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Jury rules against Palin in libel case against The New York Times
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and onetime Republican vice-presidential nominee, leaves the court after a day of the retrial of her defamation lawsuit against The New York Times in Manhattan on April 21.
ANDRES KUDACKI/NYT
A federal jury on Tuesday ruled against Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential nominee, in her yearslong defamation lawsuit against The New York Times. The jury reached the verdict after two hours of deliberations. Palin sued the Times in 2017 after the newspaper published — and then swiftly corrected and apologized for — an editorial that wrongly suggested that she had incited a deadly shooting in Arizona years earlier. The case became a bellwether for battles over press freedoms and media bias in the Trump era, with Palin's lawyers saying they hoped to use it to attack a decades-old Supreme Court precedent that makes it harder for public figures to sue news outlets for defamation. This is the second time a federal jury has concluded that the Times was not liable for defaming Palin in its editorial. The case first went to trial in 2022, and both the jury and the judge ruled in favor of the Times. But last year, a federal appeals court invalidated those decisions, setting the stage for this month's retrial. It is unclear whether the verdict will be the end of the lawsuit's eight-year run or whether Palin's lawyers will again appeal. Outside the court after the verdict, Palin said she was going to 'go home to a beautiful family' and 'get on with life.' She declined to say whether she would appeal the verdict. 'We haven't talked about what we'll do next legally,' she told reporters. Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokesperson for the Times, said in a statement: 'The decision reaffirms an important tenet of American law: Publishers are not liable for honest mistakes.' — NEW YORK TIMES
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REAL ESTATE
'Shining' hotel borrows $300 million to cater to horror fans
Stephen King attends the premiere of "The Life of Chuck" during the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 6, 2024.
Chris Pizzello/Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
The hotel that inspired Stephen King to write his bestseller The Shining is turning to the municipal-bond market to pay for a sweeping overhaul in a bid to cement its status in the film industry, particularly among horror aficionados. The new owners of the Stanley Hotel, which is in Estes Park, Colo., roughly 40 miles from Boulder, plan to borrow nearly $300 million this month to expand its facilities, bond documents show. The majority of the offering, which will be issued through a state authority, is tax-exempt and will be backed by revenue generated by the hotel as well as other streams. The project, which includes a new event center, is the result of a decade's worth of planning by the state and the hotel owner along with cultural and film organizations around how to attract more regional tourism. Part of the goal is to tap into the Sundance Film Festival's planned move to Boulder in 2027 from Utah. King and his wife stayed in the hotel for one night in 1974, and had the unusual experience of being the only guests as it was closing the next day for the winter, the author recalls on his website. — BLOOMBERG NEWS
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CRYPTOCURRENCY
Trump Media enters deal with crypto trading platform
President Trump's social media company has moved one step closer to transforming itself into a financial services firm that intends to market investment products, including cryptocurrency, to retail investors. Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, which has become Trump's main online megaphone, said Tuesday that it had signed a binding agreement with a cryptocurrency trading platform and a newly created Florida investment firm to launch a series of exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, by the end of the year. The move to market ETFs to investors is part of a strategy by Trump Media to generate a more reliable source of revenues after failing to attract sufficient advertising dollars to Truth Social. In the deal, Trump Media will team up with Crypto.com, a digital asset trading platform with more than 140 million customers, and Yorkville America Digital, a company with ties to the founders of Yorkville Advisors, an investment firm based in Mountainside, New Jersey. — NEW YORK TIMES
TECH
At trial, Instagram cofounder says Meta denied his company resources
Kevin Systrom, a co-founder of Instagram, in San Francisco on Feb. 2, 2023.
JASON HENRY/NYT
Kevin Systrom, the cofounder of Instagram, testified Tuesday in a landmark federal antitrust trial that his startup was starved of resources after Meta bought it because Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO, was afraid of the success of the photo-sharing app. 'Mark was not investing in Instagram because he believed we were a threat to their growth,' Systrom said. Systrom's testimony was among the most pointed for the government's case that Meta had purchased Instagram in 2012 as part of a 'buy-or-bury strategy' to illegally cement its social media monopoly by killing off its rivals. The Instagram cofounder made millions when Zuckerberg bought his company, but Systrom sharply contradicted Meta's defense during hours on the stand in US District Court for the District of Columbia. Last week, Zuckerberg testified that the social media giant, formerly known as Facebook, used its deep pockets to invest in Instagram after its purchase. Systrom countered Tuesday that he left Meta in 2018 because of Zuckerberg's lack of investment. At that time, Instagram had grown to 1 billion users, about 40 percent of Facebook's size, yet the photo-sharing app had only 1,000 employees compared with 35,000 employees at Facebook, he said. 'We were by far the fastest growing team. We produced the most revenue, and relative to what we should have been at the time, I felt like we should have been much larger,' Systrom said. — NEW YORK TIMES
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PHARMACEUTICALS
Roche to invest $50 billion in pharma, diagnostics in US
The logo of the pharmaceutical company Roche pictured in Basel, Switzerland, on Feb. 1, 2017.
Alexandra Wey/Associated Press
Roche Holding AG said it will invest $50 billion in the United States in the next five years, joining rival drug makers in trumpeting American expansion plans as President Trump prepares to slap tariffs on pharmaceutical imports. The Swiss firm will expand and upgrade manufacturing and distribution capabilities in Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon, and California. Roche will also build a manufacturing plant to support the expansion of next-generation weight-loss drugs, though it didn't disclose the location. The pledge echoes a move by Swiss rival Novartis AG, which earlier this month laid out plans to invest $23 billion in the United States to ensure its key drugs for Americans are made in the country. Roche said that its investments will create more than 12,000 new jobs in the United States, mostly in construction and manufacturing. Roche already has long and deep ties with the United States, including its ownership of San Francisco-based Genentech, a pioneer in modern cancer medicine and other therapies. Roche currently has more than 25,000 workers in the country. The drugmaker also reiterated previously announced plans to build a gene therapy manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania and a research and development center in Massachusetts. 'Construction is either ongoing or just getting started' on those sites, the company said. Once all the new and expanded manufacturing capacity comes online, Roche will export more medicines from the United States than it imports, the company said. Currently, its diagnostics division has an export surplus from the United States. — BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Moran asks federal officials to keep airspace restrictions at D.C. airport in place
U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran demanded commitments from federal officials during hearings Thursday to keep airspace safe at Reagan Washington National Airport, the site of a deadly collision in January. (Kansas Reflector screen capture of U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran's YouTube channel) TOPEKA — U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran pressed federal officials Wednesday on how they intend to ensure safety at the Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., in the wake of a January crash between a passenger plane from Wichita and an Army helicopter that left no survivors. Moran, a Kansas Republican, questioned U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Federal Aviation Administration administrator nominee Bryan Bedford at separate committee hearings Wednesday on whether they would commit to keeping in place restrictions on non-essential helicopter flights around the D.C. airport. 'It's my understanding, from information from the Army, that since Jan. 29, seven flights have taken off and landed at the Pentagon,' Moran said to Hegseth. 'Six of those flights occurred during periods of high volume at DCA. One of those aircraft caused two different commercial flights to abort landing on May 1, and since this latest incident, I understand that all flights have been halted.' Since the January crash, Moran has pushed for aviation reforms, introducing legislation that mandates in busy airspace the use of Automatic Dependent Surveillance–Broadcast, or ADS-B, which automatically transmits an aircraft's location to nearby pilots once per second. The legislation also removes the possibility for pilots to opt out of using ADS-B. Moran introduced that legislation after close calls at the same airport where the crash took place. The Pentagon, which is less than two miles away from Reagan National as the crow flies, halted military helicopter flights near the airport. The legislation has been in a committee awaiting action since it was introduced in early May. Moran wants the flight restrictions in place until the FAA can come up with a safe route, if there is one. Hegseth, in response, said no authorization for VIP or convenience flights exists in that area. 'You have our assurance that I'm working with (Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy) very closely to make sure that the only flights that would be — even in a modified path — would be those that are necessary and are authorized,' Hegseth said. Moran sits on the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, where he questioned Hegseth, and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, where he requested a commitment from Bedford to maintain safety restrictions. 'My understanding is the FAA is supreme when it comes to the control of the airspace,' Bedford said. 'But we want to be good partners with the Department of Defense, and we have protocols on how to do that — multiple protocols, as I understand.' The FAA creates military operating areas, which include restricted and prohibited spaces, and line of fire space and alert zones, and determines the airspace classifications around airports. The busiest airports, like Reagan, are Class B airspace. Bedford said the FAA can accommodate the U.S. Department of Defense's needs, but he added, 'we can't have this mixed-use traffic in Class B airspace.'
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Trump's Military Crackdown Is Starting To Dent His Poll Numbers
As Donald Trump launched his militarized crackdown in Los Angeles, the president and many of his advisers were convinced that deploying troops to the streets of a major American city would be good politics for them. They maintain, three people familiar with the matter say, that immigration was one of Trump's strongest issues, that it helped get him back in the White House, and that his mass deportation program has polled well since the 2024 campaign. No matter the pushback to Trump sending in the troops (likely illegally) from Democrats, the media, or protesters, the administration's brain trust saw this as a winner for them — and something they wish to replicate. 'If it works out well in L.A., expect it everywhere,' a Trump administration official said of the president's desire for militarized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids across the nation. (This official and the other three sources spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.) But just days into Trump's deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to quell anti-ICE protests in L.A., new public polling suggests that Trump's recent deportation operations, and his decision to use the military against his domestic enemies, are not boosting his approval ratings. In fact, Trump's latest power grab is tanking his latest numbers. Trump's general platform of federal immigration crackdowns polled well in the build-up to his election and second term; 2024 polling showed Trump's calls for grand-scale deportations of undocumented immigrants enjoyed majority support. (However, that majority support diminished when voters were pressed on specific policies and methods.) In April of last year — to the alarm of Democratic operatives and Biden officials — a Harris Poll survey showed 42 percent of Democrats warming up to the idea. According to a polling analysis by data journalist G. Elliott Morris, Trump entered office with a strong positive approval rating on immigration. But those ratings peaked in February at a high of +11.3 percent. Now, for the second time since April, Morris' polling average shows Trump's immigration approval rating in the negatives. It appears the militarized incursion into Los Angeles is not playing well with the public at large. A recent YouGov survey shows 47 percent of American adults disapprove of Trump ordering the Marines to L.A., compared to 34 percent who support it. In the same poll, 45 percent disapprove of the president's use of National Guard troops, with 38 percent of respondents backing it. This aligns with a Wednesday Quinnipiac poll that found 54 percent of respondents disapprove of Trump's handling of immigration, and that 56 percent disapprove of his handling of deportations. (This is a markedly negative turn from an April Quinnipiac poll that found only 50 percent of respondents disapproved of his handling of immigration issues.) Similarly, a Thursday AP/NORC poll found that 53 percent disapproved of Trump's handling of immigration, compared to 46 percent who approve. A text survey conducted by The Washington Post and George Mason University's Schar School found that the public rated Trump's immigration and deportation policies 'negatively by a 15 percentage-point margin, 52 percent to 37 percent.' A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Thursday shows a stark disconnect between the public's general approval for strong action to restore order, and disapproval of what Trump is doing in Southern California. It found that 48 percent of respondents theoretically agree with the statement that the president should 'deploy the military to bring order to the streets.' But only 38 percent of respondents actually approved of how the president is responding to protests in Los Angeles. Those numbers are likely to continue trending downward as the Trump administration continues to behave badly in L.A. On Thursday — during a press conference in which Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared her department would be staying in Los Angeles to 'liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership' of Democrats — Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was tackled to the ground and handcuffed by FBI agents when he attempted to ask a question of Noem. Video of Padilla's detention quickly went viral on social media. After being released without charges, the senator told reporters that 'if this is how DHS responds to a senator with a question you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California.' Without a doubt the videos and stories of teenagers, pregnant women, and everyday working people being chased and detained by ICE is reaffirming what polling and surveys have long showed to be true: Americans generally believe that undocumented migrants with criminal records should be deported, but they are generally put off by indiscriminate immigration raids and deportations that disregard the circumstances of the individual. There's a silver lining, perhaps, for Trump and his party in some of this data. Democrats in Congress are also wildly unpopular, driven by dissatisfaction from their own liberal voters. 'The public supports keeping America safe and secure, and they don't like the concept of people here illegally — the issue is how it's administered,' says Frank Luntz, a longtime pollster and a conservative Trump critic. 'They have an agenda the American people support; their problem is the way they execute it and articulate it.' Voters do want immigration laws enforced, he says, but they 'don't want senators beaten up at press conferences. This has been the challenge of the Trump administration from the beginning,' Luntz adds, 'because they think they are on the right track, but the way it's being administered right now, they're not.' Even the president himself — who wrote on Thursday that 'all' undocumented people 'have to go home' — seems to be oscillating on the issue, at least from a public-relations standpoint. Earlier in the day Trump posted on Truth Social that 'farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them. This is not good,' Trump wrote. 'We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!' For the time being, however, the Trump administration is barreling ahead on its vision of his very American police state. 'In November, the American people resoundingly rejected the Democrat vision for immigration — open borders and millions of unvetted illegal aliens — and endorsed President Trump's vision for immigration — deportations and enforced immigration law,' White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement to Rolling Stone. 'President Trump is keeping his promise to the American people and violent left-wing rioters won't stop that.' Asked about the recent slate of negative polls for Trump on immigration, John McLaughlin, a top Trump pollster, simply replies: 'You mean the fake polls?' He points to rosy results for Trump in his own surveys and conservative-leaning polls: 'We did a national poll for Club for Growth yesterday among 1,000 likely voters and Trump's approval was 53-44 Rasmussen Reports poll today is 53-45,' McLaughlin says. More from Rolling Stone Kim Gordon Has Words for Donald Trump on Re-Recorded 'Bye Bye 25!' Trump Calls on Iran to Agree to Nuclear Deal 'Before There Is Nothing Left' Is Trump's Troop Deployment to Los Angeles Illegal? Best of Rolling Stone The Useful Idiots New Guide to the Most Stoned Moments of the 2020 Presidential Campaign Anatomy of a Fake News Scandal The Radical Crusade of Mike Pence
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Planned protests revives question: When was the last time the U.S. had a king?
(FOX 5/KUSI) — This Saturday, thousands across the U.S. are expected to take part in the 'No Kings' protests—a national day of action against what demonstrators view as authoritarian overreach and a growing concentration of power in the executive branch. The protests coincide with a massive military parade in Washington, D.C., marking the U.S. Army's 250th anniversary and President Donald Trump's 79th birthday. This comes as a recent AP-NORC poll shows some feel the parade, which Army officials say could cost as much as $45 million, is not a good use of funds. In a video highlighting the upcoming demonstrations, organizers claimed the parade portrays President Trump to be 'acting like a 'wannabe' king.' Those same organizers say their message is simple: America was founded on the rejection of monarchy, and the traditions of democracy must be defended. Some key issues in their stance include aggressive immigration enforcement, the militarization of Los Angeles, and federal job cuts from recent executive orders. On the contrary, President Trump and his supporters have dismissed these criticisms, arguing that he is simply fighting a corrupt establishment and using the tools available to him as an elected leader. They claim the accusations are politically motivated and meant to distract from policy issues. The President himself recently stated, 'I don't feel like a king. I have to go through hell to get stuff approved.' What is the difference between democracy and authoritarian rule? Some signs and chants at the upcoming protests are expected to reference King George III of Great Britain, the last king to rule over the American colonies. As history shows, his reign ended during the American Revolution in 1776 when he was cast as a symbol of tyranny. The Declaration of Independence listed his offenses, which included imposing taxes without consent, dissolving representative bodies and obstructing justice. Though a constitutional monarch in Britain, to the colonists King George III represented absolute control and colonial oppression. The Declaration of Independence marked the birth of the U.S. as a republic but also a bold rejection of monarchy and hereditary power. In the years following the war, the framers of the U.S. Constitution deliberately built a system designed to prevent the rise of another king. In fact, in 1782, when some proposed making General George Washington the new nation's monarch, he firmly declined, as noted in the National Archives. Instead, he chose to serve under the principles of republic government. His decision helped set a standard: power in America would derive from the people, not a throne. Fast forward nearly 250 years, and that founding principle is once again in the spotlight, though backtracking to monarchy seems unlikely. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
