politics

I genuinely did not expect them to respond to this:

This was so beyond ridiculous that I debated posting it. I wasn't sure if people would believe it or not.

Trump's comments came at a rally in Ohio in the context of auto manufacturing. The Biden campaign responded by criticizing the former president's "threats of political violence."

Former President Donald Trump vowed on Saturday that there would be a “bloodbath” if he’s not reelected in November. 

The comments came at a rally here as Trump discussed the possibility of an increasing trade war with China over auto manufacturing. The rally was intended to get out the vote for Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, whom Trump endorsed in December, ahead of Ohio’s primary on Tuesday.

…

Later, he added, "If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country."

The Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors filed a motion in bankruptcy court on Friday to compel Rudy Giuliani to sell his $3.5 million Florida condo to pay off part of his debts, which became significantly larger after the former New York City mayor was ordered to pay more than $148 million to two election workers he defamed, resulting in him filing for bankruptcy last year.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the court, said that officials who use personal accounts to make official statements may not be free to delete comments about those statements or block critics altogether.

The cases forced the court to deal with the competing free speech rights of public officials and their constituents, all in a rapidly evolving virtual world. They are among five social media cases on the court’s docket this term.

Officials must have the authority to speak on behalf of their governments and intend to use it for their posts to be regarded essentially as the government’s, Barrett wrote. In such cases, they have to allow criticism, or risk being sued, she wrote.

The court’s other social media cases have a more partisan flavor. The justices are evaluating Republican-passed laws in Florida and Texas that prohibit large social media companies from taking down posts because of the views they express. The tech companies said the laws violate their First Amendment rights. The laws reflect a view among Republicans that the platforms disproportionately censor conservative viewpoints.

The number of people who describe themselves as Republican has slightly declined since the last presidential election.

The polling firm Gallup, which tracks party affiliation monthly, says that those identifying as Republicans has shrunk by two percentage points since 2020. In February 2020, 30 percent of those Gallup polled said they were Republicans, while 29 percent considered themselves Democrats.

As of February 2024, when the latest data is available, 28 percent say they are Republicans, while 30 percent say they are Democrats, showing Republican's base declining. Newsweek contacted the Republican National Committee (RNC) by email to comment on this story.

Travelers United asked a federal court to order the South Dakota governor to pay damages due to her social media posts the group says are advertisements.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was sued in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday over her promotion of a Texas dentist on her social media accounts this week.

The lawsuit, filed by the consumer advocacy group Travelers United in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, alleges that Noem "advertised a product or service without disclosing that she has a financial relationship with that company" after she posted a video  to social media Tuesday regarding dental services she received.

In the video, Noem describes consulting with and subsequently getting her teeth adjusted by a cosmetic dental company known as Smile Texas. The video appeared on Facebook, X, Truth Social, and Instagram.

Their call comes as the administration faces mounting domestic and international pressure over what critics have described as an “absurd” and “inherent contradiction” at the heart of US policy on Israel’s war against Hamas: while the US attempts to ease the deepening humanitarian crisis caused by Israel’s military campaign in the Palestinian territory, it continues to arm the country.

Measures target people convicted of driving without a license – which undocumented people can’t obtain – or committing felonies

Florida’s governor signed bills Friday that increase the prison and jail sentences for immigrants who are living in the United States illegally if they are convicted of driving without a license or committing felonies.

Ron DeSantis is a frequent critic of the Biden administration over its handling of the Mexican border, sending Florida law enforcement agents and national guard members to Texas. The Republican governor, who ended his attempt for his party’s presidential nomination last month, has also flown immigrants who entered Texas illegally to Massachusetts and California.

The House speaker is open to a stand-alone vote on Ukraine aid. Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t going to like that one bit.

Poor Mike Johnson is in quite a bind. The House speaker simply doesn’t have a governing majority: It is borderline impossible to pass anything with only Republican votes, because the hard-right MAGA bloc wants to thwart governing at all costs. So he needs Democrats to pass anything that wouldn’t be uniformly awful for the country. Yet if he does rely on Democrats, that MAGA faction is prepared to depose him.

That’s why Johnson’s new indication that he’s considering holding a vote on a Ukraine aid package—one that would be separate from an Israel aid bill—is so intriguing and suggestive. 

“I think it is a stand-alone, and I suspect it will need to be on suspension,” Johnson told Politico, meaning that a bill funding Ukraine aid would have to move via a fast-track procedure that prevents insurgents from bottling up bills in committees.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday called on the federal government to move “as quickly as possible” to change the way it officially classifies marijuana, saying that “nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.”

“I cannot emphasize enough that they need to get to it as quickly as possible,” Harris said. “We need to have a resolution based on their findings and their assessment. This issue is stark when one considers the fact that on the schedule currently, marijuana is considered as dangerous as heroin ― as dangerous as heroin ― and more dangerous than fentanyl, which is absurd, not to mention patently unfair.”

Marijuana is currently listed as a Schedule 1 drug by the Drug Enforcement Administration. That classification designates it one of the most dangerous drugs possible, with no medicinal uses. Other substances in the same category include heroin, ecstasy and LSD. Marijuana advocates have been pushing for years for the federal government to either reschedule marijuana to a different category or deschedule it entirely.

Donald Trump’s New York hush-money criminal trial was delayed Friday until at least mid-April as the judge seeks answers about a last-minute evidence dump that the former president’s lawyers said has hampered their ability to prepare their defense. 

Manhattan Judge Juan Manuel Merchan agreed to a 30-day delay starting Friday and scheduled a hearing for March 25 after Trump’s lawyers complained that they only recently started receiving more than 100,000 pages of documents from a previous federal investigation into the matter.

The trial had been scheduled to start on March 25. The delay means the trial would start no earlier than April 15. Prosecutors had said they wouldn’t object to a short delay. Trump’s lawyers have requested a three-month delay as well as asking for the case to be thrown out.

Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor working with the Fulton County District Attorney's Office, resigned his post after a judge ruled Friday that District Attorney Fani Willis and her office may remain on the 2020 election case involving former President Donald Trump and his allies if Wade stepped aside.

Wade's resignation as special prosecutor came hours after Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee laid out two options that would allow for the continued prosecution of the racketeering case against Trump and his co-defendants stemming from an alleged scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia.