'The lamest excuse I've ever heard': Trump lawyer falls flat at Senate Judiciary hearing
Senator Adam Schiff talks with Jen Psaki about the Senate Judiciary Hearing for Emil Bove, Donald Trump's former criminal defense lawyer, who Trump wants to appoint to a federal judgeship despite new information from a whistleblower that Bove was open to ignoring court orders in favor of Trump anti-immigrant mission.
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Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Alejandro Barrientos, business executive and independent Democrat, running for Spokane City Council
Jun. 25—Alejandro Barrientos, chief operations officer for the SCAFCO Steel Stud Company, is making a bid for the Spokane City Council. Barrientos is running for a seat occupied by Councilwoman Lili Navarrete, who recently announced she is not running for a new term. If elected, he would be one of two council members representing District 2, which includes most of the city south of the Spokane River. Councilman Paul Dillon is the district's other representative and is serving a term through 2027. He is running in the Nov. 4 election against Kate Telis, a former prosecutor who has more recently worked on the campaigns of several Spokane-area candidates, including Dillon's. Barrientos is a self-described Democrat, but likely one of the defining pitches of his campaign will be his independence from the progressive cohort that has taken a supermajority on the Spokane City Council and works closely with Mayor Lisa Brown. He opposed most of the recent package of homelessness laws Brown proposed , which were meant in large part to replace the 2023 voter-approved anti-camping law struck down earlier this year by the state Supreme Court. He argues that they failed to deliver the immediate response voters had asked for and would have left people on the streets to die. While city council positions are ostensibly nonpartisan, party politics still animate the positions, and the South Hill is one of the city's most reliably Democratic voting blocs. This may explain why it has been years since a self-described Republican has made a serious run for one of District 2's seats; Dillon's opponent in 2023 was Katey Treloar, who ran as a self-described moderate unaffiliated with any party and tried, not always successfully, to avoid being associated with more right-leaning candidates and politicians. Whether Barrientos' explicit alignment with the Democratic Party will spare him the same characterization remains to be seen, including whether he can manage to secure a county Democratic Party's endorsement, which eluded Treloar. Many of his donors are reminiscent of Republican-affiliated candidates of years past: RenCorp Realty owner Chris Batten, Alvin and Jeanie Wolff of the Wolff real estate empire, and unsuccessful county commission and city council president candidate Kim Plese. Treloar has donated $100. Barrientos acknowledges that some have pointed to his employer, developer and SCAFCO owner Larry Stone, a well-funded opponent of Spokane progressives for years, to question his Democratic bona fides. But he believes that when voters meet him, they will know that he is a sincere believer in Democratic values. For instance, with family ties to Colombia, he says supporting immigrants amid the current campaign of mass deportation is important to him . He attended the June 12 protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detainment of 21-year-old Cesar Alexander Alvarez Perez, who is seeking asylum from Venezuela, and Joswar Slater Rodriguez Torres, a Colombian national also in his 20s. "I am a Democrat because those are the values that align more with who I am and how I grew up," he said in an interview. "I had a conversation with (former Democratic Senate Majority Leader) Andy Billig about that specifically, because he's somebody that works for (Spokane Indians and Spokane Chiefs teams owner) Bobby Brett." "He said, 'You know what? Sometimes you just have to prove it over time.' And so I just need to build that trust with people." Barrientos has lived in Spokane off and on for the past 17 years, and with his two children, the oldest of whom is 8, he said he has planted roots here for the long haul, prompting him to consider getting politically involved. It was on the Big Red Wagon last year, after his young daughter grabbed a piece of foil and Barrientos was gripped by fear that she may have come into contact with fentanyl, that he decided to run for Spokane City Council. He was born in Miami, where his grandfather and parents moved when his grandfather, a prominent attorney in Colombia, fled from a cartel he had been prosecuting. He moved to Medellín, Colombia — the country's second-largest city — at a young age. He attended Gonzaga University, drawn by a smaller university with a Jesuit tradition familiar from growing up in Colombia. He studied abroad in Italy for a stint, then moved to Mexico City to work in an international relations liaison position with Rocky Mountain Construction, a roller coaster designer and manufacturer, where he was promoted into various executive roles. Through that job, he had also lived in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, each for short periods. Throughout this jetsetting career, Barrientos said he regularly returned to Spokane, but returned for good after being offered a job by CWallA, another business in Stone's Stone Group of Companies. "I've lived in a lot of places, and a lot of big cities as well," Barrientos said. "And big cities, you know, at a young age, really attracted me for the different pace of doing things, but when you're raising kids and having a family, for me, there was no better place than Spokane." But Barrientos also believes that things have changed in the city in the past 17 years, some positives, but also some challenges that he has "seen and witnessed here in Spokane that I never saw growing up in Medellín." He believes that current leadership has struggled, or failed to try, to collaborate successfully with right-leaning governments in the county and surrounding jurisdictions. "We know that our county commissioners hold most of the mental health resources, and our city holds the housing resources, and I think it's crucial that we get our city and county working together," he said. "And sometimes party and politics gets in the way of that. "I can be that bridge to come to the table and connect people and work together."
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Republican who blamed the political left for her near-fatal ectopic pregnancy now says she's facing death threats
Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack has revealed that her offices had to be evacuated on Wednesday after she received 'imminent death threats' in response to comments she made last week about the treatment of her ectopic pregnancy in 2024. Cammack, 37, told The Wall Street Journal about her ordeal in a Florida emergency room after it was discovered that her baby's embryo was implanted where the fallopian tube meets the uterus, meaning it could not survive and that her own life was in danger without action. Writing on X on Wednesday evening, Cammack, who is pregnant again and due in August, recounted the disturbing backlash she had received in response to the article, posting screenshots of abusive messages she had been sent. 'Today, we had to evacuate our offices due to imminent death threats against me, my unborn child, my family, and my staff. These threats erupted after the Wall Street Journal reported on my life-threatening ectopic pregnancy – a nonviable pregnancy with no heartbeat,' she explained. 'Since then, we've received thousands of hate-filled messages and dozens of credible threats from pro-abortion activists, which law enforcement is actively investigating. In light of recent violence against elected officials, these threats are taken very seriously. 'To those spreading misinformation: I did not vote for Florida's heartbeat law; I serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, not the Florida Legislature. 'Let me be clear: I will not be intimidated. I won't back down in the fight for women and families. Ensuring women have the resources and care they deserve is critical. We need real conversations about maternal healthcare in America – conversations based on truth, not fear.' ABC News's Florida affiliate has reported that it was Cammack's Washington, D.C., offices that were evacuated in response to the threats, rather than her Sunshine State premises, and that the U.S. Capitol Police are investigating. A follow-up statement from her office declared: 'Congresswoman Cammack highlighted the critical women's health crisis in America, particularly the shortage of maternal health resources and the risks of politicizing healthcare. 'Her personal story illustrates how treating women's health as a political issue endangers lives. Misinformation campaigns, funded by pro-abortion groups, have intentionally confused healthcare providers despite the law being clear on exceptions; rape, incest, victims of trafficking and life of the mother. These dangerous pro-abortion ads contributed to delays that endangered her life. 'Since the Wall Street Journal article, she has received dozens of credible death threats against herself, her unborn child, and her family, which are being investigated by U.S. Capitol Police. 'Cammack's experience underscores the unacceptable reality that sharing a personal health story in an effort to improve women's healthcare can lead to violence and intimidation. Women deserve better, as does the national healthcare dialogue.' After deciding against surgery last year during her pregnancy, the hospital's doctors and nurses had to be persuaded to give her the shot of methotrexate she required to expel the pregnancy because, she said, they feared criminal prosecution under the state's six-week abortion ban, even though she was only five weeks pregnant at the time. The procedure in question was not an abortion. Surprisingly, the congresswoman did not take issue with the ban but instead blamed the medics' hesitance on scaremongering by Democrats.
Associated Press
10 minutes ago
- Associated Press
Supreme Court has 6 cases to decide, including birthright citizenship
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is in the final days of a term that has lately been dominated by the Trump administration's emergency appeals of lower court orders seeking to slow President Donald Trump's efforts to remake the federal government. But the justices also have six cases to resolve that were argued between January and mid-May. One of the argued cases was an emergency appeal, the administration's bid to be allowed to enforce Trump's executive order denying birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children of parents who are in the country illegally. The remaining opinions will be delivered Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts said. On Thursday, a divided court allowed states to cut off Medicaid money to Planned Parenthood amid a wider Republican-backed push to defund the country's biggest abortion provider. Here are some of the biggest remaining cases: Trump's birthright citizenship order has been blocked by lower courts The court rarely hears arguments over emergency appeals, but it took up the administration's plea to narrow orders that have prevented the citizenship changes from taking effect anywhere in the U.S. The issue before the justices is whether to limit the authority of judges to issue nationwide injunctions, which have plagued both Republican and Democratic administrations in the past 10 years. These nationwide court orders have emerged as an important check on Trump's efforts and a source of mounting frustration to the Republican president and his allies. At arguments last month, the court seemed intent on keeping a block on the citizenship restrictions while still looking for a way to scale back nationwide court orders. It was not clear what such a decision might look like, but a majority of the court expressed concerns about what would happen if the administration were allowed, even temporarily, to deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the country illegally. Democratic-led states, immigrants and rights groups who sued over Trump's executive order argued that it would upset the settled understanding of birthright citizenship that has existed for more than 125 years. The court seems likely to side with Maryland parents in a religious rights case over LGBTQ storybooks in public schools Parents in the Montgomery County school system, in suburban Washington, want to be able to pull their children out of lessons that use the storybooks, which the county added to the curriculum to better reflect the district's diversity. The school system at one point allowed parents to remove their children from those lessons, but then reversed course because it found the opt-out policy to be disruptive. Sex education is the only area of instruction with an opt-out provision in the county's schools. The school district introduced the storybooks in 2022, with such titles as 'Prince and Knight' and 'Uncle Bobby's Wedding.' The case is one of several religious rights cases at the court this term. The justices have repeatedly endorsed claims of religious discrimination in recent years. The decision also comes amid increases in recent years in books being banned from public school and public libraries. A three-year battle over congressional districts in Louisiana is making its second trip to the Supreme Court Lower courts have struck down two Louisiana congressional maps since 2022 and the justices are weighing whether to send state lawmakers back to the map-drawing board for a third time. The case involves the interplay between race and politics in drawing political boundaries in front of a conservative-led court that has been skeptical of considerations of race in public life. At arguments in March, several of the court's conservative justices suggested they could vote to throw out the map and make it harder, if not impossible, to bring redistricting lawsuits under the Voting Rights Act. Before the court now is a map that created a second Black majority congressional district among Louisiana's six seats in the House of Representatives. The district elected a Black Democrat in 2024. A three-judge court found that the state relied too heavily on race in drawing the district, rejecting Louisiana's arguments that politics predominated, specifically the preservation of the seats of influential members of Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson. The Supreme Court ordered the challenged map to be used last year while the case went on. Lawmakers only drew that map after civil rights advocates won a court ruling that a map with one Black majority district likely violated the landmark voting rights law. The justices are weighing a Texas law aimed at blocking kids from seeing online pornography Texas is among more than a dozen states with age verification laws. The states argue the laws are necessary as smartphones have made access to online porn, including hardcore obscene material, almost instantaneous. The question for the court is whether the measure infringes on the constitutional rights of adults as well. The Free Speech Coalition, an adult-entertainment industry trade group, agrees that children shouldn't be seeing pornography. But it says the Texas law is written too broadly and wrongly affects adults by requiring them to submit personal identifying information online that is vulnerable to hacking or tracking. The justices appeared open to upholding the law, though they also could return it to a lower court for additional work. Some justices worried the lower court hadn't applied a strict enough legal standard in determining whether the Texas law and others like that could run afoul of the First Amendment.
