A federal judge rejected former President Trump’s latest attempt for a new trial, upholding the verdict and $83.3 million award in his defamation case against writer E. Jean Carroll. In a written opinion, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said Trump’s arguments are “without merit.” “Mr. Trump’s malicious and unceasing attacks on Ms. Carroll were disseminated to more than 100 million people. They included public threats and personal attacks, and they endangered Ms. Carroll’s health and safety,” Kaplan wrote. A jury in January ordered him to pay $83.3 million to Carroll after Kaplan found he was ..read more

President Biden’s reelection campaign trolled former President Trump for golfing on his day off from court Wednesday. “We found out where Trump was. He was golfing. Not campaigning. Golfing,” Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement, citing a CNN report that he was at his New Jersey golf club Bedminster.  “But, when your entire campaign is about enacting revenge and retribution for yourself and doing nothing to make Americans’ lives better, it makes sense you wouldn’t feel the need to actually speak to voters,” Moussa added. The Biden campaign released a sta ..read more

Justices on the Supreme Court voiced skepticism Thursday to assertions from former President Trump’s attorneys that presidential immunity could extend to an attempted coup or the assassination of a political rival, even as they seemed ready to offer some protections from criminal prosecution. Such a ruling could create a new cycle of legal battles that in turn could delay Trump's federal election subversion trial — and his other trials — past the election.  Conservative and liberal justices alike peppered Trump’s counsel with hypothetical situations, as ..read more

On Wednesday, the day after the Senate passed the House bill providing $60 billion in aid to Ukraine in its existential battle against Putin’s invasion, CNN reported on the inside story. Over the previous six months, the White House had orchestrated “public pressure and private overtures … to build [congressional] support, including the not-insignificant task of winning over House Speaker Mike Johnson.” This week’s success for Ukraine follows an equally important victory last week in the world’s other hottest spot, the Middle East. Again it was President Joe Biden’s skillful combination of pub ..read more

Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson on Wednesday said criticism from former President Trump after she testified before the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 rioting at the U.S. Capitol have has a "tremendous" impact on her life. "I mean, in short, it's been tremendous," Hutchinson said Wednesday in an interview with CNN when asked about the impact of Trump's attacks. "And it's something that I think we have to take really seriously and other witnesses coming forward have to take really seriously." Hutchinson, the former assistant to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, was the firs ..read more

The Biden campaign is going after Republicans who voted for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley after the former presidential candidate received more than 150,000 votes in Tuesday’s GOP primary in Pennsylvania. Haley, who dropped out of the race two months ago, took more than 16 percent of the total votes. Former President Trump still easily won the primary, with more than 80 percent of the vote as of the latest count. The Biden campaign noted the significant number of Pennsylvania Republicans who “rejected Donald Trump” and dropped a 30-second ad entitled “If you voted for Nikki ..read more

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson seemed to reject arguments from former President Trump’s attorneys Thursday that the justices must distinguish between personal and official acts to determine whether a president could be prosecuted, warning that the claims threaten turning the Oval Office into a “seat of criminality.” The court heard oral arguments Thursday for Trump’s immunity case, in which the former president claims he cannot be prosecuted for alleged crimes committed while he was in office, arguing that legal liability limits the president’s ability to act. Jackson noted that p ..read more

Fortunately for both Biden and Trump, November won’t be a popularity contest. Biden is the more fortunate of the two, but only slightly so.  According to Real Clear Politics average of national polling, Biden trails Trump 44.2 percent to 44.5 percent in a two-way rematch, while his unfavorable rating is 55.1 percent to Trump’s 53.7 percent. In such adverse circumstances, November will be about getting supporters to the polls: Here Biden’s disadvantage looms larger still.  The current presidential rematch appears close, as neither Biden nor Trump seem to be ab ..read more

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán encouraged former President Trump to “fight for his own truth,” during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Hungary.  The European Union's longest-serving leader defended Trump during the third annual CPAC Hungary in Budapest. Dutch party leader Geert Wilders and U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) were also in attendance. “If necessary, they will use government agencies against us — as my American friends say, ‘weaponizing state institutions,’” Orbán said during the event on Thursday, according to The Associated Press (AP). “This happens to us ..read more

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is set to vote Thursday to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules.  Here’s what you need to know:  What is net neutrality?  Net neutrality refers to the principle that internet service providers should treat all information that travels through their networks equally.  Under the FCC’s proposed rules, providers would be barred from blocking or throttling internet traffic to some websites and speeding up access to others that pay extra fees.  Why is the FCC voting on net neutrality again?  Net neutrality rules, which were ..read more