Kathleen Culliton
June 25, 2024 1:41PM ET
Kathleen Culliton
Kathleen Culliton is Raw Story's assistant managing editor. She's been covering local and national news for more than a decade for outlets that include the New York Post, Al Jazeera, DNAinfo New York, Bustle, the New York Daily News, WNYC, NY1, City Limits and the New York City Patch. Kathleen is a proudalumna of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. Here's a shocker; she is from New York City.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 19: Former US President Donald Trump sits in a Manhattan Criminal Court for his trial for allegedly covering up hush money payments on April 19, 2024 in New York City. Former President Donald Trump faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first of his criminal cases to go to trial. (Photo by Curtis Means - Pool/Getty Images)
The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's criminal hush money trial loosened his gag order Tuesday, according to a new report.
Justice Juan Merchan's new ruling allows Trump to publicly discuss witnesses in the historic New York City trial that concluded with the first ever criminal conviction of a former U.S. president, according to Reuters.
Trump is still barred from discussing prosecutors and other involved in the case, according to the report.
Trump's lawyers challenged the gag order, arguing it stifled the presumptive Republican nominee's campaign speech.
The ruling comes two days before Trump is expected to debate President Joe Biden.
ALSO READ:‘They could have killed me’: Spycraft, ballots and a Trumped-up plot gone haywire
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office reportedly agreed Trump could speak about witnesses — who included former fixer Michael Cohen and adult film star Stormy Daniels — but argued he still needed to be restrained from attacking jurors and court staff.
Trump is expected to face sentencing on July 11 on 34 counts that he falsified business records to conceal hush money payments to Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
SmartNewsTrump NewsTrump Indictment
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Chris Matthews talks to Raw Story: Who would you bet on in 2024, Trump or Kamala?
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Matthew Chapman
June 28, 2024
The Supreme Court issued a ruling on Friday overturning "Chevron deference" — a 40-year-old precedent that orders courts to defer to the expertise of agency employees when interpreting statute, which could make it easier for courts to strike down all manner of regulations across the entire federal government. Ironically, the original Chevron ruling was issued by conservative justices, to protect Ronald Reagan administration policymakers from being overruled by Jimmy Carter-appointed judges — but now with a far more Democratic-leaning administrative state, right-wing judges have been clamoring to take back power over the regulatory process for years.
The decision horrified many legal experts — and also renowned singer and actress Barbra Streisand, who took to X to condemn the ruling.
"The Supreme Court overruled 40 years of precedent and overturned the Chevron decision," wrote Streisand. "It makes judges and the Supreme Court the regulators of laws passed by Congress rather than the scientific expertise at federal agencies. This is not democracy but rule by judicial order. The only beneficiaries are big business and polluters."
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A number of conservative commentators reacted angrily to her statement, including Mike Davis, a former clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the members of the majority to overturn Chevron.
"Our elected members of Congress pass laws," he wrote. "Our elected President enforces those laws. Our federal judges picked by our elected President and U.S. senators interpret those laws. That's how our constitutional republic is supposed to work. You want 'experts' to replace all that."
"You agree that we ought not rely on nine unelected people wearing black robes to write our laws?" wrote another right-wing commentator, @amuse. "That is the job of elected legislators. We need to ensure that democracy is maintained - not rule by unelected people. The court is designed to help determine what the law says not what the law is - that is the job of Congress."
@soncharm wrote, "Barbra Streisand really really cares about ‘Chevron’ now. Big issue for her. It’s so, so sad to me."
"Couldn’t she like buy a island. And live on the island. With servants. Forever. Why is she spending her time reading up on ‘Chevron’ and then ‘tweeting’ about it. Sad."
"The Nation" justice correspondent Elie Mystal said, "I did not have 'Narbra Streisand defends Chevron Deference' on my bingo card but, welcome it."
In practice, contrary to these assertions, a legal system without Chevron is unlikely to increase congressional power over the minutiae of how federal rules and procedures work, but judicial power instead, noted the three dissenting liberal justices — and this comes after some embarrassing mistakes from the Supreme Court in interpreting basic facts and information in their rulings, like Gorsuch confusing nitrogen oxide smog with laughing gas.
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'Hard to understand': Expert questions competency of Supreme Court after website flub
Sarah K. Burris
June 28, 2024
Legal experts gathered Friday to trash some of the recently released decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Slate Supreme Court reporter Dahlia Lithwick explained the unwriting of a 40-year precedent in the Chevron case, which the High Court had not made. The federal government decides a number of regulations, employing experts, scientists, doctors, chemists, and others to determine what is or isn't safe for the American people. Some examples are how long meat can be unrefrigerated during transport, how much lead is safe for drinking water, and even recommendations about cooks washing their hands after using the bathroom.
"So, Chevron is essentially shorthand for a long-standing tradition that says that if there's an ambiguous statute, the courts defer to the agency itself and their interpretation of how to read that statute. Why? Because agencies are teeming with people who know the science and understand how the climate works, who understand how health care works, and who understand how guns work," said Lithwick.
Read Also: The stunning reason Donald Trump thinks he’s going to win
The Supreme Court essentially "said, nope. From here on in, we're going to give courts the power to decide how agency regulations are interpreted." Lithwick confessed she didn't want to be alarmist but that it is "a wholesale transfer of power over federal regulatory agencies. Clean water, clean air, guns, health care, monetary policy- all of it is now shifted away from federal agencies and into the laps of courts."
Amid her cynicism, she bashed the court for being incapable of controlling its own website this week. At one point, the Idaho abortion case was posted online, improperly formatted, and then quickly removed.
"It is hard to understand how they can have the kind of expertise to talk about nuanced things like climate and health care if they can't even sort out their own in-house procedures," she quipped.
It's a comment that comes after Justice Neil Gorsuch penned the Court's opinion and mistakenly referred to pollution as nitrous oxide and not nitrogen oxide. The former is often referred to as "laughing gas" and is sometimes used at the dentist. The latter is pollution.
See the conversation below or click the link.
Supreme Court has no business taking on nuance when it can't work its own website: expertwww.youtube.com
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Daniel Hampton
June 28, 2024
A new poll showing the disastrous Atlanta debate appears to have helped — or at least, not harmed — President Joe Biden's chances, and the internet laughed as everyone rallied around the notion it seems no one knows anything anymore.
Amidst a sea of articles and opinion pieces questioning Biden's decision to seek re-election — and even a certain prominent paper of record urging him to drop out — emerged a small beacon of hope for Democrats.
The non-partisan group Political Polls shared a new general election poll Friday afternoon with a curious finding: Biden led Trump 45 percent to 44 percent post-debate. The previous poll "was a tie," the group noted on social media.
A bewildered internet couldn't help but ask the tough question: "Did any of those people watch the debate?"
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The poll even caught the attention of MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who quipped: "shrug emoji no one knows anything...."
Reactions ranged from some theorizing the poll was "rigged," to others flatly saying many would "rather vote for a rock before they vote for Trump." (At least two people directly supported the latter statement.)
"Character still matters to some of us," wrote @slanderson2474.
"Yep, they saw Trump lie incessantly and never answer a question," said Dana_Molly_Reid.
"Turns out, Trump's lies and racism were more of a deal breaker than Biden being sick," wrote @Thecolours.
And perhaps most appropriate for the moment, chimed in @Drugged_Atlas, who channeled the philosopher Socrates: "All I know is that I don’t know nothing."
shrug emoji no one knows anything.... https://t.co/koji*zhxdF7
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) June 28, 2024
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