“Don’t Hold Your Breath” if you’re waiting for Nicole Scherzinger’s to start showing her age … because she’s celebrating 48 years old and still killin’ it in the looks department! Check out the gallery! The Pussycat Dolls lead singer is popping…
From TMZ.
El futbolista del Arsenal recibió una gran asistencia de Bruno Guimarães y definió con categoría para darle a Brasil su primera ventaja en el partido.
This post was originally published on NBC News.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on Monday rejected an emergency motion from Roy Moore, in litigation related to Moore’s bid to save the $8.2 million jury award he won over a campaign ad that he said falsely portrayed him as soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl.
An appeals court vacated the Alabama jury’s verdict, and the former state judge and failed GOP Senate candidate signaled that he will appeal that loss to the justices.
In the meantime, his emergency application that Thomas rejected on Monday had asked to halt the appellate ruling from taking effect while Moore prepares his Supreme Court petition. Moore said that without high court intervention, his ability to collect would be hampered if the justices ultimately grant review of his petition and side with him.
Moore’s application went to Thomas because he is the justice assigned to receive urgent motions from the circuit that ruled against Moore on appeal. The justices are each assigned to different lower court regions. In line with the typical practice for such rejections, Thomas did not provide any explanation. Justices usually refer what they see as significant matters to the full bench for consideration, so Thomas’ solo denial suggests he did not see Moore’s application as a close call.
To be clear, the justices will still be free to take up Moore’s underlying petition after he presents it to them and the opposing party has a chance to respond.
In this emergency litigation, the appeals court declined to halt its ruling from taking effect while Moore petitions the justices. The group that ran the ad, the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC, successfully argued to the appeals court that it shouldn’t halt its ruling from taking effect because, among other reasons, it said the Supreme Court is unlikely even to grant review of Moore’s forthcoming petition, much less side with him.
As Moore noted in his failed application, Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch have urged reconsideration of the “actual malice” standard that public figures must meet to win defamation claims, a standard that stems from the court’s landmark 1964 opinion in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. But it takes four justices to grant review of petitions, and the issue has not gained traction at the high court.
In the latest example of that phenomenon earlier on Monday, Thomas and Gorsuch dissented from the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up a defamation petition from Alan Dershowitz in his appeal against CNN.
Opposing Moore’s emergency high court application, Senate Majority PAC said he “entirely failed to show that such extraordinary relief is warranted here.” The group urged the justices to reject what it called Moore’s “rank speculation” that he would be unable to collect without the emergency relief he requested.
The group, which said it’s the primary super PAC committed to the election of Senate Democrats, said its finances are strong and so there’s no need to worry about Moore being able to collect if he were to ultimately win a reversal at the high court.
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The post Justice Clarence Thomas won’t block Roy Moore’s defamation loss from taking effect appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.
The Senate Ethics Committee has dismissed a misconduct complaint against Sen. Ruben Gallego after investigating allegations brought by another lawmaker, the panel wrote in a letter released by the Arizona Democrat’s office.
The letter, dated June 26, states that the GOP-led panel’s probe found no evidence that Gallego “violated Federal law, Senate Rules, or related standards of conduct,” after probing accusations relayed to the committee by Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida. The letter was first reported by NBC News on Monday.
Luna sent the staff of Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., information in April about allegations about Gallego that were “sexual in nature,” she said on CBS at the time. Luna’s allegations, which she never specified, followed reports that then-Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., who was Gallego’s friend, faced allegations of sexual assault and harassment. The letter states that her complaint also alleged unspecified campaign finance violations. (Politico recently reported that Gallego used campaign funds for luxury outings with his wife, and childcare. The lawmaker denied any wrongdoing, noting that the Federal Election Commission permits such expenses as long as they are not for “personal use.”)
The committee’s probe included looking at FEC and expenditure reports, as well as information Gallego provided to the committee himself, the letter states. The panel, led by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., the chair, and Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., the vice chair, wrote that Gallego provided “full cooperation” with the committee’s investigation.
The letter states that the committee “retains the authority to revisit this matters should additional facts become known.”
In a statement, Gallego, a potential 2028 presidential contender, said the dismissal “reaffirms” that the allegations were “right-wing conspiracies.”
“I look forward to an apology from Rep. Luna for weaponizing the ethics process while refusing to investigate historic corruption that’s making life harder for families,” Gallego said. “In the meantime, I will continue fighting for Arizonans and holding Trump Republicans accountable for high costs and new wars.”
Luna rejected Gallego’s characterization of the accusations as “conspiracy theories,” writing in a post on X on Monday, “You’re a gross example of representation.”
The post Senate Ethics Committee dismisses complaint against Sen. Ruben Gallego appeared first on MS NOW.
From MS Now.
Damien O’Brien and Jessica O’Brien — the Michigan couple charged with murdering their obese 7-year-old son — are apparently receiving better treatment in prison than they allegedly provided to their own child. The O’Briens are enjoying a…
From TMZ.
From The Hill
A JetBlue Airways pilot reported striking a drone while approaching John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) on Monday morning, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The pilot of JetBlue Flight 948, en route from Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas, reported hitting the drone at roughly 3,000 feet in altitude while on…
Turns out Druski wasn’t the one calling the shots when a saxophone played SZA and Doechii offstage during their acceptance speeches at the BET Awards … it was production. A source close to production tells TMZ … producers decided to have a…
From TMZ.
Veda Pierce always had her eye on the bigger house, the fancier car, the richer man. It was a drive that would destroy her life and make her one of the greatest L.A. villains of all time.
Trump v. Slaughter, one of two “unitary executive” cases that the Supreme Court handed down on Monday, is the culmination of a nearly 40-year fight by Republican judges to expand the powers of the presidency. It transforms President Donald Trump into the most powerful figure to govern the United States in generations.
The central issue in Slaughter is whether Congress may create “independent” federal agencies, which are led by a board of people appointed by the president, but who cannot be removed by the president except for neglect, malfeasance, or some other cause other than the fact that the president wants to replace them with people who are more loyal to his agenda.
The Supreme Court endorsed these independent agencies in Humphrey’s Executor v. United States (1935), and Congress has created many such agencies since then. Slaughter concerned the same agency that was at issue in Humphrey’s Executor, the Federal Trade Commission, whose leaders have enjoyed some protection from presidential firing since it was created in 1914.
Slaughter overrules Humphrey’s Executor, and eliminates nearly all of Congress’s more-than-a-century-old power to create agencies that may act with some independence from the president. But it’s worth noting that the decision was handed down alongside Trump v. Cook, which strongly suggests that members of the Federal Reserve remain independent from the president.
While independent agencies have existed for more than a century, Republican judges have wanted to eliminate them for a very long time. In 1988, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a lonely dissent, in Morrison v. Olson, that touted a theory known as the “unitary executive.”
The Constitution, Scalia wrote, provides that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.” This, according to Scalia, meant that no one in the federal government could wield power that is “executive” in nature unless that official is fully controlled by the president. The Constitution, Scalia concluded with a flourish, does not say that “some of the executive power, but all of the executive power” belongs to the president and the president alone.
Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion in Slaughter, which is joined in part or in full by all of his Republican colleagues, tracks Scalia’s position. It holds that agency leaders who wield power that “fall well within the heartland of executive power” must be fireable at will by the president.
Nothing about this decision will surprise anyone who has paid attention to the Court’s past two decades of decisions. The Court’s Republican majority started signaling that Humphrey’s Executor was doomed as recently as 2009. The unitary executive played a starring role in Trump v. United States (2024), the Republican justices’ decision holding that Trump is allowed to use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes. And the Court previously ruled against Rebecca Slaughter, the FTC commissioner who sued after Trump fired her, in a temporary decision handed down last September.
But Slaughter does complete a project that the Republican justices have strived to complete for their entire time on the nation’s highest Court. And it gives Trump powers that no president has enjoyed for about a century.
Broadly speaking, the unitary executive theory contains two propositions. One is that all “executive” power, whatever that means, belongs to the president. The second is that certain governmental functions are definitively “executive” in nature.
The first of these two propositions is the most defensible. The Constitution does say that “the executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.” So that does suggest that there is something called the “executive Power” that belongs to a single person.
But the Court’s Republicans have often made very bold claims about what qualifies as “executive” that are not supported by history. Most egregiously, in the Trump immunity decision, the Republican justices did not simply hold that Trump may commit crimes; they held that he may order the Justice Department to target his enemies even if these investigations are “shams” conducted “for an improper purpose.”
The Republican justices reasoned that the power to investigate and prosecute crimes is “the special province of the Executive Branch,” and thus belongs entirely to the president — even if he wields this power unlawfully.
Historically, however, federal judges often had the power to appoint prosecutors — a power that they retain under limited circumstances today. And many historians believe that around the time of the Constitution’s framing, private attorneys, and not government employees within the executive branch, were primarily responsible for prosecuting crimes. So Trump’s claim that the power to prosecute belongs entirely to the executive is anachronistic.
Slaughter rests on a similar argument, saying that the FTC, the formerly independent agency at issue in that case, “enforces and administers some 80 statutes” and thus must be thought of as an “executive” agency. Roberts points, for example, to the fact that the FTC investigates private companies that have allegedly violated certain laws, and “files suits” against these companies.
It should be obvious that many federal statutes are enforced by private lawyers who file suits against private companies on their clients’ behalf. But that doesn’t mean that those private lawyers are subordinate to the president.
The unitary executive theory, in other words, seizes upon a vague line in the Constitution which indicates that some undefined powers belong to the president, and uses that vague line to give very specific powers to Trump. That’s hard to justify as a matter of text and history. But it is still a project that the Republican Party’s judges have been committed to for a very long time.
Almost immediately after the Court handed down Slaughter, it also handed down Cook, which allows Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors who Trump attempted to fire after bringing sham allegations against her — to remain in her job.
The Court previously suggested that members of the Federal Reserve are immune to the unitary executive because “the Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States.” But it did not explain what this sentence means or why it justifies an exemption to the rule governing agencies like the FTC.
Cook does little to flesh out this vague sentence, although Roberts’s opinion in Cook does spend some time arguing that the idea that there should be a national bank that is somewhat independent of political actors precedes the Constitution itself.
There are, however, powerful policy reasons why the Fed should be independent. Among other things, the Fed has the power to temporarily stimulate the economy in ways that will cause turmoil and high inflation years down the road. So, if the president controls the Fed, he can order it to lower interest rates and send a flood of cheap money to borrowers, injecting cocaine into the US economy during an election year, knowing that the bill is unlikely to come due until the president leaves office — or at least until after the election takes place.
That appears to be enough to have convinced two Republican justices, Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, to join an opinion letting Cook keep her job for now. But the Cook opinion also emphasizes that it is “narrow,” and it merely holds that Trump had to give Cook a minimal amount of process — “some explanation of the evidence at issue, some avenue for a response, and a deadline by which a response would be due” — before he can fire her.
It remains to be seen, in other words, whether the Court is actually committed to Fed independence. For the moment, however — unlike other independent agency leaders — Cook gets to keep her job against Trump’s will.
Source: Vox.
The official cause of death has been revealed for former child actor Daveigh Chase. Chase died of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) with other significant conditions, including chronic polysubstance use, according to Los Angeles County medical examiner records. She died in a hospital and the manner of death is listed as natural. Chase died June 16 […]
Source: Deadline.
Brasil reacciona e iguala el marcador con anotación de Casemiro. La afición brasileña celebra con furor el empate y ponen a bailar a todo Houston.
This post was originally published on NBC News.
Josh Duggar keeps playing prison hopscotch, jumping from one penitentiary to another, with his latest stop at a federal lockup in Oklahoma … and his lawyer is calling all the moves “punitive.” The ex-reality star was recently transferred to FTC…
From TMZ.