Questioning Trump’s Immunity & Making The Internet A Little Better
December 12, 2023
You’ve Gotta Hear Me Out Here!
On Monday, Special Counsel Jack Smith requested that the Supreme Court make a quick ruling – you might even call it a snap judgment – on whether former President Donald Trump can be prosecuted on charges that he attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Prosecutors are trying to keep their election subversion trial on track for its scheduled date in March. While District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that Trump is not immune, his lawyers have argued that he should be protected under presidential immunity, as his actions were taken during his time in office.
“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former President is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” wrote prosecutors.
Justices ordered Trump’s lawyers to respond to the request by December 20, with the court’s next meeting scheduled for January 5 of next year. It’s unclear whether they will actually hear the case, which Trump’s team is trying to delay by sending it to an appeals court. “There is absolutely no reason to rush this sham to trial except to injure President Trump and tens of millions of his supporters. President Trump will continue to fight for Justice and oppose these authoritarian tactics,” said his campaign in response to the news.
Trump, however, remains an immovable object – and all of his Republican challengers are very, very stoppable forces. With just five weeks to go before the Republican Iowa caucuses on January 15, Trump remains firmly in the lead in the Hawkeye State, with a commanding 51% of Republican voters saying he’s their first choice. Ron DeSantis has just 19% of the vote and Nikki Haley trails him with 16%.
Some Good News
- Miyazaki’s ‘The Boy and the Heron’ is No. 1 at the box office, a first for the Japanese anime master (AP)
- A teenager who passed California’s notoriously tricky bar exam at just 17 is now a practicing attorney (Yahoo)
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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Economic Issues
- At Argentina’s presidential inauguration on Sunday, newly-sworn-in President Javier Milei gave a less celebratory speech than you’d expect of the profanity-loving, chainsaw-wielding firebrand. For his first speech as president, the far-right politician – a former economist – turned back the clock and dropped some cold, hard numbers to illustrate the country’s dire financial situation.
- “In the last 12 years, GDP per capita fell 15% in a context in which we accumulated 5,000% inflation. As such, for more than a decade we have lived in stagflation,” he said. “This is the last rough patch before starting the reconstruction of Argentina. It won’t be easy; 100 years of failure aren’t undone in a day. But it begins in a day, and today is that day.”
- After taking the election cycle by storm, Milei has toned down his headline-snatching antics. He’s shifted away from promises to dollarize Argentina’s economy, dispatched a climate envoy to the COP28 summit despite rejecting the idea of human-caused climate change, and has already turned back on his plans to dismantle the country’s health ministry. The question remains if the Milei we saw on the campaign trail is lurking somewhere in the shadows, or if he’s already been tamed by the political pressures of the presidency.
Poland’s Own Donald Takes Power
- As Argentina shifts to the right, Poland is heading the other direction. On Monday, former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was given a mandate to form a new government after every other major party in Poland refused to form a government with the far-right PiS party, which has been in power for eight years. Tusk’s centrist Civic Coalition (KO) will form a government with the help of the center-right Third Way party and a party named the Left – guess what that party’s political leanings are?
- Tusk’s coalition basically campaigned on a version of the Biden platform, remixed for the Polish electorate. That is to say, the coalition’s main policy focus will be undoing the effects of the right-wing administration that came before it. “We are working… on a whole set of measures that will restore the rule of law as much as possible,” Tusk said on Monday. Those measures will hopefully unblock a €36 billion ($38.7 billion) payment from the E.U. to Poland, which has been withheld by Brussels over rule of law concerns.
Additional World News
- COP28: Climate summit draft agreement removes mention of fossil fuel phase-out (CNN)
- EU set for summit showdown over Ukraine accession talks as Hungary stands firm (Reuters)
- U.S. F-16 crashes off the coast of South Korea (NBC)
- Kenya’s nationwide power blackout sparks KPLC sabotage suspicions (BBC)
- India’s supreme court upholds decision to strip Kashmir of special status (Guardian)
Middle East Reads
- Hunger, thirst and chaos in southern Gaza as hostilities drive humanitarian aid to the brink of collapse (NBC)
- Global Strike Begins for a Gaza Ceasefire (Time)
- Gazans say hunger is causing social breakdown, fuelling fears of exodus into Egypt (Reuters)
- Protesters chain themselves to White House fence (AP)
“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.” – Aristotle
Leaking On His Lonesome
- Back in April of this year, 21-year-old Jack Teixeira leaked Pentagon documents on Discord. He was indicted on six federal counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information, though he pleaded not guilty in June. This week, the U.S. Air Force found that he acted alone in leaking the documents.
- The results of an Air Force Inspector General investigation did note that Teixeira’s unit “failed to take proper action after becoming aware of his intelligence-seeking activities,” but that there was no indication that they were aware he was leaking information. 15 personnel were disciplined for indirectly enabling the leak by failing to adequately inspect areas under command, inconsistent guidance for reporting security incidents, inconsistent definitions of the “need to know” concept, and a lack of supervision and oversight on night shift operations.
Not Interested, Don’t Care, Won’t Hear It
- A family counselor in Washington, Brian Tingley, sued over a 2018 state law that threatens therapists who engage in conversion therapy with a loss of their license. Tingley claims the law violates his speech rights, but the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it in a split decision. The Supreme Court refused to take up the case on Monday.
- It takes four of the nine justices to set a case for arguments, and only three justices – Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh – were interested in hearing the case. Thomas wrote that the court should have taken up the case because “licensed counselors cannot voice anything other than the state-approved opinion on minors with gender dysphoria without facing punishment.”
Additional USA Reads
- Deadly tornadoes leave thousands displaced or without power in Tennessee (CNN)
- Rudy Giuliani’s trial for damages in defamation lawsuit filed by two Georgia election workers begins today (CBS)
- Samantha Woll death: ‘Person of interest’ taken into custody in Detroit synagogue leader’s killing, police say (CNN)
- Murder conviction overturned for man imprisoned as teen in 2004 flower shop killing (ABC)
- Workers seen on video denying Jewish customer access to bathroom are no longer employed at California coffee shop (NBC)
- Harvard professors defend president amid calls to resign after statements on antisemitism (Guardian)
Looking 4 Solutions To Slow Internet
- You might have noticed your internet-surfing experience has degraded in recent years. Ever-more intrusive ads, boxes asking you to signup for email newsletters (ew!), those damn cookie warnings, and deteriorating search results are all weighing down the internet-using experience, but a group of companies is looking to change that — kind of.
- A collection of tech giants – including Apple, Google, Ericsson, and Comcast – are working on a new technology named L4S to at least make the internet feel a lot faster. There’s a lot going on with the technology, but the short version of it is that our internet infrastructure is a mess, with computers, servers, and routers all adding short delays to your data’s travels. The different nodes in the system can also delay communication if they think they’ve lost data, which happens all the time. To compensate for all these issues, networks often build in buffer times, allowing them to queue information for a more smooth delivery.
- The issue with this is that you end up staring at a spinning wheel for a few seconds, and you might even hear the faint sound of a dial-up tone in the recesses of your mind. The new L4S system looks to solve this problem by helping networks determine when issues are actually occurring, allowing them to send through the optimal amount of data at the right times. This keeps data flowing as quickly as possible, reducing buffer times and making the internet feel like we’re actually in the year 2023. Unfortunately, you’ll still have to deal with those ads and newsletter signup boxes – they’re not going anywhere.
Additional Reads
- Inland Empire City Among The Most Roach-Infested In USA, Study Finds (Patch)
- Elon Musk Marks Race to Bottom With Alex Jones, Ramaswamy, Andrew Tate in Live Twitter Chat (Rolling Stone)
- Brain sample from Maine gunman to be examined for injury related to Army Reserves (AP)
- Gao Yaojie, a pioneering activist who exposed China’s AIDS epidemic, dies at 95 (NPR)
- Quarter of world’s freshwater fish at risk of extinction, according to assessment (Guardian)
- Prince Harry ordered to pay legal fees to Daily Mail publisher in libel case (NBC)