Before joining Raw Story, Brad Reed spent eight years writing about technology at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.
In a new interview with Time Magazine, Fox News host Tucker Carlson once again downplays the idea that white supremacists are a threat to America, and even goes so far as to say he's never even encountered a white supremacist.
"I've never met a white supremacist in my entire life," he said in the interview. "According to Joe Biden they're everywhere. Maybe I'm surrounded by them and don't know about it."
The trouble is that Carlson has actually employed multiple white nationalists, both on his primetime Fox News show and through the Daily Caller, the publication he co-founded in 2010 and at which he served as editor-in-chief until 2016.
One of them was Katie McHugh, a now-repentant former neo-Nazi who worked at the Daily Caller in 2014 for several months before taking a job at Breitbart News.
Then there's Scott Greer, who also worked at the Daily Caller starting in 2014 and who was exposed three years ago for writing under a pseudonym for white nationalist Richard Spencer's Radix Journal.
Former Daily Caller writer Jonah Bennett, meanwhile, was exposed three years ago for regularly taking part in an email thread called the "Morning Hate" in which contributors described Adolf Hitler as "our good friend."
The most infamous example, however, is Blake Neff, a former Daily Caller writer who left the publication to join Carlson as the lead writer of his Fox News show.
Neff was eventually fired after it was revealed that he took part in an online forum in which he made multiple racist and sexist comments.
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."
Nuremberg Zoo plans to cull individuals from its troop of baboons to manage the population and to counter inbreeding, director Dag Encke announced in the southern German city on Thursday.
The troop had become too large and inbred, resulting in problems with the gene pool and social structures, Enke said.
Sending the animals to other zoos, whether in Germany or abroad, was not an option, he said. Nor was rewilding.
The zoo has sent a proposal to the city council, and Encke is to follow up with an explanation the week after next with the aim of initiating a public discussion.
