From The Hill
The American Cancer Society (ACS) updated its guidelines Wednesday to include two new screening options for colorectal cancer, including a first-ever blood test. The ACS already recommends that adults take colonoscopy tests every 10 years beginning at age 45 and ending at age 75. However, the medical association noted that a sizable proportion of the…
From The Hill
Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) scored a proxy win in Tuesday’s Texas primary runoffs over state Rep. James Talarico, who beat her out in the initial Democratic race for Senate. Former Rep. Colin Allred (D-Texas), endorsed by Crockett, won Tuesday’s runoff for a Dallas-area House seat — besting Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), who was supported by…
From The Hill
Police in Virginia say a white nationalist group that marched in Virginia Beach on Memorial Day weekend did not require a permit because the gathering met legal requirements.
The Rev. Al Sharpton said Republicans in the South Carolina Senate did the “right thing” on Tuesday after they bucked President Donald Trump and joined Democrats to block a new congressional map that would have erased the state’s single majority-Black district, represented by longtime Rep. James Clyburn.
“Given the population in South Carolina, the percentage of Black residents, it would have been unthinkable to wipe out the only Black district and the only Democratic district,” Sharpton said on Wednesday’s “Morning Joe.”
Sharpton, the host of MS NOW’s “Politics Nation” and founder of the National Action Network, said he heard from activists in the state prior to Tuesday’s Senate vote, who said they believed enough Republicans would reject the president’s efforts to remake the map ahead of November’s elections.
“Rev. Nelson Rivers, who heads National Action Network for us in South Carolina, was there every day, and he kept telling me, ‘No, some of these Republicans are going the other way,’ and I said, ‘Really?’ and it ended up being that way,” Sharpton told the “Morning Joe” panel.
“I think this might be a story that a lot of us are not looking at,” he continued. “A lot of people, even in the Deep South, are saying, ‘Wait a minute, there’s only so far I’m going to go.’”
Sharpton said Republicans may have chosen not to support the president’s effort for “different reasons,” including the possibility of their own districts being redrawn to include the impacted voters, which could have diluted their support, but ultimately showed that “in their heart they know what’s wrong.”
“The history of the civil rights movement was always reconciliation, and we had a small example of that yesterday,” he explained. “Some of them may have done it because they feel that their districts would have been impacted. But whatever the reason, they came to a conclusion that we benefit from.”
“The story could have been, here’s another reinforcement of the old South again. Yesterday, the opposite happened in South Carolina,” he added.
Whatever their motivations, Sharpton said he believes that if “people do stand up and do the right thing on the Republican side, we need to stand up and loudly say they did the right thing.”
You can watch Sharpton’s full comments in the clip at the top of the page.
The post Al Sharpton: South Carolina GOP did the ‘right thing’ rejecting Trump’s redistricting push appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.
Source BuzzFeed.
A pregnant woman was shot in front of her 2-year-old while driving home from a prenatal appointment, in what cops are calling a road rage incident. According to legal documents, authorities say Anthony Lee-Armstrong shot the woman on May 17 in St.…
From TMZ.
Teenage sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi produces his latest extraordinary innings by hitting 97 from just 29 balls in the Indian Premier League eliminator.
Source: BBC.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia won a rare legal victory last week when a federal judge in Tennessee dismissed his indictment on the grounds that it was an unconstitutionally vindictive prosecution. The judge found that the Trump-controlled Justice Department charged Abrego only because he filed a successful civil lawsuit securing his return from El Salvador after the administration illegally sent him there in violation of a court order.
Because vindictive prosecution motions rarely succeed, it’s no surprise that Abrego’s win already features in a new motion to dismiss another set of allegedly vindictive charges, as lawyers for the Southern Poverty Law Center argue that the civil rights group’s Alabama indictment should likewise be dropped before trial.
In their motion filed Tuesday, the SPLC’s lawyers noted that “just last week, another federal court dismissed criminal charges in part because” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Deputy Associate Attorney General Aakash Singh had “directed a vindictive prosecution.” The defense lawyers called Abrego’s dismissal the latest “shift towards the demise” of any “presumption of regularity” owed to the Trump DOJ.
Courts have long employed that presumption to assume that government officers, including lawyers, act in good faith. Yet some judges have questioned whether the DOJ deserves it in a second Trump term that has featured court order violations and other aberrations as the department caters to President Donald Trump’s demands.
One of the latest rebukes against the DOJ came when Abrego toppled his criminal charges of illegally transporting undocumented immigrants, to which he had pleaded not guilty. The DOJ said it plans to appeal the recent ruling in his favor.
The SPLC was charged in an 11-count fraud indictment that Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel announced to great fanfare last month.
In their motion to dismiss, the group’s lawyers called the charges “the latest manifestation of a top-down, retributive campaign in which he [Trump] directed his Justice Department to go after those individuals and groups he deemed his political enemies, including the SPLC.” The defense lawyers said the indictment is retaliation for exercising First Amendment rights to identify, report on and criticize extremist hate groups.
“The Administration has falsely accused the SPLC of being ‘anti-Christian,’ of aiding the Biden Administration’s ‘weaponization’ of the Department of Justice, of participating in political violence, and, most recently, of helping to ‘rig’ the 2020 election against President Donald Trump,” the SPLC’s motion said, adding that those examples of the government’s “animus over the past year culminated in the criminal charges against the SPLC — an indictment premised on conclusory accusations but devoid of provable facts or a proper statement of the law.”
Abrego’s case isn’t the only one cited in the SPLC’s motion. But the group’s lawyers argue that their case similarly “reveals sufficient evidence of presumed vindictiveness to justify dismissal of the indictment or, at a minimum, as the court did in that case, to order discovery” before it rules. If the judge in the SPLC case orders such discovery as the next step, then that would allow for more of an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the indictment before deciding whether to take the bold step of dismissing it as vindictive.
The Abrego decision isn’t binding precedent in the SPLC case, because it was a trial-level ruling, as opposed to a Supreme Court or appellate ruling that would bind judges nationwide or within their relevant appellate jurisdictions, respectively, and Alabama is in a different appellate circuit than Tennessee in any event. Still, the judge presiding over the SPLC case, Trump appointee Emily Marks, can cite it as persuasive authority if she agrees that Obama appointee Waverly Crenshaw correctly applied the same overarching principles that bind them both.
In their motion, the SPLC’s lawyers further cited Abrego’s case for the proposition that a “significant factor” in weighing vindictiveness is when a criminal investigation is opened and closed without producing charges and then charges come later without any new reason for them. In Abrego’s case, Crenshaw noted that the executive branch had closed its investigation into the 2022 traffic stop on which the case centered and then reopened the probe only after Abrego succeeded in vindicating his right to return to the United States.
Attempting to show why their case should lead to the same result, the SPLC’s lawyers sought to draw a similarly corrupt timeline in their dismissal motion. They noted that no charges were brought after the Biden administration had reviewed the matter but then, they wrote, “as part of President Trump’s specific targeting of civil rights groups and his and his officials’ particular focus on the SPLC, a dormant or closed investigation was revived, and the charges in this case were filed.”
They said the resulting indictment came “after the clear instigation by President Trump’s statements, his executive orders, and the actions to implement those statements and orders by then-Attorney General [Pam] Bondi and Acting Attorney General Blanche, along with Director Patel.”
The DOJ will have a chance to respond before the judge decides how to proceed.
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The post Southern Poverty Law Center cites rare Abrego vindictiveness victory in seeking dismissal appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.
Enzo Fernandez wants to leave Chelsea after they failed to qualify for Europe, but any move for the Argentina midfielder would cost around £120m.
Source: BBC.
Sunset Studios plans to launch a group of standing sets at the Sunset Las Palmas Studios lot in Hollywood catering to the fast-growing vertical format. It’s partnered with short-form studio Knockout Shorts on the design and construction of the initial sets, which it called “versatile, production-ready environments … designed to meet the evolving needs of […]
Source: Deadline.
Last week, Gio Reyna and his wife, Chloe, were sitting in a parking lot, outside a smoothie shop in Connecticut, waiting to hear if he’d made Team USA’s World Cup roster.
This post was originally published on NBC News.
“How I Met Your Mother” actor Nick Pasqual’s legal nightmare is far from over … because his ex-girlfriend is now suing him for sexual battery. According to a court doc obtained by TMZ, Hollywood makeup artist Allie Shehorn alleges Pasqual…
From TMZ.