Travis Gettys is a senior editor for Raw Story based in northern Kentucky. He previously worked as a web editor for WLWT-TV and a contributing writer for the Kentucky Enquirer, and he also wrote for the award-winning Sadly, No! blog. He has covered national, state and local politics, breaking news, criminal investigations and trials, sports and a variety of community issues, with a special emphasis on racial justice, right-wing extremism and gun safety.
Donald Trump's last acting attorney general told U.S. senators the former president applied "persistent" pressure on the Department of Justice to discredit the results of the 2020 election.
Jeffrey Rosen told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he "persuaded the president not to pursue a different path" during a January meeting where Trump considered ousting the acting attorney general and replacing him with colleague Jeffrey Clark, who Rosen said had showed an "inexplicable" willingness to push false claims about the election, reported the Washington Post.
"The president was persistent with his inquiries, and I would have strongly preferred that he had chosen a different focus in the last month of his presidency," Rosen said in his opening statement, according to a person familiar with the testimony. "But as to the actual issues put to the Justice Department, DOJ consistently acted with integrity and the rule of law held fast."
Rosen said he pushed back against the former president's pressure, and Trump eventually backed down.
"[Trump's claims were] misguided, and I disagreed with things that President Trump suggested the Justice Department do with regard to the election. So we did not do them," Rosen said. "[When Trump was told he was] misinformed or wrong, or that we would not take various actions to discredit the election's validity, he acquiesced to the department's position."
A new Oscar for best casting will be added to the Academy Awards from 2026, organizers announced Thursday.
It will be the first competitive new golden statuette added to Hollywood's most important award show in more than two decades.
"Casting directors play an essential role in filmmaking, and as the Academy evolves, we are proud to add casting to the disciplines that we recognize and celebrate," Academy CEO Bill Kramer and president Janet Yang said in a statement.
Casting directors are among the first key personnel to join new film projects.
They play an integral role in shaping the movies that ultimately reach the big screen, hiring A-list stars and performers for minor roles.
A campaign to add the annual category has been ongoing for several years.
Stunt performers are also lobbying for their own Oscar, without success so far.
The statement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not say whether the casting award will be handed out during the live Oscars show itself.
Currently, all 23 existing categories are presented live during the gala.
An effort to speed up the ceremony by pre-recording certain categories with less famous nominees in 2022 was hit with an industry backlash, and scrapped the next year.
The last new Oscar created was best animated film in 2001.
The 91-year-old Colorado Republican who challenged former President Donald Trump's eligibility to be on the state's primary ballot referenced the existential threat to democracy and invoked Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler when explaining why she got involved in the case that came before the U.S. Supreme Court for oral arguments on Thursday.
"You have to remember, as old as I am, I was born in the Great Depression," Norma Anderson, who previously led the Colorado Senate and House of Representatives, told NPR. "I lived through World War II. I remember Hitler."
"I remember my cousin was with [then-U.S. President Dwight] Eisenhower when they opened up the concentration camps," Anderson continued. "I mean, I understand protecting democracy."
Recalling when she watched on her home television as Trump's supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, she added, "They're trying to overthrow the government is what I was thinking."
Backed by the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), Anderson in September joined five other GOP and Indepedent Colorado voters in filing a lawsuit to keep Trump off the state's ballot, citing the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars anyone who has taken an oath to support the Constitution "as an officer of the United States" and then "engaged in insurrection" from holding any civil or military office, unless two-thirds of each chamber of Congress votes to allow them to do so.
The Colorado Supreme Court disqualified the Republican presidential front-runner from the state's primary ballot in December, agreeing with the voters that Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 loss that culminated in the Capitol attack during the certification of the election results amounted to engaging in insurrection.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last month, at the urging of both the Colorado voters and Trump. The court has a right-wing supermajority that includes three Trump appointees—Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—plus Justice Clarence Thomas, whose activist wife Ginni Thomas was involved with the GOP's 2020 election interference effort. None of them recused.
"On the merits, this is an open-and-shut case," Take Back the Court Action Fund president Sarah Lipton-Lubet said in a Thursday statement about Trump v. Anderson. "The 14th Amendment plainly states that insurrectionists are barred from holding office."
"Of course, the Republicans on the Supreme Court have shown they have no problem ignoring the obvious meaning of laws that conflict with their party's political interests," she added. "Donald Trump anticipated a moment like this one when he installed his right-wing supermajority. He thinks that these are his justices, on the court to do his bidding. Soon, we'll see if—and to what degree—he's right."
Common Cause was among various groups that submitted an amicus brief to the high court in support of removing the twice-impeached former president from the ballot.
"American democracy has never meant unchecked mob rule," Colorado Common Cause executive director Aly Belknap said Thursday. "Donald Trump sent an armed mob to the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of an election."
"His ongoing incitement has led to an unprecedented rise in attacks and death threats against election workers, judges, and other public servants," Belknap asserted. "There must be consequences for political violence—the Supreme Court must hold the former president accountable to the people and to the Constitution."
The presidential primary season is already underway. Trump has won the GOP's Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary by significant margins, setting him up to face Democratic President Joe Biden in November, unless he is barred from the contest.
The case before the country's highest court is "of extraordinary importance to our democracy," Campaign Legal Center senior vice president Paul Smith stressed Thursday. "It is vital that, one way or another, the court returns a clear ruling as quickly as possible to avoid any potential confusion in the upcoming presidential election. However the court decides, election officials deserve time to properly prepare for the upcoming election, and voters deserve time to make an informed decision."
Several arguments made in the case offer the Supreme Court an opportunity to defer the dispute to a different branch of government, said Derek T. Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who focuses on election law.
"All of them are ways for the court to shift responsibility to another branch and to say, 'We're not going to deal with it now,'" Muller said. "And it leaves open questions for resolution, or maybe indeterminacy, in the weeks and months ahead."
During arguments, Slate legal writer Mark Joseph Stern said on social media that questions from Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Kavanaugh and Thomas "suggest to me that a consensus off-ramp is emerging: the notion that individual states cannot enforce Section 3's disqualification provision against federal candidates, or at least against the president."
"The problem is that Jonathan Mitchell's atrocious briefing and argument failed to put meat on the bones of this idea, so SCOTUS will have to improvise a justification," Stern added, referring to the Trump attorney who argued the case.
Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court's three liberals, also expressed "deep skepticism that a single state should be able to decide who can 'be president,'" he noted. "In my view this argument is as good as over. A majority will hold that individual states can't enforce Section 3 against the president, at least without congressional approval."
Currently, Republicans have a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, while Democrats narrowly control the Senate, though the November elections could change that.
While voters and groups in several other states have launched similar legal battles to disqualify Trump, the only other successful one so far was in Maine, where Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, cited statute and the evidence of Trump's conduct to determine his name should not be on the ballot. Trump appealed the Maine disqualification, but a state judge in January deferred a decision in the case, citing the looming Supreme Court ruling.
"People from across the political spectrum and from all walks of life—from former members of Congress to constitutional scholars to everyday Americans—have come together in this exceptional and fragile moment in the history of American democracy to reinforce the Constitution's very purpose in safeguarding our democracy from insurrectionists," CREW president Noah Bookbinder said in a statement after the hearing.
Anderson, also weighing in post-arguments, said that "we stand here today not just as voters, but as defenders of the principles that define our democracy."
"Our fight to uphold the integrity of our electoral process is not about partisan politics; it's about preserving the very ideals for which our forefathers fought," she added. "Donald Trump's actions on January 6th stand in direct opposition to those sacred ideals and today, we stand before the Supreme Court seeking justice to ensure that no one, regardless of their party or popularity, is above accountability."
Former White House adviser Peter Navarro must go to prison despite any pending appeals, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
In a 12-page ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta denied Navarro's request after he was sentenced to four months in prison for refusing to cooperate with the Jan. 6 Committee.
"In his sentencing memorandum, Defendant requested release pending appeal if the court imposed a term of prison," Mehta wrote. "Defendant raises four grounds to support his motion for release pending appeal. As explained below, because Defendant has not shown that any of those issues will pose a 'substantial question of law' on appeal, his motion is denied."
Mehta said that former President Donald Trump's executive privilege claim "likely will not lead to reversal of his conviction for refusing to appear for testimony." The judge pointed out that Trump was not a sitting president when he invoked executive privilege.
"Thus, even if the former President had invoked privilege, at a minimum, such invocation did not reach testimony pertaining non-official acts," Mehta explained. "Therefore, no authority excused his complete non-appearance before the Select Committee."
"For the foregoing reasons, Defendant’s request for release pending appeal is denied," the ruling concluded. "Unless this Order is stayed or vacated by the D.C. Circuit, Defendant shall report to the designated Bureau of Prisons ('BOP') facility on the date ordered by the BOP."
