“When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
Important Takeaways:
- During this week’s broadcast of FNC’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) reacted to last week’s 34-count guilty verdict against former President Donald Trump.
- The Kentucky Republican said he had “bigger” concerns beyond Trump.
- “A sad day in America,” Paul said of the verdict. “And what I worry about is something even bigger than Donald Trump. I worry about strife. I worry about war in the streets. I worry about 50% of the public believing that the court system will be used against them. Once upon a time, it was because of the color of your skin, now because of the shade of your ideology. I worry about that and I worry, when half the country thinks they won’t be treated fairly, what happens and how people react.
- “If you look at records violations and you look at Hillary Clinton, $8 million expense, and they slapped her on the wrist because she got an $8,000 fine,” he continued. “And that’s actually probably appropriate, some kind of fine for mislabeling things. But there’s a real question whether it is mislabeled. Was it a legal expense? Sounds like it was a legal expense. All nondisclosure agreements, I believe, are legal expenses. I’m guessing there are hundreds of them in New York City as we speak. And my guess is, not one of them have ever been taken to court. I think Donald Trump is the only person ever prosecuted for this particular crime.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that New York Judge Juan Merchan should consider former President Donald Trump’s comments about being jailed while sentencing.
- Sunday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends Weekend,” Trump said, “I think it would be tough for the public to take, you know at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”
- Guest host Kasie Hunt said, “Considering that the sentencing is likely to occur, just days before the start of the convention and months before he’s to be the Republican nominee in November do you think it would be dangerous for the country if Donald Trump were sentenced to jail?”
- Schiff said, “No, I don’t think it will be dangerous for the country and we have seen Trump urge mass protests outside the courthouse that never materialized. But nevertheless this is I think what Donald Trump is aiming for. This is essentially his threat that if he gets jailed time that he’s going to encourage his supporters to rise up. And we saw the very deadly results of that on January 6. So I don’t think the public is going to respond to that call. I hope we learn something from the awful experience of January 6.”
- He added, “It’s very clear what Donald trump has suggesting here. This is something I think that the judge needs to take into consideration also not to be intimidated by that threat but as a further evidence, this defendant not only doesn’t accept responsibility but is willing to endanger people, just as Trump’s willing to violate the gag order and potentially endanger witnesses or jurors or the judge himself or family members, that’s something that judge ought to be considering.”
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Important Takeaways:
- Houthi militants said the US and UK killed at least 16 people with airstrikes on Yemen on Thursday, in the deadliest assault on the group since the start of a campaign in January to prevent its attacks on ships around the Red Sea.
- The Iran-backed militant organization on Friday said it targeted a US aircraft carrier in the area, the Dwight D. Eisenhower, in response. Though, there was no attack in the vicinity of the ship and it wasn’t hit, a Politico reporter said, citing a US Defense Department official.
- The militants have vowed to continue their attacks in solidarity with Palestinians and are calling on Israel to stop its war against Hamas in Gaza.
- The assault comes as Israeli troops pursue Hamas militants in Rafah. The US, European Union and other allies have either urged Israel to stop its operations in the southern Gaza city or do more to protect civilians.
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“When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
Important Takeaways:
- Former President Trump became the first-ever former U.S. president to become a convicted felon on Thursday.
- Trump, the presumed 2024 GOP nominee, is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, just one week before the Republican National Convention.
- His attorney Todd Blanche told CNN Trump’s legal team would “vigorously fight” with motions in the coming weeks and if unsuccessful with these, they would appeal following his sentencing.
- The appeals process is unlikely to conclude before the November election.
- Would Trump go to jail?
- Judge Juan Merchan will determine whether Trump’s punishment will include a prison sentence.
- The 34 charges are all Class E felonies — the least severe level in New York. They each carry the possibility of up to four years in prison.
- But the judge can also decide to sentence Trump to probation without prison time. That would require the former president to regularly report to a probation officer. If he commits any more crimes, Trump could then be jailed.
- Can Trump run for president as a convicted felon?
- While Trump can still run for president, it’s not yet clear if he’ll be able to vote for himself since some states have laws that limit the voting rights of a person with a felony conviction.
- Trump moved his residency to Florida after leaving the White House in 2021. According to Florida law, the ability of people with a felony conviction to vote depends on the laws in the state where they were convicted.
- “New York only disenfranchises people while serving a prison sentence, so assuming Trump is not sentenced to prison time, his rights would be restored by New York law and therefore also in Florida,” Blair Bowie, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center said.
- “The only way he wouldn’t be able to vote is if he is in prison on Election Day,” Bowie said.
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Important Takeaways:
- America has gone ‘over a cliff’ with Trump’s conviction, Judge Jeanine says: ‘All smoke and mirrors’
- Fox News host Jeanine Pirro said Thursday that America has “gone over a cliff” after former President Trump was found guilty on all counts, making him the first former President of the United States to be convicted of a crime.
- “I want to believe that Americans believe in justice, and I think that in their gut, they realized that there is something that is very wrong here. We have gone over a cliff in America,” Pirro said on-air, moments after the jury found Trump guilty of falsifying business records on all counts, concluding his historic and unprecedented criminal trial. Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts.
- “This verdict is a verdict of someone who was forced to fight a 1,000-pound gorilla with both hands tied behind his back. This was a defendant for whom crimes were created, against whom a judge…was handpicked for this defendant, who denied him the ability to fight the way he needed to fight, who brought in crimes that we have never heard of in New York before, where they had dead misdemeanors that they resurrected into felonies based upon non-unanimous verdicts of crimes that are federal over which no state court or no state judge or prosecutor has jurisdiction,” Pirro said.
- “And in the end, with all this smoke and mirrors, at 34 counts, and a hooker, and a guy, [who] according to a federal judge is a serial perjurer, we have convicted a former President of the United States of America,” she continued.
- Democrats have set a dangerous precedent by doing this. They may not like life under the new rules they have created.
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Important Takeaways:
- A California city has been accused of wrongfully ordering two chaplains to stop praying in the name of Jesus Christ, which a legal group argues violates their religious freedom.
- The First Liberty Institute sent a complaint letter to the Carlsbad City Council on Tuesday regarding the City Manager Scott Chadwick allegedly ordering fire chaplain Denny Cooper and police chaplain J.C. Cooper to stop praying in Jesus’ name.
- According to the letter, Chadwick told the chaplains of a new standard in separate conversations in April.
- “Because the chaplains cannot in good conscience erase the name of Jesus from their prayers, this order deprives first responders of the solace and spiritual strength that the Chaplains’ volunteer ministry has provided for nearly two decades,” the letter reads.
- “Therefore, we urge the City Council to return to its longstanding practice of inviting the Chaplains to pray freely in accordance with their sincere religious beliefs.”
- FLI Counsel Kayla Toney, who authored the letter, told The Christian Post via email that the institute became aware of the situation through a “former client who we helped with a different religious liberty issue.”
- Toney took issue with the city manager’s reported argument that praying in Jesus’ name constituted harassment of non-Christians and created a hostile work environment.
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Important Takeaways:
- The Biden administration has quietly given Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia — solely near the area of Kharkiv — using U.S.-provided weapons, two U.S. officials and two other people familiar with the move said Thursday, a major reversal that will help Ukraine to better defend its second-largest city.
- In the last few days, the U.S. made the decision to allow Ukraine “flexibility” to defend itself from attacks on the border near Kharkiv, the second U.S. official said.
- In effect, Ukraine can now use American-provided weapons, such as rockets and rocket launchers, to shoot down launched Russian missiles heading toward Kharkiv, at troops massing just over the Russian border near the city, or Russian bombers launching bombs toward Ukrainian territory. But the official said Ukraine cannot use those weapons to hit civilian infrastructure or launch long-range missiles, such as the Army Tactical Missile System, to hit military targets deep inside Russia.
- Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who supports a restriction lift, became the first U.S. official to publicly hint that Biden may shift course and allow such strikes, telling reporters that U.S. policy toward Ukraine would evolve as needed. White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby later did not rule out a potential change.
- Those messages came after top U.S. allies, such as the United Kingdom and France, said Ukraine should have the right to attack inside Russia using Western weapons. Lawmakers from both parties also supported the move publicly and privately, while top U.S. military officials briefed Congress behind closed doors that relaxing the restriction had “military value,” POLITICO first reported.
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Important Takeaways:
- The city of San Francisco has removed the Revolutionary War-era “Appeal to Heaven” flag featuring a pine tree following the controversy with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
- “City parks officials quietly took down the Civic Center ‘Appeal to Heaven’ flag over the weekend, saying a statement to the Chronicle that although it originally signified the ‘quest for American independence,’ it has ‘since been adopted by a different group — one that doesn’t represent the city’s values,’” noted the San Francisco Chronicle.
- As Breitbart News reported recently, Democrats have been calling for Alito to recuse himself in the case against former President Donald Trump after images surfaced of an “Appeal to Heaven” flag waving over his beach house:
- Unable to expand the court with more liberal justices, Democrats are casting doubt on Justice Alito’s ability to remain impartial after the New York Times published two stories showing an upside-down American flag and an Appeal to Heaven flag displayed in Alito’s front yard. The pressure campaign is the latest from left-leaning media outlets and Democrats, who have also targeted conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and similarly demanded his recusal from politically expedient cases.
- “The left claims to uphold norms but violates them by inventing recusal standards to pressure and delegitimize the court. The goal is power, not ethics,” Mark Paoletta, a senior fellow at Center for Renewing America and a top lawyer for the Trump White House, wrote in a rebuttal op-ed in the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday.
- The first story from the Times stirred outrage over an upside-down American flag displayed outside of Alito’s Virginia home in January of 2021 — historically, the American flag is flown upside-down to show a signal of “dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property,” according to U.S. flag code.
- The Appeal to Heaven flag was one of the 18 original flags raised 1964 on Flag Day in San Francisco. It was originally flown from George Washington’s ships during the Revolutionary War and has always held a place of historical significance. However, the flag has since become controversial due to its usage by some segments of the political right.
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Important Takeaways:
- The upcoming House Farm Bill will contain measures to restrict foreign entities like China from scooping up American farmland in a big win for national security, a Republican who helped secure the provisions told DailyMail.com.
- Foreign entities own a total of 40 million acres of U.S. farmland and China has bought up nearly 347,000 acres, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
- Now lawmakers are working to further restrict China and other adversaries from snatching up coveted land in the fiscal year 2024 ‘Farm Bill.’
- The Chinese land purchases near important U.S. military instillations have been a particular concern for lawmakers and government officials.
- In 2022, for example, the China-based food producer, Fufeng Group, acquired 300 acres of land in Grand Forks, just 20 minutes down the road from the Grand Forks Air Force Base, where some of the nation’s most sensitive drone technology is based.
- Chairman of the committee, Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., celebrated the bill’s passage through committee with bipartisan support, saying in a statement last week, ‘Great things can be accomplished when you don’t surround yourself with redlines, and I am eager to continue our work with whomever wants to come to the table.’
- Hinson also celebrated the bill’s committee approval.
- ‘I was proud to work with Chairman Thompson to ensure initiatives to reshore our food supply chain and prevent Communist China from buying our land were included in the House Farm Bill.’
- ‘Food security is national security, and this Farm Bill bolsters both.’
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Important Takeaways:
- A top US official has described China’s recent military exercises around Taiwan as “a rehearsal” for an invasion.
- US Indo-Pacific Commander Samuel Paparo said his command monitored China’s drills last Thursday and Friday.
- “We watched it. We took note. We learned from it,” he told Nikkei, adding that it “looked like a rehearsal.”
- China said its two-day exercises were punishment for separatist forces seeking independence. Beijing claims the island is part of China’s national territory.
- The drills came days after President Lai Ching-te was inaugurated. He called on Beijing to stop threatening the island and pledged to “neither yield nor provoke” the mainland Communist Party leadership.
- Admiral Paparo warned China continues to “build capability at an alarming rate.”
- The US does not have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan but is bound by its own laws to provide the island with the means to defend itself.
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