The progressive Texas congresswoman thinks Republicans' obeisance to Trump's whims looks awfully like the unquestioning fealty of Nazi officials to the Führer himself.
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DoJ to meet with Ghislaine Maxwell as Trump faces new scrutiny over Epstein ties
Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned sex trafficker linked to dead financier Jeffrey Epstein, is meeting with justice department officials – including Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who will see if Maxwell 'has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims'. The announcement of Maxwell's meetings with justice department officials come as the Trump administration faces backlash from Democrats and Trump supporters alike for its recent handling of the Epstein case. In early July, the justice department and the FBI announced that they will not be releasing any further Epstein-related documents and further said that there is 'no incriminating 'client list''. 'We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties,' the justice department said. FBI officials also determined that Epstein indeed died by suicide. The administration's attempts to place a lid on the Epstein case have been met with criticism, including from members of Congress who have pushed for votes to compel the administration to release documents related to the case. There will likely not be a vote before the August recess, Politico reports, due to leading Republican resistance during congressional meetings. Last week, Trump directed attorney general Pam Bondi to ask a court to release all relevant grand jury testimony in Epstein's case. The grand jury testimony could reveal previously-unknown information but it is not likely to include tremendous revelations since, often, prosecutors provide limited information to a grand jury only to secure an indictment. Maxwell, who was convicted of sex trafficking underage girls for Epstein in December 2021, will reportedly be negotiating with the government. She is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in Epstein's abuse of children. 'I can confirm that we are in discussions with the government and that Ghislaine will always testify truthfully,' her attorney, David Oscar Markus, told CNN. On Tuesday morning, Blanche also released a statement saying that he plans to meet with Maxwell 'in the coming days'. It is unclear what the terms of Maxwell's discussions will be or if she will agree to be a cooperating witness with the justice department. It's also unclear what benefit she may gain from cooperating with the government. Typically, cooperating witnesses receive certain benefits for working with the government, including visas, reduced sentences and, at times, government protection. 'For the first time, the Department of Justice is reaching out to Ghislaine Maxwell to ask: what do you know?' Blanche posted on X (formerly Twitter). Trump has also been in the crosshairs of the Epstein dilemma, due to his past ties to the financier. Epstein once said he was Trump's 'closest friend'. Additionally, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Trump allegedly sent a 'bawdy' letter to Epstein in 2003. Trump sued the Wall Street Journal and its owners, and the paper was later banned from participating in the press pool during Trump's upcoming trip to Scotland. Alan Dershowitz, who was an attorney for Epstein, recently said that Maxwell would be willing to testify during an interview with Fox News, if offered immunity. 'She knows everything, she is the Rosetta Stone,' Dershowitz said. 'If she were just given 'use immunity,' she could be compelled to testify. I'm told that she actually would be willing to testify.' In a separate interview with Real America's Voice, Dershowitz said that Maxwell should not be in prison. 'She is really serving Jeffrey Epstein's sentence,' Dershowitz said. 'After he committed suicide, there was no one else to prosecute 'cause there was no real information against anybody else. And so they went after her and they sentenced her to the sentence that would have been appropriate for Epstein, but not at all appropriate for her.' 'She deserves to be out,' he added. Solve the daily Crossword
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White House to unveil plan to push US AI abroad, crackdown on US AI rules, document shows
By Jarrett Renshaw WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The White House on Wednesday intends to publish a plan that calls for the export of American AI technology abroad and a crackdown on state laws deemed too restrictive to let American AI flourish, a document seen by Reuters shows. According to a summary of the draft plan seen by Reuters, the White House will bar federal AI funding from going to states with tough AI rules and ask the Federal Communications Commission to assess whether state AI laws conflict with its mandate. It will also promote open source and open weight AI development and "export American AI technologies through full-stack deployment packages" and data center initiatives led by the Commerce Department. The plan will "focus on empowering American workers through AI-enabled job creation and industry breakthroughs," according to the document. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The document shows President Donald Trump is laser-focused on removing barriers to AI expansion, a marked departure from former President Joe Biden, who feared U.S. adversaries like China could harness AI to supercharge its military and harm allies. Biden, who left office in January, imposed a raft of restrictions on exports of coveted American AI chips to China and other countries that could divert the semiconductors to China over national security concerns. Trump rescinded Biden's executive order aimed at promoting competition, protecting consumers and ensuring AI was not used for misinformation. He also pulled back Biden's so-called AI diffusion rule, which capped the amount of American AI computing capacity that some countries were allowed to obtain via U.S. AI chip imports. Last month, White House AI czar David Sacks downplayed the risk that coveted American AI chips could be smuggled to bad actors and expressed concern that regulating U.S. AI too tightly could stifle growth and cede the critical market to China. Under Trump's plan, the White House would also promote AI use at the Pentagon, launch a program to identify federal regulations that impede AI development, and streamline the permitting process for data center construction. (Writing by Alexandra Alper, Editing by Franklin Paul) Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
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Trump Executive Order on College Sports Unlikely to Move the Needle
President Donald Trump is weighing an executive order that would attempt to stabilize the business and law of college sports but might instead kindle new legal challenges. A draft of the order, obtained by Yahoo, adopts the viewpoint that big-time college sports has morphed into an unworkable, volatile and overly litigious framework. The order negatively references unlimited transfers, the prospect of college athletes gaining employment recognition and a 'chaotic race to the bottom' with states opportunistically using NIL laws to supply 'competitive advantages' to their universities. More from Sporticast 468: 'Pay Us What You Owe Us' Nevada WR Catches Court Win as NCAA Eligibility Cases Split NBA Seeks Supreme Court Review of 'Bork Bill' Case After Split Rulings Dubbed 'Saving College Sports,' the order directs several federal officials and agencies— including the U.S. Attorney General, the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Secretary of Education, the U.S. Secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board—to pursue policies that would allegedly ensure the 'long-term availability' of college sports opportunities. Another aspiration is 'greater uniformity, predictability, and cooperation with respect to Federal and State laws and enforcement practices concerning college athletics.' The order provides several specific requests. They include agency actions within 60 or 120 days and a directive that 15 U.S.C. 7802—the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act, a law that Sportico revealed has not been enforced—be enforced. For the most part, however, the order is aspirational and refrains from enunciating policy positions. Notably absent are declarations that the NCAA and its members ought to be exempt from antitrust scrutiny or that college athletes aren't employees. The absence of many specifics is important for several reasons. For starters, agencies that would be directed by Trump are already capable of issuing regulations and other administrative actions to exert control over college sports. To that point, in the last week of Joe Biden's presidency, federal agencies entered the college sports legal debate without an accompanying executive order. The Department of Education issued a fact sheet expressing that colleges paying athletes for their NIL counts as athletic financial assistance under Title IX. A month later, Trump's Department of Education rescinded that fact sheet. Biden's Department of Justice also filed a statement of interest in the House litigation. The statement expressed that a revenue share cap of $20.5 million, while better than not sharing any revenue, is still an antitrust problem, because it's a cap that hasn't been collectively bargained. The DOJ under Trump didn't pursue the issue as U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken weighed the granting of final approval to the settlement. To be sure, a Trump executive order would elevate the importance and urgency for those agencies to tackle college sports issues. But it's not an essential ingredient. Agencies could act on their own just as they did in January. Also consider how agencies would implement Trump's order. The more agencies look under the hood of college sports, the more likely they'll see potential drawbacks and limitations of weighing in. The federal government doesn't control the universe of college sports issues, some of which extend well beyond government control. Take employment. A federal declaration that college athletes aren't employees would presumably mean they're not—at least as the Trump administration sees it—employees under the two most relevant federal laws, the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. That type of declaration would be challenged in court, since it is a debatable interpretation of federal statutes. Put another way, whether college athletes are employees under the NLRA or FLSA is ultimately a question for the courts, not an agency or even the president. That is particularly true given the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. Judges are no longer expected to defer to agency interpretation when a statute is ambiguous, meaning judicial deference to agencies, including those in the Trump administration, has been reduced. Even assuming an agency declaration that college athletes aren't employees withstood judicial review, it wouldn't foreclose the possibility of athletes being recognized as employees under states' laws. There are labor and employment laws in all 50 states, and they vary. There's also the chance that a college or conference voluntarily recognizes athletes as employees, a move that has not happened at least in part because it would violate NCAA rules. But such a move is not implausible—especially since collective bargaining with college athletes would put an end to antitrust lawsuits over those athletes' rights. Even if an agency declaration says that any, and all, conflicting state employment laws are preempted by federal action, that wouldn't automatically make preemption happen. Preemption is a highly litigated topic that intersects with powers enunciated by the U.S. Constitution and would surely be litigated in this context. Antitrust is another relevant subject for Trump's possible executive order. The draft states that though the settlement resolving the House, Carter and Hubbard antitrust litigations will provide back pay and revenue sharing, it 'provides little assurance that it will not soon be upended by new litigation seeking more compensation with fewer rules, further reducing in the number of student-athletes.' Trump might want the NCAA, conferences and colleges to be exempt from antitrust scrutiny or to receive deferential treatment. On the surface, a Trump or agency-announced antitrust exemption or deferential standard would make it more difficult for athletes to sue regarding topics like compensation and eligibility. But the president and his agencies can't change the language of the Sherman Act, which has applied to college sports for decades and which the U.S. Supreme Court in NCAA v. Alston (2021) said not only governs NCAA rules but does so without deference. It's also noteworthy that conservative judges, including those whom Trump nominated, have been among the most critical of college sports amateurism from an antitrust perspective. And there are state antitrust laws, too, that fall outside of federal authority and thus outside any executive order. Trump might want the Department of Justice to take a permissive approach to antitrust issues in college sports. One could say the DOJ under both Republican and Democratic presidents has already done that: Save for the DOJ joining Ohio v. NCAA (2024), which concerned transfer rules, and suing the NCAA in 1998 under the Americans with Disabilities Act over treatment of college athletes with learning disabilities, the DOJ has largely been on the sidelines. Meanwhile, a long list of athletes, from Ed O'Bannon to Shawne Alston, sued the NCAA on antitrust grounds. That highlights a key point: Private individuals and businesses can bring antitrust lawsuits. The government isn't needed since federal antitrust law provides for a private right of action. No matter how the DOJ and other agencies oversee college sports, athletes will continue to be able to bring antitrust claims. There are still other legal complications from a potential executive order on college sports. Any order that leads to college athletes being denied the same rights and opportunities as their classmates would invite an Equal Protection lawsuit. Restricting athletes' expressions, including through limiting NIL opportunities, could trigger First Amendment and right of publicity litigation. Trump might not need an executive order to influence college sports. If the SCORE Act passes Congress—a big 'if' given that college sports bills in Congress in recent years have all flamed out—Trump would have the chance to sign a college sports act into law. Of course, the SCORE Act could be challenged in court, including on grounds mentioned above. But given that it would be federal law, it would stand a stronger chance of sticking than an executive order. Best of College Athletes as Employees: Answering 25 Key Questions
