politics

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/63243644

LOS ANGELES (CN) — A federal judge in California Friday awarded Hunter Biden $1.7 million in punitive damages in his defamation dispute against former Overstock.com CEO and 2020 election denier Patrick Byrne.

U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson had already indicated at a hearing in January that Byrne faced punitive damages after failing to defend himself against the claims by former President Joe Biden’s son. Byrne had claimed Biden had sought an $800 million bribe from Iran sometime in 2021.

“Here, the evidence is clear and convincing that defendant has engaged in intentional misrepresentation with conscious disregard towards plaintiff’s rights,” Wilson said. “Defendant’s defamation went far beyond mere negligence. In fact, defendant has admitted that after the offending article was published, defendant repeatedly reposted the article across social media platforms and encouraged his followers on those platforms to promote it further.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49318173

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/49915655

“We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it,” said Khanna, a progressive lawmaker from California in the U.S. House of ​Representatives.

“And these hoodlums come in with machine guns – M4, an American-made machine gun – and they detain us. They block off the road. And then they call the IDF and ​the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans,” Khanna said, referring to the Israeli military.

An aide to ⁠Khanna who was in the group, Cameron Kasky, said they were held for more than an hour and made appeals to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem for help. A group ​of officers who appeared to be police eventually intervened, leading to their release, Kasky said.

Mystery surrounding Senator Mitch McConnell’s health is deepening as the US Congress prepares to return from recess next week.

McConnell, 84, has not been seen in public since he was admitted to hospital in the Washington area on 14 June. Nearly a month later, the Kentucky Republican’s office has released only sparse updates, saying he is “continuing to improve” and remains engaged with Senate business, while refusing to disclose the nature of his illness or explain why he remains hospitalised.

• Video of EMS
• Audio of 911 call

from the the-censorship-police-are-getting-bolder dept

Another senior Trump administration official [Adam Candeub] is gleefully showing off his true colors: The current general counsel for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published an opinion column with the Heritage Foundation’s news outlet The Daily Signal calling for stronger obscenity regulation.

[...] Candeub proposes a supposed moral restoration of obscenity laws such that anything viewed through the lens of non-traditional sexual expression could be fair game for legislatures to heavily restrict or outright ban.

[...] Candeub works for the FCC and is backing a legal strategy that’s been used, historically, to aggressively prosecute women, LGBTQ+ individuals, entire communities of color, consensual sex workers, and pornographic and non-pornographic publishers for their speech.

This is the FCC presenting itself as the morality speech police.

Alabama Republican voters and politicians meanwhile:

Archive link: https://archive.is/qarCU

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old contractor awaiting regularization of his status, was shot dead by an agent claiming to have acted in self-defense, a claim disputed by the victim's friends and family.

A trans teen withdrew from the girls’ division of an Irish Dance contest in Florida after the organizers were pressured by state officials to kick her out. However, it is unclear whether the girl’s participation in the competition would have actually violated any law.

“No young person should become the center of a political fight simply because they want to participate in the activities they love,” said Public Policy Manager for Equality Florida Quinn Diaz in a statement. “At a time when Florida is competing to attract visitors, talent, and major events from around the world, the question for our leaders is simple: will we send a message that our doors are closed, that ours is only a state for some? Or will we make it clear that everyone is welcome here?”

The Irish dance contest is governed by the Irish Dance Teachers’ Association of North America (IDTANA). That organization has trans-inclusive policies that allow competitors to decide how they compete. They have previously defended those policies, and the community has supported that move, including by setting up a petition to the Dublin-based governing body, An Coimisiún le Rincí Gaelacha (CLRG), to voice their unequivocal support for the inclusion of trans dancers.

Over 200 major clean energy projects were canceled over the first year and a half of Trump’s term. A report says that’s left nearly half a million jobs on the table.

Weeks before introducing a bill to streamline data center development across Pennsylvania, [Republican] State Sen. Greg Rothman’s real estate firm quietly collected a fee from the $30 million sale of land now hosting the state’s largest proposed data center. Whether that sequence amounts to a conflict of interest — or simply an uncomfortable overlap — depends entirely on who you ask and what standard you think elected officials should be held to.

I bet it's my taxpayer money.

Discussing the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on a conservative podcast, prominent election denier David Clements claimed on July 8 that “in theory, right now,” President Donald Trump “can fire the entire board as it's comprised, and it's completely constitutional."

On the evening of July 9, Trump announced that he had done just that. Democrats have criticized the move, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called it a “brazen attempt to seize control of our elections” by Trump ahead of the midterms.

In a conversation on The David Rutherford Show, Clements claimed the commission “can, right now, say the elections are vulnerable. The machines are crap. We're decertifying them,” adding, “For all intents and purposes, if the EAC were to decertify the machines, it's game over.”

Clements excitedly explained that the Supreme Court’s recent Trump v. Slaughter ruling — which gives the president “sweeping new authority over approximately two dozen multi-member agencies that Congress intended to be independent” — is “an amazing opportunity for Trump to start firing people right out the gate” at the EAC and replace them with commissioners who would “decertify the machines.” He then called for Trump to force recess appointments so “all of a sudden, you could have like a Shawn Smith on the EAC.” As the Brennan Center notes, Smith is an election denier.

The neighbor said emergency responders worked quickly – but they did not seem panicked.

“In a situation where perhaps time is of the essence, there seems to be a little bit more urgency, but there was no urgency here,” the neighbor told CNN.

When the emergency vehicles left the street, the neighbor said their sirens were not on.

Zeteo’s weekly round-up, documenting the growth of authoritarianism in Trump’s second term.

After the rule was proposed last year, it triggered roughly 220,000 public comments. About 99 percent were against the change, according to an analysis by The New York Times that used artificial intelligence.

Among those asking the administration to reconsider were state wildlife agencies in some Republican-governed states.

Over 80 percent of this spending went toward Republicans or conservative causes, a new analysis finds.

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a man killed by federal immigration agents during a traffic stop in Houston this week, was not the intended target of the “enforcement operation”, the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were reportedly seeking two people from Guatemala when they attempted to stop Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant who had lived in the United States for 35 years, the New York Times reported.

Salgado Araujo, who was on his way to work early on Tuesday morning, was driving three other people in a white van. After the shooting, the three men were taken into custody. One of the three men has been identified by advocates as Victor Hugo Salgado Araujo, the brother of the victim. The New York Times reported that he was still in an immigration detention center.