Politics
Trump threatened with jail if he misses hush money trial as Biden campaigns in Pennsylvania
President Biden returns to the campaign trail on Tuesday with a visit to his childhood hometown of Scranton to begin three consecutive days of campaigning in Pennsylvania. While the Democratic incumbent is holding events in the battleground state, his 2024 opponent, Donald Trump, is forced to spend the day in a New York City courtroom for the first ever criminal trial of a former president.
Biden plans to use Scranton, a working class city of roughly 75,000 people, as the backdrop to pitch his new tax plan. His travels through Pennsylvania overlap with the start of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal hush money case against Trump.
Day two of the New York City trial continues with the jury selection at approximately 9:30 a.m. Tuesday. Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree relating to alleged hush money payments to Stormy Daniels during his successful 2016 presidential campaign.
Trump has been ordered to attend the court proceedings Tuesday and every day of the trial. Judge Juan Merchan told Trump that if he fails to be present, a warrant will be issued for his arrest.
TRUMP HUSH MONEY TRIAL ENTERS DAY TWO AS JURY SELECTION CONTINUES
Biden plans to spend Tuesday night in Scranton before continuing to Pittsburgh on Wednesday morning. He is expected to then briefly visit the White House, but intends to return to Pennsylvania on Thursday, with an event in Philadelphia.
Scranton, Biden’s first destination, blends the personal and political for Biden as he grew up in a three-story colonial home in the Green Ridge neighborhood. His family later moved to Delaware, the state Biden ultimately represented in the U.S. Senate.
“It’s hard to draw paths to Biden winning the White House that don’t involve Pennsylvania,” said Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Harry Truman, in 1948, was the last Democrat to become president who did not win the state.
SEE THE 42 QUESTIONS POTENTIAL TRUMP HUSH MONEY TRIAL JURORS ARE BEING ASKED
His opportunity to campaign comes as Trump is sequestered in a courtroom, defending himself against criminal charges. If convicted, Trump could be sentenced to time behind bars.
Trump pleaded not guilty to all counts last year.
As Monday showed, however, the criminal case against the former president continues to struggle against worries that Trump will get a fair trial.
TRUMP SLAMS BRAGG AFTER PLEADING NOT GUILTY: ‘I NEVER THOUGHT ANYTHING LIKE THIS COULD HAPPEN IN AMERICA’
Yesterday afternoon, 96 prospective jurors were sworn in but more than 50 of them were almost immediately excused for admitting they could not serve as impartial jurors.
“It’s a scam. It’s a political witch hunt,” Trump said after court adjourned Monday.
Judge Juan Merchan, who Trump has repeatedly criticized as being partisan and serving the interest of Democrats, addressed Trump directly before calling the prospective jurors into the courtroom.
NEW YORK JUDGE IMPOSES GAG ORDER ON TRUMP IN BRAGG HUSH MONEY CASE
The judge told Trump that if he fails to be present, a warrant will be issued for his arrest. Judge Merchan also told Trump that he has a right to be present at the trial, but that if he disrupts the proceedings he would be removed. Trump nodded after hearing the instructions.
Judge Merchan denied Trump’s request to be excused from the trial next Thursday, after the president expressed he wanted to attend arguments at the Supreme Court about presidential immunity. The judge has not yet ruled on whether the trial will be adjourned so Trump can attend his son Barron’s high school graduation.
Before jury selection began, Judge Merchan again denied the defense’s request to recuse himself.
Judge Merchan also set a hearing for next Tuesday, April 23 to discuss possible sanctions for Trump violating the gag order.
Politics
Omar Draws Criticism for Suggesting Some Jewish Students Are ‘Pro-Genocide’
Representative Ilhan Omar made the comments at Columbia University, where her daughter was among the students arrested protesting against Israel’s actions in Gaza. The protests have drawn visits by leaders across the political spectrum.
Politics
White House dodges questions on college administrators' response to anti-Israel protests on campuses
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dodged several questions during a press briefing on Monday, regarding the responses of many universities in the U.S. as anti-Israel protests, which sometimes turn violent, continue to flare up.
Colleges from coast to coast, including many Ivy League schools like Columbia, Yale, Harvard and Penn, have seen dayslong protests on campuses, with students demanding their schools completely divest from Israel as the death toll in Gaza continues to increase.
One reporter on Monday asked Jean-Pierre whether President Biden or anyone else in the White House had spoken with leadership at Columbia University, and if the president was happy with how school administrators are handling the situation.
“The president has always been clear that while Americans have the right to peacefully protest…he stands squarely, squarely against any rhetoric, violent rhetoric, any hate, hate threats and physical intimidation and hate speech,” she said, adding there is no place for antisemitism on college campuses or anywhere else. “It is a painful moment, we get that. But it is a painful moment that Americans are dealing with, and free expression has to be done within the law. And, you know, we’re going to continue to be very clear about that.”
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS FAIL TO REACH DEAL, PRESIDENT ASKS CAMP TO ‘VOLUNTARILY DISPERSE’
The press secretary did not answer the question about whether Biden was satisfied with how universities are handling the situation. And that was not the only question she dodged.
Jean-Pierre was asked if the White House thought it was fair that protesters at Columbia or other schools were being threatened with probation or other disciplinary actions, and whether students should leave a protest before a deadline being given by university personnel at Columbia.
To both questions, Jean-Pierre said she would not comment.
VIRGINIA TECH POLICE PHYSICALLY CARRY AWAY ANTI-ISRAEL AGITATORS AMID EFFORT TO RESTORE PEACE ON CAMPUS
“These are institutions. Some of them are private, some of them are public, and it is up to their leadership, university leadership and colleges, to make that decision,” she responded to the first question.
She nearly echoed her response to the second question.
“I’m just not going to comment on leadership at colleges and universities….that’s for them to decide,” Jean-Pierre said. “We’ve been very clear.”
TRUMP SAYS 4 WORDS ABOUT ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTS ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES AS ARRESTS SKYROCKET
Other topics that were dodged included whether the White House was concerned about safety at graduations; the response of the Biden administration to the use of police force in some of the college protests; the Biden administration’s reaction to the repercussions of the protests and how they have impacted students on campuses in terms of the University of Southern California canceling graduation and George Washington University moving exams; and if the White House supported having antisemitism monitors on campus.
In nearly every response, Jean-Pierre stuck to the message that Biden is in favor of peaceful protests and condemns antisemitism and any form of hate.
But this is nothing new.
CALIFORNIA UNIVERSITY REVEALS ‘TRUE COST’ OF ANTI-ISRAEL MOB THAT TOOK OVER ACADEMIC BUILDINGS
On Sunday, the White House remained silent on if the administration plans to bar student protesters from eligibility for student loan forgiveness programs. One thing Biden campaigned on in 2020 was forgiving student loan debt, pledging to cancel at least $10,000 per borrower back in 2020.
While Biden denounced the protests, he came under criticism last week for also condemning those “who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
“I condemn the antisemitic protests. That’s why I have set up a program to deal with that. I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians,” Biden told reporters this month.
Critics have compared it to Trump’s remarks in 2017, following a two-day riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, when White nationalists descended on the city. Trump said at the time that the violence had “no place in America,” while adding there was “blame on both sides” and “very fine people, on both sides.”
Emma Colton of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
Politics
University protests dominate media coverage, obscuring the true horror of Gaza war
The mention of mass graves is so deeply disturbing that it’s preferable to think of such wartime horrors as dark remnants of another era, chapters of history we’ll never repeat. The Armenian genocide, the Bolshevik revolution, Nazi Germany, El Salvador, Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The fairy tale that the human race has evolved beyond such barbarism was shattered (again) last week when reports surfaced that three mass burial sites had been unearthed in Gaza. The shocking development should have made headlines, but it barely made it onto most people’s radars.
The media are instead hyper-focused on how we protest atrocities rather than the atrocities themselves.
Anti-war demonstrations on college campuses dominate conversations and coverage about the Israel-Hamas war. Every imaginable news source — legacy print outlets, user-generated posts, broadcast and cable news — has its sight set on the encampments and rallies breaking out on campuses across the nation.
The protests are worthy in their own right for drawing attention to critical issues. They’ve raised awareness (and hackles) around the staggering Palestinian death toll, antisemitism, occupation, the oft-forgotten hostages and free speech. The largely peaceful demonstrations, dealt with ineptly at best by university heads and law enforcement, are rightfully the leading national story, and its stars are a generation that many older folks had written off as apathetic.
In SEO terms, the protests present the perfect setting for a media blitz. They’re taking place at colleges and they come with powerful images and ample social media content. As an example, protests at USC unfolded live on television across various local stations, with choppers capturing the action from every imaginable angle. They’re also an easier way into the war, bringing the Mideast conflict home to America without the horror of witnessing a real battle.
But blanket coverage of the uprising by students is so omnipresent, it’s overshadowed news from the very war they’re protesting.
There’s been a stunning lack of coverage and outrage following an announcement Friday by Palestinian authorities that they’d uncovered 390 bodies from mass grave sites around Gaza’s Nassar and Shifa hospitals, facilities that were raided and destroyed in Israeli strikes. The bodies were reportedly found in the pits, buried by bulldozed debris, after the Israeli Defense Forces ended operations in the region.
Women and children are among the deceased; the majority are still unidentified. Some of the dead were allegedly found stripped naked with their hands bound behind their backs. “It indicates serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, and these need to be subjected to further investigations,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a chief spokesperson for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk.
The sheer barbarity of these scenes may explain why they haven’t garnered more attention. It’s simply too awful to process, so we turn away.
And if the discovery of mass graves is a hard story to watch, it’s an even harder one to cover. Israel continues to restrict international journalists’ access to Gaza, so there are fewer reporters there to bear witness. For those who are there, it’s one of the deadliest wars on record for media workers, and civilian casualties are more than 34,000. If reporters do survive, they’re faced with intense investigative digging to get to the truth. And when their stories are finally reported, they’ll be lambasted, trolled and harassed by one side — or both — for their perceived bias.
But we need answers, and short of an independent investigation (the Biden administration has left it up to Israel to investigate itself), we’re left to guess whether war crimes have or have not been committed.
The dearth of information is partly due to the contraction of American newsrooms. Journalism outlets big and small have lost the resources, access and the expertise to cover wars like they once did. It’s also up to elected officials to draw attention to potential war crimes, especially when the U.S. plays such a central role in the conflict.
Politicians like Mike Johnson have instead been busy raising their profiles by inserting themselves into the Palestinian-Israeli mire. Painting himself as a defender of student safety, the Republican House speaker instead put hundreds if not thousands of anti-war protesters in danger — Jewish students included — by conflating their pro-Palestinian stances with sympathy for Hamas. “The things that have happened at the hands of Hamas are horrific, and yet these protesters are out there waving flags for the very people who committed those crimes. This is not who we are in America,” Johnson posted Thursday on X, formerly Twitter.
It was refreshing to see that ABC News didn’t just quote him and move on, as many other news outlets did. The network reported that there had been no documented cases of demonstrators waving Hamas flags. Such details matter when the safety of students is at stake.
But critical questions remain around Gaza’s mass graves, and there’s the matter of accountability.
“The grave in question was dug — by Gazans — a few months ago,” tweeted Nadav Shoshani, a spokesman for the Israeli Defense Force. “This fact is corroborated by social media documentation uploaded by Gazans at the time of the burial. Any attempt to blame Israel for burying civilians in mass graves is categorically false and a mere example of a disinformation campaign aimed at delegitimizing Israel.”
Israeli officials said the corpses buried near Nasser Hospital had been exhumed to check whether they were those of Israeli hostages. An Israeli military official said that all remains were then “respectfully returned to their place.”
Gaza authorities affirm that graves were dug before the Israeli military’s arrival, but allege that the IDF added bodies to the site. Gaza Civil Defense said that only about 100 people were buried in graves before the IDF raid, and that 390 to 392 bodies (accounts vary) had since been recovered.
The widely reported slaughter of innocent Israelis and Palestinians, and the taking of hostages, prompted the protests in the first place. Now, the cries of demonstrators are the story. But we can certainly pay attention on both fronts, even if one of them requires a lot more work and emotional girding. It’s our moral imperative to pay attention or risk becoming bystanders as another dark chapter on wartime atrocities writes itself.
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