On Monday, the D.C. Court of Appeals rejected a request by a former associate of President Donald Trump's ex-campaign adviser Roger Stone to challenge special counsel Robert Mueller's appointment.
Andrew Miller, who refused to testify before Mueller's grand jury, argued in a lawsuit that Mueller's appointment, laid out by special counsel regulations, is unconstitutional because Mueller was not appointed by the president or confirmed by the Senate. The court implied that the matter is no longer relevant, given that Mueller's investigation is now concluded.
"Upon consideration of appellant's petition for panel rehearing, which contains a suggestion of mootness, filed April 15, 2019, it is ordered that the petition be denied," stated the court ruling.
Stone, who repeatedly bragged about having a backchannel to WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential election, was indicted by Mueller's team on charges of obstruction, witness tampering, and false statements. His trial is scheduled to take place in November.
Adult film star Stormy Daniels is planning to host a Q&A session on her Only Fans profile as speculation continues to swirl over a possible indictment against Donald Trump handed down by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, The Daily Beast reported.
A grand jury has been considering charges against Trump in regards to the $130,000 paid to Daniels by Trump's then-personal lawyer Michael Cohen -- a "hush money" payment that some say was designed to keep an alleged sexual encounter between Trump and Daniels under wraps in the run up to the 2016 election.
“This is going to be entertaining,” Daniels wrote in a Twitter post promoting the livestream Q&A, which is scheduled to take place at 9 p.m. EST Wednesday. “Get your questions ready.”
Daniels went on to write that participants in the event will hear her answers “straight from the horse’s mouth" -- a likely reference to Trump's preferred nickname for Daniels, "Horseface."
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Florida has attracted nationwide controversy as new censorship measures put in place by Gov. Ron DeSantis have driven some schools to empty their bookshelves to keep up with a wave of right-wing activists demanding the review of any books mentioning racial or sexual orientation issues.
In fact, things have gotten so extreme that one school was even forced to pull a documentary about civil rights icon Ruby Bridges.
But things could just be getting started. As Greg Sargent noted in The Washington Post on Wednesday, a new bill advancing in the legislature with DeSantis' support could formally require schools to ban any book, pending review, if even a single parent complains about it.
"The provision is buried in a bill that’s already received attention for another reason: It would expand the state’s 'don’t say gay' law prohibiting classroom discussion of sex and gender up to high school — well beyond the initial goal of limiting discussion only through third grade," wrote Sargent. "That’s bad, but the book-banning provision, which has attracted far less attention, makes it worse. That part of the bill mandates that instructional material facing objection in public schools through 12th grade for depicting 'sexual' or 'pornographic' conduct be 'unavailable to students until the objection is resolved.'"
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"This means books and other materials would be removed before something akin to due process occurs," wrote Sargent. Furthermore, "such objections could be lodged not just by a parent, but any resident in the county, meaning anyone could get a book removed more easily than before."
Furthermore, Sargent noted, the bill is written so broadly that virtually anything can be challenged as "pornographic." For instance, "Take the case of “The Bluest Eye,” a novel by Toni Morrison. In at least one Florida county — Pinellas — parental objections have already resulted in the book being banned from schools because it features a rape scene, even though students protested that it was important to their education." And the challenges take months to resolve, leaving books banned in the meantime and creating an environment in which teachers are afraid to introduce any controversial subject.
DeSantis, facing growing protest and negative press attention as he prepares to launch a 2024 presidential bid, has shot back, calling it a "hoax" that Florida schools are seeing a wave of book bans — even though it is very much not a hoax.
Ultimately, it could become a serious liability for him, wrote Sargent.
"DeSantis probably calculates that this would serve his short-term political interests. Headlines about banned books — and liberal outrage in response — will bolster him among GOP primary voters," wrote Sargent. "But those elites are also backing DeSantis because he supposedly can win back suburban voters alienated by Trump. And national stories about the latest book-banning frenzy would probably undermine that suburban appeal ... it’s likely he will have to answer for the whims of these petty functionaries when their efforts run off the rails."
A commentary published on top tech news website TechCrunch takes Twitter CEO Elon Musk to task for doing seemingly everything in his power to make the social networking site worse.
The piece's author, Natasha Lomas, marvels at the way that Musk has made Twitter less user-friendly while at the same time implementing changes that are sure to drive away more users, such as taking away verified accounts from people unless they pay him a monthly $8 fee.
"It almost doesn’t matter if this is deliberate sabotage by Musk or the blundering stupidity of a clueless idiot," she writes. "The upshot is the same: Twitter is dying."
Lomas predicts that charging users monthly fees for verified accounts will be Musk's "next -- perhaps final -- stage of destruction" of the company he bought last year for more than $40 billion.
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"Genuine users are rightly outraged at the idea of being blackmailed into paying Musk to prove who they are," she charges. "These people — the signal amid the Twitter noise — are, after all, a core component of the value of the network. So of course they shouldn’t (and won’t) pay — and so their visibility on Twitter will decay. Which, in turn, will trigger more damage — as any remaining users wanting to find quality information will find it increasingly hard to come by… It’s death by irrelevance."
The bottom line, Lomas says, is that Musk is "flushing Twitter down the sink."
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