOs in the past during their time in the hotseat.

    “I sense there is a willingness to participate here that is genuine and authentic,” said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who chairs the committee’s technology panel.

    New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, adopting an unusual level of familiarity with a witness, found himself repeatedly addressing Altman as “Sam,” even as he referred to other panelists by their last names.

    Even Altman’s fellow witnesses couldn’t resist gushing about his style.

    “His sincerity in talking about those [AI] fears is very apparent, physically, in a way that just doesn’t communicate on the television screen,” Gary Marcus, a former New York University professor and a self-described critic of AI “hype,” told lawmakers.

    With a relaxed yet serious tone, Altman did not deflect or shy away from lawmakers’ concerns. He agreed that large-scale manipulation and deception using AI tools are among the technology’s biggest potential flaws. And he validated fears about AI’s impact on workers, acknowledging that it may “entirely automate away some jobs.”

    “If this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong, and we want to be vocal about that,” Altman said. “We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening.”

    Altman’s candor and openness has captivated many in Washington.

    On Monday evening, Altman spoke to a dinner audience of roughly 60 House lawmakers from both parties. One person in the room, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a closed-door meeting, described members of Congress as “riveted” by the conversation, which also saw Altman demonstrating ChatGPT’s capabilities “to much amusement” from the audience.

    Lawmakers have spent years railing against social media companies, attacking them for everything from their content moderation decisions to their economic dominance. On Tuesday, they seemed ready — or even relieved — to be dealing with another area of the technology industry.

    Whether this time is truly different remains unclear, though. The AI industry’s biggest players and aspirants include some of the same tech giants Congress has sharply criticized, including Google and Meta. OpenAI is receiving billions of dollars of investment from Microsoft in a multi-year partnership. And with his remarks on Tuesday, Altman appeared to draw from a familiar playbook for Silicon Valley: Referring to technology as merely a neutral tool, acknowledging his industry’s imperfections and inviting regulation.

    Some AI ethicists and experts questioned the value of asking a leading industry spokesperson how he would like to be regulated. Marcus, the New York University professor, cautioned that creating a new federal agency to police AI could lead to “regulatory capture” by the tech industry, but the warning could have applied just as easily to Congress itself.

    “It seems very very bad that ahead of a hearing meant to inform how this sector gets regulated, the CEO of one of the corporations that would be subject to that regulation gets to present a magic show to the regulators,” Emily Bender, a professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington, said of Altman’s dinner with House lawmakers.

    She added: “Politicians, like journalists, must resist the urge to be impressed.”

    After years of fidgety evasiveness from other tech CEOs, however, lawmakers this week seemed easily wowed by Altman and his seemingly straight-shooting answers.

    Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy, after expressing frustration with IBM’s Montgomery for providing a nuanced answer he couldn’t comprehend, visibly brightened when Altman quickly and smoothly outlined his regulatory proposals in a bulleted list. Kennedy began joking with Altman and even asked whether Altman might consider heading up a hypothetical federal agency charged with regulating the AI industry.

    “I love my current job,” Altman deadpanned, to audience laughter, before offering to send Kennedy’s office some potential candidates.

    Compounding lawmakers’ attraction to Altman is a belief on Capitol Hill that Congress erred in extending broad liability protections to online platforms at the dawn of the internet. That decision, which allowed for an explosion of blogs, e-commerce sites, streaming media and more, has become an object of regret for many lawmakers in the face of alleged mental health harms stemming from social media.

    “I don’t want to repeat that mistake again,” said Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin.

    Here too, Altman deftly seized an opportunity to curry favor with lawmakers by emphasizing distinctions between his industry and the social media industry.

    “We try to design systems that do not maximize for engagement,” Altman said, alluding to the common criticism that social media algorithms tend to prioritize outrage and negativity to boost usage. “We’re not an advertising-based model; we’re not trying to get people to use it more and more, and I think that’s a different shape than ad-supported social media.”

    In providing simple-sounding solutions with a smile, Altman is doing much more than shaping policy: He is offering members of Congress a shot at redemption, one they seem grateful to accept. Despite the many pitfalls of AI they identified on Tuesday, lawmakers appeared to thoroughly welcome Altman as a partner, not a potential adversary needing oversight and scrutiny.

    “We need to be mindful,” Blumenthal said, “of ways that rules can enable the big guys to get bigger and exclude innovation, and competition, and responsible good guys such as our representative in this industry right now.”

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  • Ron DeSantis praised Anthony Fauci for Covid response in spring 2020 for ‘really doing a good job’ | CNN Politics

    Ron DeSantis praised Anthony Fauci for Covid response in spring 2020 for ‘really doing a good job’ | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis is attacking former President Donald Trump for “turning the country over to [Dr. Anthony] Fauci in March 2020” but DeSantis was praising the chief public health official at the same time in previously unreported quotes, saying Fauci was “really, really good and really, really helpful” and “really doing a good job.”

    In other comments, the Florida governor said he deferred to Fauci’s guidance on COVID-19 restrictions and later cited his guidance when communicating the policies he was putting in place early in the pandemic in the state of Florida.

    “You have a lot of people there who are working very, very hard, and they’re not getting a lot of sleep,” DeSantis said on March 25, 2020, at a briefing on Florida’s response. “And they’re really focusing on a big country that we have. And from Dr. Birx to Dr. Fauci to the vice president who’s worked very hard, the surgeon general, they’re really doing a good job. It’s a tough, tough situation, but they’re working hard.”

    In one of his first appearances as a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, DeSantis attacked Trump for following Fauci’s guidance during the Covid pandemic. Fauci served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases until retiring in 2022. He played a key early role in crafting the administration’s response to the pandemic, but often was criticized and sidelined by then-President Trump.

    “I think [Trump] did great for three years, but when he turned the country over to Fauci in March of 2020 that destroyed millions of people’s lives,” DeSantis said last Thursday. “And in Florida, we were one of the few that stood up, cut against the grain, took incoming fire from media, bureaucracy, the left, even a lot of Republicans, had schools open, preserved businesses.”

    “If you are faced with a destructive bureaucrat in your midst like a Fauci, you do not empower somebody like Fauci. You bring him into the office and you tell him to pack his bags: You are fired,” DeSantis said Tuesday at one of his first campaign events in Iowa.

    Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for DeSantis, told CNN he initially followed guidance from Fauci but changed course and didn’t look back.

    “Like most Americans, the governor initially assumed medical officials were going to serve the interests of the people and keep politics out of their decision making. When it became clear that this wasn’t the case, the governor charted his own course and never looked back,” Griffin told CNN in an email. “Governor DeSantis would’ve fired Anthony Fauci.”

    In a news conference on Tuesday, DeSantis also acknowledged mistakes early in the pandemic.

    “And what I’ve said about it is it was a difficult situation and we didn’t know a lot,” he said. “So I think people could do things that they regret. I mean I’ve said there are things we did in those first few weeks that I pivoted from.”

    Though Fauci did help craft the administration’s Covid response, Trump was often critical of Fauci as he attacked his own administration’s pandemic guidelines. Trump began criticizing Fauci early in spring 2020, retweeting calls to fire him in April of that year and in May blasting comments Fauci made against reopening schools. In July 2020, the White House’s deputy chief of staff for communications, Dan Scavino, posted a cartoon on Facebook that showed Fauci as a faucet flushing the American economy for his COVID guidance.

    In spring 2020, Fauci was provided with around-the-clock security after he began receiving escalating threats after his providing guidance to Trump for the country to remain as locked down as possible to help control the spread of the virus, which to date has claimed more than a million lives in the US.

    DeSantis, like Trump, later broke with Fauci over reopening Florida in July 2020, but he didn’t begin regularly harshly criticizing Fauci until spring 2021.

    Trump urged reopenings by May 2020 and DeSantis was one of the first to put in place plans to do so – for which Trump praised the Florida governor at an October 2020 rally.

    Last week, DeSantis’ campaign’s rapid response account and a spokesperson also shared a video from a Republican congressman that attacked Trump for praising Fauci, which used comments from March and February 2020, the same time DeSantis himself was praising Fauci.

    But DeSantis’ attacks rewrite history, according to a CNN KFile review of public appearances by DeSantis in 2020 as Trump began harshly criticizing Fauci much earlier than DeSantis. And in at least 10 different instances at press briefings in April and March, DeSantis cited Fauci or mentioned his guidance when discussing his own support for restrictive policies like closing beaches and putting in place curfews.

    Speaking at a news briefing on March 21, 2020, DeSantis made similar comments praising Fauci.

    “The president’s task force has been great,” DeSantis said. “I mean, you’ve called, you know, we’ve talked Dr. Fauci number of times, talked to, you know, the surgeon, US surgeon general number of times, VP, you know, they’ve been really, really good and really, really helpful.”

    At other press briefings in March 2020, DeSantis also cited Fauci’s guidance on mobile testing, individual testing, and how long the timeline on COVID might be.

    “I would defer to people like Dr. Fauci,” DeSantis said on March 14, 2020. “I think Dr. Fauci has said nationwide, you’re looking at six to eight weeks of where we’re really gonna be having to dig in here.”

    On March 25, 2020, DeSantis cited Fauci’s guidance on isolating.

    “So please, please if you’re one of those people who’ve come from the hot zone, Dr. Fauci said yesterday, you know, you have a much higher chance being infected coming out of that region than anywhere else in the country right now. So please, you need to self-isolate. That’s the requirement in Florida.”

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  • Top US officials have ‘candid and productive discussions’ in Beijing amid ongoing tensions | CNN Politics

    Top US officials have ‘candid and productive discussions’ in Beijing amid ongoing tensions | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senior American and Chinese officials had “candid” and “productive” discussions on Monday in China, according to read-outs from both Washington and Beijing, as the two countries grapple with how to maintain communication amid intense friction.

    Top US State Department and National Security Council officials met with Chinese officials in Beijing on Monday “as part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and build on recent high-level diplomacy between the two countries,” according to a readout from the US State Department.

    The trip by Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink and NSC Senior Director for China and Taiwan Affairs Sarah Beran to the Chinese capital comes as the Biden administration works to navigate its complicated relationship with Beijing.

    There have been a number of exchanges as the United States works to rectify normal channels of communications amid ongoing tensions between the two nations, including two military-related incidents in the past week.

    According to the readout from the State Department, Kritenbrink and Beran, accompanied by US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns, met with Ministry of Foreign Affairs Executive Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu and Director General of the North American and Oceanian Affairs Department Yang Tao. They also “met with members of the U.S. Embassy community.”

    “The two sides exchanged views on the bilateral relationship, cross-Strait issues, channels of communication, and other matters. U.S. officials made clear that the United States would compete vigorously and stand up for U.S. interests and values,” the readout said.

    China’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the two sides had “candid, constructive, and productive communication on improving China-US relations” and “properly managing differences” in line with the consensus reached by Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, who met on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali in November.

    China also clarified its “solemn position” on Taiwan and other major issues of principle, according to its readout, which added that the two sides agreed to continue communication.

    The self-governing democracy of Taiwan has become a key source of tension between the two countries. China’s ruling Communist Party claims the island as its own, despite never having controlled it and has not ruled out using force to take it.

    On Saturday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned that a conflict in the Taiwan Strait would be “devastating” and affect the global economy “in ways we cannot imagine,” while underlining US support for the island democracy and the importance of deterrence.

    State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said Monday that other bilateral issues discussed in Monday’s meeting included climate change, precursor chemicals from China that are used in fentanyl production, human rights, and wrongfully detained American citizens. There are three Americans publicly known to be wrongfully detained in China: Mark Swidan, Kai Li and David Lin.

    Patel did not say if the meeting in Beijing yielded progress on rescheduling Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s own visit to the Chinese capital, which was postponed after the spy balloon incident earlier this year. Instead, Patel reiterated that the department hoped to schedule the trip “when conditions allow.”

    US officials have emphasized their desire to maintain open channels of communication with China as a means to prevent the “competitive” relationship from veering into conflict. China rebuffed a formal meeting of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu while they were both in Singapore, though the two ministers shook hands and “spoke briefly,” the Pentagon said.

    “The most dangerous thing is not to communicate and as a result, to have a misunderstanding, a miscommunication,” Blinken said at a press availability in Sweden last week after the US asserted that a Chinese fighter jet conducted an “unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” during an intercept of a US spy plane in international airspace.

    On Sunday, the US accused a Chinese warship of cutting in front of an American vessel that was taking part in a joint exercise with the Canadian navy in the Taiwan Strait, forcing the American vessel to slow down to avoid a collision. The Chinese defense minister accused the US of “provocation.”

    John Kirby of the US National Security Council on Monday attributed the incidents to an “increasing level of aggressiveness” by China’s military.

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  • Trump shakes up legal team in wake of classified documents indictment | CNN Politics

    Trump shakes up legal team in wake of classified documents indictment | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump’s legal team is undergoing a significant shakeup in the wake of his indictment in the special counsel’s classified documents probe.

    In a sudden move, Trump announced Friday morning that he was removing two of his top attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, from the case and said Todd Blanche, a defense lawyer he hired in April after being indicted in Manhattan, would take the lead. Soon after, Trusty and Rowley issued a joint statement in which they said they were resigning from the legal team entirely.

    Trump is considering adding Miami-based attorney Benedict Kuehne to his legal team, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. He has not been formally added to the team yet but could join soon given Trump’s expected court appearance on Tuesday. CNN has reached out to Kuehne for comment.

    Lindsay Halligan, who is barred in the state where Trump was indicted, also remains on the team.

    In their statement, Trusty and Rowley said they were confident Trump will be “vindicated in his battle against the Biden Administration’s partisan weaponization of the American justice system” and said now was a “logical” time for them to step aside with the case having been filed in Miami.

    They added that they do not plan to make media appearances or to reveal conversations they’ve had with Trump. Trusty appeared on CNN just hours after Trump announced that he had been indicted to defend his client but also left open the door to potential changes in the legal team.

    Asked which members of the team would accompany Trump to court Tuesday, Trusty said, “We’ll see. It’ll make some excitement to see who shows up to the table on Tuesday, I guess.”

    Shortly before Friday’s statement was issued by Trusty and Rowley, Trump disclosed on Truth Social that neither would be representing him. He thanked them for their work, saying they “were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and ‘sick’ group of people,” but did not explain why they were departing.

    Trump’s legal team has seen significant turnover as the investigation into the mishandling of classified documents has unfolded. Last month, Timothy Parlatore, an attorney who played a key role in the investigation and once testified before the grand jury, left Trump’s legal team due to infighting, he told CNN’s Paula Reid.

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  • McCarthy and hardliners reach tentative agreement to resume House floor business | CNN Politics

    McCarthy and hardliners reach tentative agreement to resume House floor business | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Hardline conservatives have agreed to end their blockade of the House floor while they continue discussions with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy about future spending decisions and a new “power-sharing agreement,” according to multiple members leaving the speaker’s office.

    Conservatives who had voted against a procedural vote in retaliation for how GOP leadership handled the debt ceiling deal now say they are willing to support the procedural vote, after they received new commitments from McCarthy about how the California Republican plans to operate going forward, though they said the exact details are still being worked out and did not say whether they would ever be made public or put into a written statement.

    “I think you’re gonna see an agreement to move forward in the next day or two on moving the legislation we wanted to move last week,” said Rep. Bob Good, a Virginia Republican who has repeatedly criticized McCarthy.

    Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican, said of the nearly hourlong meeting in McCarthy’s office: “We aired our issues. We want to see this move forward as a body.”

    Norman said one of the things McCarthy agreed to was to involve conservatives more directly in future decision making.

    A group of hardline conservatives have held up legislative action in the GOP-led House for nearly a week in protest of the deal McCarthy struck with President Joe Biden to raise the nation’s borrowing limit last month. Conservatives wanted the debt ceiling deal to cut more federal spending than it did, and several far-right members of McCarthy’s conference accused him of reneging on commitments he made to them in private in order to win the speakership in January.

    McCarthy told the hardliners Monday that he wouldn’t have cut the debt ceiling deal had he known it would “divide us,” according to a GOP source familiar with the meeting.

    But McCarthy knew at the time that not all his members were going to be on board with the deal, with many of them publicly expressing their concerns with the direction of the talks.

    One of the concessions McCarthy agreed to as part of Monday’s developments was an ironclad commitment to bring a pistol brace bill from GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia to the floor. Leadership has agreed to incorporate the bill, which would block a new Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives rule on pistol braces, into an upcoming procedural vote.

    That vote, which is slated for Tuesday, will now combine a rule for the pistol brace bill with a rule for a gas stoves bill as well as a bill to rein in the administration’s regulatory powers.

    GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said, “The power-sharing agreement that we entered into in January with McCarthy … it has to be renegotiated, so what happened on this debt ceiling bill never happens again.”

    Specifically, Gaetz said the hardliners want more tools to put more “downward pressure on spending,” and want a return to fiscal 2022 spending levels.

    House Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger announced Monday night that her panel will take up spending bills that would roll back funding to the levels demanded by the hardliners, a move that could ease tensions between the group and McCarthy while generating backlash from the White House and Senate Democrats.

    Gaetz said that while they’re willing to end their stand against the procedural vote this week, he warned that they’re willing to oppose future procedural votes if they don’t get their way.

    “If there’s not a renegotiated power sharing agreement then perhaps we’ll be here next week,” he said.

    House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania confirmed they’ve reached a “framework for moving forward” but did not provide details.

    Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, leaving McCarthy’s office, said they have a path forward now but said there will be no votes in the House tonight, as they had previously planned.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • First on CNN: New bipartisan bill in Senate could address TikTok security concerns without a ban | CNN Business

    First on CNN: New bipartisan bill in Senate could address TikTok security concerns without a ban | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Five US senators are set to reintroduce legislation Wednesday that would block companies including TikTok from transferring Americans’ personal data to countries such as China, as part of a proposed broadening of US export controls.

    The bipartisan bill led by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis would, for the first time, subject exports of US data to the same type of licensing requirements that govern the sale of military and advanced technologies. It would apply to thousands of companies that rely on routinely transferring data from the United States to other jurisdictions, including data brokers and social media companies.

    The legislation comes amid a flurry of proposals to regulate how TikTok and other companies may handle the sensitive and valuable data of Americans — not just their names, email addresses and phone numbers but also potentially their behavioral data such as location information, search and browsing histories and personal interests.

    “Massive pools of Americans’ sensitive information — everything from where we go, to what we buy and what kind of health care services we receive — are for sale to buyers in China, Russia and nearly anyone with a credit card,” Wyden said in a statement. “Our bipartisan bill would turn off the tap of data to unfriendly nations, stop TikTok from sending Americans’ personal information to China, and allow nations with strong privacy protections to strengthen their relationships.”

    Lawmakers have scrutinized TikTok, in particular, for its ties to China through its parent company, ByteDance. Much of the existing legislation addressing TikTok at the federal and state level has focused on bans of the app. But Wyden’s bill subjecting US data to export licensing could address the issue without wading into the thorny legal issues surrounding a potential ban, an aide said, and simultaneously avoid giving broad new powers to the executive branch.

    Wednesday’s legislation, known as the Protecting Americans’ Data From Foreign Surveillance Act, does not identify TikTok by name. Instead, it directs the Commerce Department to maintain lists of countries that are considered trustworthy and untrustworthy for the purposes of receiving US data.

    There would be no restrictions applied to personal information transferred to trustworthy states, and no restrictions on individual internet users’ own transfers of their personal data, but companies seeking to transfer Americans’ personal information to countries outside of the trustworthy list would be required to apply for a license. Transfers to countries on the untrustworthy list would be automatically prohibited unless companies could prove they have a valid reason for a transfer, according to a copy of the bill text reviewed by CNN.

    Factors the Commerce Department would need to consider when building its lists include whether a country has enough of its own privacy safeguards — reflected in laws, regulations and norms — to prevent sensitive US data from being transferred further to one of the untrustworthy countries. Another factor includes whether a country has engaged in “hostile foreign intelligence operations, including information operations, against the United States,” language that appears to refer to China, Russia and other foreign adversaries.

    The Commerce Department would also be authorized to identify the specific types of information that would be subject to licensing requirements, based on their sensitivity, as well as how much information a company could transfer to a non-approved country before needing a license.

    A previous version of the bill was introduced last summer. The newest version, the Wyden aide said, includes fresh language that targets TikTok indirectly by prohibiting data transfers from one company to a parent company that may receive data requests by a hostile foreign government, when the company holds data on more than one million users.

    TikTok has faced criticism from US officials who say the company’s links to China pose a national security risk. TikTok has said it has never received a request for US user data from the Chinese government and would never comply with such a request.

    TikTok has also said it is working on securing US user data by storing it on servers controlled by Oracle and by establishing special US access protocols to prevent unauthorized use of the information.

    Should TikTok abide by its plan, known as Project Texas, Wednesday’s legislation would not affect the company, according to the Wyden aide, but if TikTok or ByteDance did seek to move US user data to China, then those transfers would potentially be subject to the proposed Commerce Department restrictions.

    Congress has made several attempts in recent months to address data transfers to foreign adversaries. In February, House lawmakers advanced a bill that would all but require the Biden administration to ban TikTok over national security concerns about the app. The next month, Senate lawmakers introduced a bill that would give the Commerce Department wide latitude to assess all foreign-linked technologies and to take virtually any measures, up to and including imposing a nationwide ban, to restrict their domestic use.

    Those bills have provoked a backlash from industry and civil liberties groups, as well as among some fellow lawmakers. Among the concerns are their potential impact on Americans’ First Amendment rights and a potential conflict with laws facilitating the free flow of media to and from foreign rivals. Other concerns include whether the breadth of the legislation could give the US government too much power and whether it could end up harming industries that are not the target of the legislation.

    The new bill includes language requiring more input from privacy, civil rights and civil liberties experts, said Justin Sherman, founder and CEO of the research firm Global Cyber Strategies and a senior fellow at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy who has seen the bill.

    “You don’t load up Excel sheets in a shipping crate and send them to a foreign port,” Sherman said, but data transfers are a “hugely and often ignored problem in national security.”

    “We need to get beyond just looking at a couple mobile apps and platforms, and start looking at all parts of this ecosystem, including how data gets sold and transferred,” Sherman added, “and this bill takes an important look at that issue.”

    Other senators co-sponsoring Wednesday’s legislation include Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich and Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio. A companion bill in the House will also be unveiled Wednesday, sponsored by Ohio Republican Rep. Warren Davidson and California Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo.

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  • Google earned $10 million by allowing misleading anti-abortion ads from ‘fake clinics,’ report says | CNN Business

    Google earned $10 million by allowing misleading anti-abortion ads from ‘fake clinics,’ report says | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Google has earned more than $10 million over the past two years by allowing misleading advertisements for “fake” abortion clinics that aim to stop women from having the procedure, according to an estimate from a report released Thursday from the non-profit Center for Countering Digital Hate.

    The estimated amount is microscopic compared to the more than $200 billion Google generates from ad sales annually. But the report’s data hints at the broad reach pro-life groups can have by placing these advertisements in Google results for common phrases searched for by abortion seekers.

    Using Semrush, an analytics tool, researchers at the CCDH identified “188 fake clinic websites” that placed ads on Google between March, 2021 and February of this year. CCDH estimates that ads for fake clinics were clicked on by users 13 million times during this period.

    Some searching for “abortion clinics near me” on Google instead found results directing them toward so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” that may try to talk abortion-seekers out of treatment and offer medically unproven abortion pill reversal techniques, according to the report.

    Other Google searches populated by crisis clinic ads included “abortion pill,” “abortion clinic” and “planned parenthood,” the report said, with clinics in states where abortion is legal spending two times as much as those in states with bans.

    In the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, Google faced calls from Congressional Democrats to do more to prevent searches for abortion clinics from returning results for misleading ads – as well as calls from Republican lawmakers to do the opposite. The dueling pressure from lawmakers highlighted how central Google can be for women searching for information on the procedure.

    In a statement Thursday, Google said its approach to abortion ads follows local laws and that any advertiser targeting certain keywords or phrases related to abortions must complete a certification to confirm if it does or does not provide abortion services.

    “We require any organization that wants to advertise to people seeking information about abortion services to be certified and clearly disclose whether they do or do not offer abortions,” a Google spokesperson told CNN. “We do not allow ads promoting abortion reversal treatments and we also prohibit advertisers from misleading people about the services they offer.”

    “We remove or block ads that violate these policies,” the company added.

    Google said it does not allow for abortion reversal pill advertisements because the treatment isn’t approved by the FDA. In response to Thursday’s CCDH report, the company told CNN it took “enforcement action” on content violating this policy.

    Google has continued to face scrutiny in recent months for the steps it takes to protect abortion seekers’ location data.

    Nearly a dozen Senate Democrats wrote to Google in May with questions about how it deletes users’ location history when they have visited sensitive locations such as abortion clinics. The letter came after tests performed by The Washington Post and other privacy advocates appeared to show that Google was not quickly or consistently deleting users’ recorded visits to fertility centers of Planned Parenthood clinics.

    Google previously declined to comment on the lawmakers’ letter. Instead, it referred CNN to a company blog post that includes abortion clinics on a list of sensitive locations, but did not explain what it means when it claims the data will be deleted “soon after” a visit.

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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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  • GOP battle brews over defense bill as McCarthy under pressure to appease the right on social issues | CNN Politics

    GOP battle brews over defense bill as McCarthy under pressure to appease the right on social issues | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House GOP leaders are confronting a legislative landmine over a massive defense bill as right-wing lawmakers are pushing for a slew of hot button amendments that could put moderate Republicans in a complicated position and threaten Democratic support for the must-pass bill.

    The lawmakers are demanding amendment votes this week on a wide-range of controversial issues – everything ranging from abortion to transgender rights to diversity programs at the Pentagon – and are even privately warning that they could scuttle the defense bill on the first procedural vote if they don’t get their way.

    The move has once again put the focus on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as he tries to navigate the unyielding demands from members on his far-right while pushing legislation that many of his most vulnerable members are eager to tout back home. If he caters to the whims of members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus, he could win over more far-right Republicans but could jeopardize support from Democrats and moderate Republicans, both of which will be essential to getting the bill through the chamber.

    Yet the votes could even put the White House in a jam as a group of lawmakers from both parties are pushing to halt President Joe Biden’s move to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.

    Even though the House Armed Services Committee sent its bill to the floor on a bipartisan vote, the top Democrat on that panel warned that his support would be in jeopardy if the final bill includes some of these controversial amendments, particularly around abortion.

    “The committee did a good job of presenting a bipartisan bill,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, the committee’s top Democrat, told CNN. “But I am worried that the full House Republicans are not going to do that, that they’re going to push this bill too far into an extreme anti-inclusion direction that makes it difficult to support.”

    The House Rules Committee will meet Tuesday afternoon to decide which of the over 1,500 amendments that have been submitted will actually be made in order, with the GOP leaders hoping to pass the final bill by the end of this week.

    But even the House Rules Committee has become a wild card for the National Defense Authorization Act. Republicans can only afford to lose two votes on the committee on a party-line vote, and McCarthy placed three far-right members on the panel in exchange for becoming speaker. At least one of the conservative lawmakers on the panel, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, told CNN he plans to oppose the rule, citing concerns that the bill does not go far enough to target “woke” Pentagon policies, and won’t receive the amendment votes to change that.

    GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, one of the other far-right members on the panel said in a statement to CNN, “While this NDAA makes some improvements, there are still glaring issues at the DOD that it needs to address in order to receive my support” when asked how he plans to vote on the rule.

    “The Department of Defense’s transformation into a social engineering experiment wrapped in a uniform is the single greatest threat to this nation’s ability to defend itself – and Republicans are complicit,” Roy added. “Year after year, Republicans pass an NDAA that propagates the cultural rot at DOD while massive defense contractors get rich.”

    Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, the other conservative on the committee, has not returned a request for comment about how he plans to vote, though a Republican source said they’re not as worried about Massie breaking ranks.

    While drama isn’t new in fights over the NDAA, which has been passed by Congress every year for the last six decades, this level of acrimony is something of a departure for what is a typically bipartisan affair. After receiving heat for the debt ceiling deal, McCarthy is under increasing pressure to cater to his right flank, ratcheting up concerns about the ability for lawmakers to reach a compromise that both chambers can agree on.

    GOP Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who represents a swing district and has long been pushing her Republican colleagues to soften their stance on abortion, told CNN, “I don’t anticipate the NDAA not passing but the GOP has an opportunity to show it can be compassionate and pro-woman, and I hope they don’t drop the ball.”

    Aside from amendments that target culture war issues, Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs of California and GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, who both serve on the Armed Services Committee, are also planning to offer an amendment aimed at stopping President Joe Biden’s cluster munition transfer to Ukraine. If it comes to the floor, the vote would reveal how much support Biden’s move has in the House.

    “Cluster munitions are unpredictable weapons that maim and kill indiscriminately, wreaking havoc on civilian populations and undermining economic rebuilding and recovery for decades,” Jacobs told CNN. “This amendment sends a strong message to the world that we will stand by our values and our commitment to protect civilians.”

    Gaetz voiced a similar refrain on Twitter.

    “These cluster bombs will not end the war in Ukraine and will not build a more stable country. Children will be left without limbs and without parents because of this decision if we do not work together in a bipartisan fashion to stop it,” Gaetz tweeted Monday.

    And while the version of the NDAA that passed out of the Armed Services Committee included more funding for the war in Ukraine, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and others are pushing to roll that funding back.

    The NDAA, which outlines the policy agenda for the Department of Defense and the US military and authorizes spending in line with the Pentagon’s priorities, passed out of the House Armed Services committee with overwhelming bipartisan support, even though some controversial GOP amendments – including on banning drag shows on military bases and reinstating troops who refused to comply with the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate – were adopted.

    Some of the amendments that will take center stage on the floor this week include prohibiting gender transition surgeries and treatments from Gaetz, eliminating any offices of diversity, equity and inclusion within the armed forces and Department of Defense from a number of members including Norman, and prohibiting the Department of Defense from “purchasing and having pornographic and radical gender ideology books in their libraries” from GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

    While a handful of Republicans do not believe those amendments go far enough, others warned their colleagues not to jeopardize the future of this crucial legislation as the $858 billion defense package boasts measures that modernize the US military, increase its readiness to counter foreign adversaries like Russia and China, and increase support for servicemembers and their families.

    “We need to get the NDAA passed. … It’s not something to ever put at risk and national security needs to be a priority for each and every one of us. If we don’t have world peace, we have nothing,” Rep. Jen Kiggans, a freshman Republican from a Virginia swing district, told CNN. “And we do that through providing the budget that the military needs. … So, it’s a responsibility.”

    GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, who serves on the Armed Services committee and represents a district Biden won in 2020, told CNN, “I hope smart, common sense amendments are passed.”

    “The committee passed a bill near unanimously with only one dissenting vote, and it will take bipartisanship to get it also through the Senate,” Bacon told CNN.

    While the markup process of the NDAA touched on hot button issues, ultimately members on the committee came together to pass a package that most could support.

    Reflecting on the markup process, one GOP staffer told CNN, “People were pushing for DoD funds to be used for supporting war fighters over wokeness.”

    Those clashes, however, have only seemed to foreshadow the floor flights to come.

    “I think in committee, we tried to craft a bipartisan bill that would be able to get through the Senate and I’m hopeful that’s what everyone will try and do on the floor as well,” Jacobs told CNN. “But I think we’re already seeing the extreme Republicans try and put some poison pills in there that will make it very hard for Democrats to vote for the bill.”

    Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who told CNN he was “proud” to be the only member to vote against NDAA in committee because he needed to see “greater investment” in the Pacific region, called out the amendments that “hurt diversity and inclusion, education, and do nothing to strengthen our national security.”

    “I plan to vote no when it comes to the floor and encourage my colleagues to do the same,” Khanna added.

    One Democratic aide claimed, “Republicans are trying to hijack NDAA to make it a culture war battle.”

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  • Biden raised $72 million in his first quarter of fundraising since announcing reelection bid | CNN Politics

    Biden raised $72 million in his first quarter of fundraising since announcing reelection bid | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden raised $72 million for his reelection effort and for the Democratic Party in his first quarter of fundraising since launching his reelection bid in April, his campaign announced Friday.

    The showing could help quell some concerns about the president’s ability to fundraise as he seeks a second term. His campaign boasted an average contribution of $39 from nearly 400,000 donors and said 97% of all donations were less than $200.

    Biden’s campaign, which has yet to open a headquarters and maintains a skeletal staff several months in, also boasted a sizable war chest, with $77 million in cash on hand at June 30, the end of the quarter.

    While the president’s fundraising haul is stronger than any other 2024 presidential contender, it falls short of the record-breaking $86 million raised in 2011 by President Barack Obama for his reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee in his first quarter of fundraising after launching his second-term bid.

    Obama’s campaign also boasted 158,000 more individual donors in that quarter than Biden’s reported total. Donor contribution limits were lower in the 2012 cycle than they are now: Individual donors could give a maximum of $2,500 to Obama’s campaign when he ran for a second term. This cycle, the individual limit is $3,300. The disparity in maximum contributions between the two cycles is even higher when totaling the maximum allowed contribution to joint fundraising committees.

    Obama launched his campaign three weeks earlier in the second quarter of 2011 than Biden did this year, and as a result, Biden campaign officials noted that they raised more per day than Obama’s campaign did in that quarter.

    Responding to questions about the fewer number of individual donors for Biden compared with Obama’s first quarter of reelection fundraising, Biden campaign officials pointed to a “very different” political climate that has made grassroots fundraising more challenging across the board this year, with political fatigue setting in on both the right and the left.

    Still, the campaign officials said there were signs of enthusiasm, adding that 30% of campaign donors this past quarter had not previously donated to Biden’s 2020 campaign.

    A fundraising sweepstakes to meet the president was especially successful, raising nearly $2 million, campaign officials said. And campaign merchandise that embraced the “Dark Brandon” meme drove over half of the campaign store’s revenue, according to the officials.

    Biden campaign officials declined to disclose the breakdown between funds raised for the campaign versus those raised for the DNC and state parties that are participants in Biden’s joint fundraising operation, noting that Biden’s campaign is heavily integrated with those entities as part of its strategies. That breakdown will become available when the campaign files its report with the Federal Election Commission by Saturday’s deadline.

    In another point of comparison, in 2019, President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee raised a combined $105 million in the second quarter, though Trump’s reelection operation had been well underway for more than two years at that point.

    “Let’s not forget the months of hype about then-President Trump’s “Death Star” his team spent all of 2019 building, which completely fell apart by summer 2020 while the Biden campaign’s rebel alliance surpassed them and then continued to break fundraising records until Election Day,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in response to the comparison. “That’s not exactly the playbook we’re looking to replicate.”

    Trump’s 2024 campaign reported last week that the former president’s joint fundraising committee had raised more than $35 million in the second quarter of the year. Trump launched his comeback bid for the White House in November. The campaign of his chief rival for the GOP nomination – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – reported that it had raised $20 million through June 30 over the six weeks since he announced his candidacy in late May.

    Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez touted the latest fundraising totals as evidence of “incredible enthusiasm” for the president’s agenda and campaign.

    “We’ve seen incredible enthusiasm for President Biden and Vice President Harris’ agenda – including their commitment to restoring democracy, fighting for more freedoms and growing the economy by growing the middle class. While Republicans are burning through resources in a divisive primary focused on who can take the most extreme MAGA positions, we are significantly outraising every single one of them – because our team’s strength is our grassroots supporters,” Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • US orders deployment of fighter jets and Navy destroyer to Middle East in response to Iranian activities | CNN Politics

    US orders deployment of fighter jets and Navy destroyer to Middle East in response to Iranian activities | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered F-35 and F-16 fighter jets deployed to the Middle East, as well as the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, in response to Iranian activities in the Strait of Hormuz.

    “In response to a number of recent alarming events in the Strait of Hormuz, the Secretary of Defense has ordered the deployment of the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, F-35 fighters and F-16 fighters to the US Central Command Area of Responsibility to defend US interests and safeguard freedom of navigation in the region,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said Monday.

    The deployments come after two incidents earlier this month in which Iranian Navy ships attempted to seize merchant vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman.

    The US Navy intervened in both incidents on July 5. In one instance, in which an Iranian vessel was approaching the Richmond Voyager oil tanker, Iranian personnel opened fire on the tanker and hit the ship near the crew’s living spaces.

    “In light of this continuing threat, and in coordination with our partners and allies, the department is increasing our presence and ability to monitor the straight and surrounding waters,” Singh said. “We call upon Iran to immediately cease these destabilizing actions that threaten the free flow of commerce through this strategic waterway of which the world depends on for more than one fifth of the world’s oil supply.”

    Last week, a senior defense official said that US air and maritime forces are working together to continue monitoring the waterway, recently starting to fly A-10 attack aircraft over the Strait of Hormuz. The A-10s were deployed in late March.

    The US also bolstered its forces in the Middle East in May after destabilizing actions from Iran in the Persian Gulf.

    “[The] United States will not allow foreign or regional powers to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz,” National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby said at the time.

    He added that there is “simply no justification” for Iranian actions to interfere, harass or attack merchant ships.

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  • Senate confirms slate of State Department nominees as Tuberville’s military hold remains | CNN Politics

    Senate confirms slate of State Department nominees as Tuberville’s military hold remains | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Senate confirmed a slate of high-profile State Department nominees late Thursday night, including ambassadors to Italy, Jordan, Georgia, the United Arab Emirates, Niger, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

    The confirmations came after Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky told CNN earlier in the evening that he was close to a deal with the State Department to release holds on nominees in exchange for records on the origins of COVID.

    There was no resolution, however, to an ongoing impasse over military nominations as Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama maintains holds in protest over a Pentagon abortion policy.

    Sen. Paul tweeted Thursday evening, “After 2 yrs, the State Department and USAID have agreed to release documents related to risky research conducted in Wuhan. I am pleased that both agencies are going to cooperate in our investigation and provide these critical records.”

    CNN has reached out to the State Department to request comment.

    Meanwhile, pressure intensified over Tuberville’s hold during the Senate’s final week in session prior to the start of the August recess.

    Tuberville’s hold cannot ultimately stop Pentagon nominees from being approved, but moving through dozens of military promotions, which are typically so uncontroversial that they can be approved with a simple agreement, would take months. It would consume the Senate floor and paralyze the body from being able to take up almost any other action, aides say.

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Thursday evening that Senate Democrats would not work to release Tuberville’s hold on military promotions, saying that is “the Republicans’ responsibility,” and that he does not regret “not one bit” that he didn’t put one or two promotions on the floor to try and pry open the hold before the recess.

    “This is the responsibility of the Republican Senate caucus. Leader McConnell has condemned what Tuberville has done,” he said. “It’s up to them. Now I think in August, pressure is going to mount on Tuberville. And I think the Republicans are feeling that heat. As you know, I offered Tuberville if he wanted to put his amendment on the floor, (the Republican Sen. Joni) Ernst amendment, I said ‘go ahead.’”

    “So he’s boxing himself into a corner,” Schumer said. “It’s the Republicans’ responsibility. Theirs, and theirs alone.”

    CNN has previously reported that GOP leadership and fellow lawmakers trying to entice Tuberville to back off are treading carefully, knowing that Tuberville is exercising a power that rank-and-file members want to protect for the future while also recognizing that a long-term standoff with the military could have implications on readiness and recruitment.

    ​​”I’m taking all the fire from the other side, but I’m fine with it. I mean, I knew that was gonna happen. I knew it was gonna be tough, but I’m doing it for the right reasons,” Tuberville recently told CNN. The Republican senator is objecting to the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing military service members and their families for travel to obtain abortion care.

    Here are State Department ambassador nominees that were confirmed by the Senate on Thursday:

    • Eric Kneedler to be ambassador to the Republic of Rwanda
    • Hugo Yue-Ho Yon to be ambassador to the Republic of the Maldives
    • Kathleen FitzGibbon to be ambassador to the Republic of Niger
    • Martina Anna Tkadlec Strong to be ambassador to the UAE
    • Robin Dunnigan to be ambassador to Georgia
    • Nicole D. Theriot to be ambassador to the Co-operative Republic of Guyana
    • Ervin Jose Massinga to be ambassador to the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia
    • Yael Lempert to be ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
    • Julie Turner to be special envoy on North Korean Human Rights Issues with the rank of ambassador
    • William W. Popp to be ambassador to the Republic of Uganda
    • Matthew D. Murray to be US senior official for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation with the rank of ambassador
    • Jennifer L. Johnson to be ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesia
    • Bryan David Hunt to be ambassador to the Republic of Sierra Leone
    • Joel Ehrendreich to be ambassador to the Republic of Palau
    • Jack A. Markell to be ambassador to the Italian Republic and to the Republic of San Marino

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  • Could Donald Trump serve as president if convicted? | CNN Politics

    Could Donald Trump serve as president if convicted? | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Donald Trump has been indicted on federal charges related to 2020 election subversion, a stunning third time this year that the former president has faced criminal charges.

    But could the former president, who remains the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, assume the Oval Office again if convicted of the alleged crimes? In short, yes.

    University of California, Los Angeles law professor Richard L. Hasen – one of the country’s leading experts on election law – said Trump still has a path to serving as president should he win reelection in 2024.

    “The Constitution has very few requirements to serve as President, such as being at least 35 years of age. It does not bar anyone indicted, or convicted, or even serving jail time, from running as president and winning the presidency,” he said in an email to CNN.

    Could a president serve from prison? That’s less clear.

    “How someone would serve as president from prison is a happily untested question,” Hasen said.

    The newest criminal counts against Trump include: conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

    Those are in addition to a total of 40 counts in a separate federal indictment related to the special counsel’s investigation into the mishandling of classified documents, as well as 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records in Manhattan related to an alleged hush money payment scheme and cover-up involving an adult film star.

    If Trump were to be convicted before the 2024 election and win the contest, he could try to grant himself a pardon, according to Hasen.

    “Whether he can do so is untested. The Supreme Court may have to weigh in,” Hasen said, adding that Trump could potentially appeal a conviction to the conservative Supreme Court.

    Special counsel Jack Smith told reporters that he will seek a “speedy trial,” but if Trump was to be elected before a trial concluded, he may be able dismiss it entirely.

    Robert Ray, an attorney who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial, said on CNN following Trump’s June indictment in the classified documents case that the former president “would control the Justice Department” if reelected, adding that if the documents case was pending at that time, “he just dismisses the case.”

    Asked about the latest indictment, Trump defense attorney John Lauro told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins he thinks a potential trial could last “nine months or a year.”

    Lauro said he will need to see the evidence but that his client deserves as much time as any other American. “Every single person in the United States is entitled to due process, including the former president,” he said.

    If Trump is convicted of a felony at the federal level or in New York, he would be barred from voting in his adoptive home state of Florida, at least until he had served out a potential sentence.

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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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  • Justice Department asks Supreme Court to reverse ruling striking down bump stock ban | CNN Politics

    Justice Department asks Supreme Court to reverse ruling striking down bump stock ban | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department on Friday asked the Supreme Court to take up an appeals court ruling that struck down a Trump-era federal ban on so-called bump stocks.

    The request comes as the high court has repeatedly declined to disturb those rulings that favor the restriction on the device, including not considering a challenge to the federal ban in October. Bump stocks are attachments that essentially allow shooters to fire semiautomatic rifles continuously with one pull of the trigger.

    “Like other machineguns, rifles modified with bump stocks are exceedingly dangerous; Congress prohibited the possession of such weapons for good reason.” US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in the new filing with the Supreme Court. “The decision below contradicts the best interpretation of the statute, creates an acknowledged circuit conflict, and threatens significant harm to public safety.”

    The January appellate court ruling concluded that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, ATF, did not have the authority to classify the devices as machine guns, a classification that had effectively banned them. But in the new filing, the Justice Department argued that prior to the ruling, three other appeals courts had upheld the bump stock regulation.

    In 2018, the ATF classified the devices as machine guns under the National Firearms Act after then-President Donald Trump ordered a review of bump stocks – which were used in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting a few months prior.

    But the appellate majority in January argued that bump stocks were not covered by the law.

    “A plain reading of the statutory language, paired with close consideration of the mechanics of a semi-automatic firearm, reveals that a bump stock is excluded from the technical definition of ‘machinegun’ set forth in the Gun Control Act and National Firearms Act,” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote in the majority’s opinion.

    In 2010, the ATF had determined that bump stocks were merely accessories, or firearms parts – and therefore not regulated as a firearm.

    But following the Las Vegas shooting that killed over 50 people and injured hundreds, the Justice Department said that the “devices allow a shooter of a semiautomatic firearm to initiate a continuous firing cycle with a single pull of the trigger,” similar to automatic rifles.

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  • Meta opens up its Horizon Worlds VR app to teens for the first time, prompting outcries from US lawmakers | CNN Business

    Meta opens up its Horizon Worlds VR app to teens for the first time, prompting outcries from US lawmakers | CNN Business

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Meta is forging ahead with plans to let teenagers onto its virtual reality app, Horizon Worlds, despite objections from lawmakers and civil society groups that the technology could have possible unintended consequences for mental health.

    On Tuesday, the social media giant said children as young as 13 in Canada and the United States will gain access to Horizon Worlds for the first time in the coming weeks.

    The app, which is already available to users above the age of 17, represents Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for a next-generation internet, where users can physically interact with each other in virtual spaces resembling real life.

    “Now, teens will be able to explore immersive worlds, play games like Arena Clash and Giant Mini Paddle Golf, enjoy concerts and live comedy events, connect with others from around the world, and express themselves as they create their own virtual experiences,” Meta said in a blog post.

    Zuckerberg has pushed to spend billions developing VR hardware and software, even as Meta has scaled back significantly in other parts of its business. Last year alone, the company spent nearly $16 billion in its Reality Labs segment and warned investors not to expect profitability from that unit anytime soon.

    Tuesday’s expansion reflects Meta’s attempt to capture early adopters in a key demographic. But it immediately triggered criticism from lawmakers who had pleaded with the company to postpone its plan.

    “Meta is despicably attempting to lure young teens to Horizon Worlds in an attempt to boost its failing platform,” said Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who last month, along with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey, urged Zuckerberg to reconsider letting teens use the app.

    Lawmakers have previously raised alarms about the impact of some of Meta’s other products, including Instagram, on younger users.

    “Meta has a record of abject failure to protect children and teens, and yet again, this company has chosen to put young users at risk so that it can make more money,” Markey said, accusing Meta of “inviting digital disaster.”

    “I’m calling on the company to reverse course and immediately abandon this policy change,” Markey added.

    Those calls were echoed earlier this month by dozens of civil society groups who wrote in an open letter that Meta’s VR offerings could expose users to new privacy risks through the collection of biometric and other data; new forms of unfair and deceptive marketing; and abuse or bullying.

    Meta said in its announcement that in opening up Horizon Worlds to teens, the company would provide protective guardrails, such as by using default settings to make teenage users’ profiles and activity less visible to other users and by applying content ratings to potentially mature virtual spaces. Meta added that its safety controls were developed with input from parents and online safety experts.

    “I hope no one is assuming there is any inclination on our part to simply open the floodgates,” Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, told CNN during a recent tech demonstration at the company’s Washington offices. “Clearly we can’t do that. We have to build experiences which are tailored to the unique vulnerabilities of teens.”

    Meta’s announcement Tuesday came as other US government officials said they were beefing up scrutiny of social media’s potential effects on mental health.

    The Federal Trade Commission is “actively working” on hiring in-house psychologists to address concerns linking social media use to teen mental health harms, said Alvaro Bedoya, an FTC commissioner.

    In recent weeks, members of the FTC have been consulting with public health officials and medical professionals to understand the available scientific evidence on the matter, Bedoya told lawmakers on a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

    “There is evidence that some uses of social media do, in fact, hurt certain groups of teenagers and children,” Bedoya said, though he cautioned that there were important nuances and caveats in the research. “This is not some moral panic. There is a ‘there’ there.”

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