“War on white America”: Influential Texas group hosting pro-Christian nationalism conference
True Texas Project has for years worked with Attorney General Ken Paxton, Sen. Ted Cruz and other prominent Republicans.
Potential Supreme Court candidates during a second President Biden term
WASHINGTON — A continuing focus on diversity appears to be the political strategy for how President Biden would approach filling any Supreme Court vacancies in a second term. Sources close to the White House and his re-election campaign say the president would use the successful nomination of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as a template for navigating any future high court opening. For now, officials say he plans to more prominently tout Jackson’s confirmation to various key constituencies as the presidential campaign intensifies, especially to Black voters who will be key to his re-election. After Justice Stephen Breyer announced his 2022 retirement, Biden committed early on to naming the first Black woman as his replacement and gathered a number of qualified jurists for initial vetting. That internal list then expanded before three finalists were ultimately reached — Jackson and judges Leondra Kruger and J. Michelle Childs. Kruger and Childs remain top contenders for the Supreme Court, sources say. BIDEN ADMIN WEIGHS GOING AROUND ISRAEL TO NEGOTIATE RELEASE OF US HOSTAGES DIRECTLY WITH HAMAS: REPORT The president, in public remarks, has made much of the diversity of his judicial nominees for the courts. Almost two-thirds are women, more than twice those named by President Trump in his single term (Biden 127; 64% as of May 22, versus Trump 55 total; 24%). Biden has also named an equal percentage of members of a racial or ethnic minority group to the federal bench — about 64%. Biden could make history with the first justice who identifies as Asian American or Pacific Islander and would have more than 30 AAPI judges he has named to the lower federal courts to choose from. But any retirement by Justice Clarence Thomas, who turns 75 June 23, or Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who turns 70 two days later, would put political pressure on the next president to name a Black or Latino to the Supreme Court. BIDEN’S CRUSADE AGAINST US ENERGY HARMS AMERICA AND OUR ALLIES Overall, Biden has been actively finding qualified federal candidates to fill bench vacancies. His 200th federal judge was confirmed by the Senate last month, slightly outpacing the number by his predecessor at this point in his presidency. The following is an unofficial list of potential candidates for the Supreme Court by Biden. It was compiled from a number of sources, including officials within his inner circle, his political campaign and Democratic political and legal circles. The current White House administration, like those before, quickly began compiling an informal list of possible high court nominees to consider in the event of a sudden vacancy. But serious vetting only begins when such a vacancy occurs or is announced in advance by a retiring justice. Born in 1976, Kruger is a former Obama Justice Department lawyer and argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court. She also clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens and was a finalist for the 2022 court seat that went to Brown Jackson. Her sterling resume and relatively young age could continue to make Kruger a strong favorite for a Supreme Court seat, especially if Thomas retires. She’s considered something of a moderate on the state high court and often a “swing” or deciding vote in close cases. But state judges rarely receive serious consideration for the U.S. Supreme Court. The last was Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981. Kruger’s parents were both pediatricians. Her mother is Jamaican. Her late father was the son of Jewish immigrants. She gave birth to a daughter in March 2016. Born in 1967 in India, Srinivasan was later named to the court in 2013 (97-0 vote), months before colleague Patricia Millett joined him. He is now chief judge on that bench. He was a finalist for the seat that Garland was nominated for. The son of Indian immigrants and raised in Kansas. Padmanabhan Srikanth Srinivasan was the principal deputy solicitor general at the Justice Department and argued more than two dozen cases before the Supreme Court. He would be the high court’s first Asian American. He clerked for Republican-nominated federal judges Harvie Wilkinson and Day O’Connor. Obama called him “a trailblazer who personifies the best of America.” Known as low-key, practical and non-ideological, he may not excite many progressives, nor give conservatives much to dislike. Fun fact: Justice Elena Kagan has praised him (both worked together in the Obama SG’s office), saying Srinivasan “cools it down” with his calm manner during oral arguments. BIDEN WANTS TO ‘BASTARDIZE’ HIS FAMILY STORIES TO GET ‘WEIRD POLITICAL POINTS WITH CERTAIN DEMOGRAPHICS’ Born in 1980, Prelogar became the 40th solicitor general in October 2021, after serving for months in an acting role. The Idaho native clerked for justices Ginsburg and Kagan, a former solicitor general, and for then-Judge Merrick Garland on the D.C. Circuit appeals court. Besides Kagan, former solicitors general to later become a justice include William Howard Taft, Robert Jackson, Stanley Reed and Thurgood Marshall. Fun facts: She was a beauty pageant contestant named Miss Idaho in 2004 and appeared last fall on the NPR quiz show, “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me” (her topic was vacuum cleaner salespeople). Born in 1968, Monaco was a former federal prosecutor and national security adviser under Obama from 2013-2017. She worked as a researcher under then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joe Biden starting in 1992. Monaco would also be a favorite for attorney general in a second Biden term if Garland retires. Born in 1979 in Norfolk, Virginia, both her parents are judges, U.S. District Judge Raymond Alvin Jackson and former Norfolk General District Court Judge Gwendolyn Jackson. A former federal defender in Chicago and, before that, a partner in a D.C. law firm, Jackson-Akiwumi was nominated by Biden in March 2021, one of three Black women named to appeals court seats in the administration’s first months. Born in 1966, Childs was nominated in December 2021 to serve on the high-profile D.C. Circuit appeals court, replacing the retiring Judge David Tatel. She was Biden’s second Black woman on the D.C. Circuit, after now-Justice Jackson.
Chandrababu Naidu makes heroic return to Andhra Pradesh politics, becomes 4th time CM with Pawan Kalyan as his deputy
TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu was sworn-in as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for the fourth term on Wednesday at a ceremony that was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, senior BJP leaders and Union Ministers.
California law prohibiting gun shows at county fairs upheld by federal appeals court in unanimous decision
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday to uphold California laws banning gun shows at county fairs and other public properties in a 3-0 decision. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the two measures do not violate the rights of firearm sellers or buyers. The ruling on Tuesday overturns a federal judge’s ruling in October that blocked the laws. State Sen. Dave Min, a Democrat, introduced both laws: the first went into effect in January 2022 and prohibited gun shows at the Orange County Fair, while the other went into effect last year and extended the ban to county fairgrounds on state-owned land. U.S. District Judge Mark Holcomb wrote in his decision last year that the state was violating the rights of gun sellers and potential buyers by barring purchases of firearms that can be bought at any gun store and that lawful gun sales involve commercial speech protected by the First Amendment. GAVIN NEWSOM’S ANTI-GUN CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT FAILS TO GAIN SUPPORT FROM A SINGLE STATE AFTER 1 YEAR The appeals court, however, ruled that the laws only ban sales agreements on public property and do not limit discussions, advertisements or other speech about firearms. Judge Richard Clifton wrote that the bans “do not directly or inevitably restrict any expressive activity.” Clifton said that a separate state law that was not challenged in the case states that the actual purchase of a firearm at a gun show is completed at a licensed gun store after a 10-day waiting period and a background check. California Attorney General Rob Bonta praised Tuesday’s decision after defending the laws in court. “Guns should not be sold on property owned by the state, it is that simple,” Bonta said in a statement. “This is another victory in the battle against gun violence in our state and country.” Gun-control groups have claimed the gun shows present dangers by making firearms attractive to children and enabling “straw purchases” for people ineligible to possess guns. CALIFORNIA GROUP SECURES SIGNATURES TO LAND PROP 47 REFORM PENALIZING CRIMINALS ON NOVEMBER BALLOT The case came after a lawsuit by gun show company B&L Productions, which argued that the ban on fairgrounds sales violated the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. But the appeals court disagreed, writing that there were six licensed firearms dealers in the same ZIP code as the Orange County Fairgrounds, where the 2022 law banned gun sales. Attorney Chuck Michel, president of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, the state affiliate of the National Rifle Association, said the ruling would be appealed. “CRPA will continue to protect the despised gun culture and fight back against an overreaching government that seeks to limit disfavored fundamental rights and discriminate against certain groups of people on state property,” Michel said in a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle. Min applauded the ruling on Tuesday, saying in a statement that the appeals court upholding the laws will make Californians safer. “I hope that in my lifetime, we will return to being a society where people’s lives are valued more than guns, and where gun violence incidents are rare and shocking rather than commonplace as they are today,” Min said. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
J-K: 2 terrorists killed by security forces in Kathua district two days after Reasi attack
The incident in the Jammu region comes two days after terrorists attacked a bus carrying pilgrims from Shiv Khori temple to Katra, causing the bus to veer off the road and fall into a deep gorge, leaving nine dead and 41 injured.
Vegetable prices skyrocket across India; Onion, potato get costlier by…
The recently concluded general elections in India have coincided with a significant surge in the prices of onions and potatoes nationwide. Within a week, the cost of onions has soared drastically by 50% in the Delhi NCR market.
Merrick Garland’s fate hangs in balance as House readies contempt vote
The House of Representatives is expected to vote on holding Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress on Wednesday over his failure to produce audio recordings of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview with President Biden. Hur’s findings cleared Biden of wrongdoing in his handling of classified documents but also said the 81-year-old president presented himself “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and “it would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” Biden and his allies aggressively pushed back on concerns about his mental fitness in the report’s wake. Republicans seeking the audio recording argue it would provide critical context about Biden’s state of mind. Democrats, meanwhile, have dismissed the request as a partisan attempt to politicize the Department of Justice (DOJ). JOHNSON FLOATS DEFUNDING SPECIAL COUNSEL’S OFFICE AMID JACK SMITH’S TRUMP PROBE The pursuit of Hur’s audio tapes is part of the House GOP’s wider impeachment inquiry into Biden, investigating allegations he used his political position to enrich himself and his family. Biden has denied accusations of wrongdoing. And while the majority of Republicans have indicated they support the measure, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has little wiggle room: He can only lose two votes on any party-line measure. Two Republicans – Reps. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., and Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., told Fox News Digital they are still unsure about how they’ll vote. “I still have to go through the final decision process. But if they’ve already released the transcripts, it doesn’t seem to me like there’s any legal leg to stand on to not release the actual videos. To me, that seems like something they should do,” Newhouse said. Ciscomani said, “I want to understand exactly the purpose behind that before I comment on it.” HILL AID INTERFERES WITH FOX NEWS CAMERA CREW DURING TLAIB INTERVIEW House Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., criticized the moderates’ indecision. “If moderates don’t agree that Merrick Garland needs to be censured by not turning over audio which solidifies whatever the testimony is, that would shock me,” Norman said. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., said she would aim to force a vote on her own inherent contempt resolution against Garland if the DOJ fails to go after him if the Wednesday resolution passes. An inherent contempt resolution would direct the House’s sergeant at arms to arrest its target rather than passing it to the DOJ. “As of right now, we fully intend to bring it,” Luna said. “I don’t really have much faith in the Department of Justice. And I don’t think the American people do either. But we are trying to bring back a level playing field and show that, you know, there should be accountability all the way up to the top.” Democrats, meanwhile, blasted the GOP effort. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., said, “This is what they want to do because they don’t have the votes to impeach Joe Biden, right? That’s why they did Merrick Garland. That’s why they went after [Hunter Biden]. It’s all trying to please their base because Congress doesn’t want to do what Donald Trump wants, which is to impeach Joe Biden so they can have even scores.” Their targeting of Garland is part of a wider GOP effort to crack down on alleged weaponization of the DOJ by Biden’s officials. That also includes various pieces of legislation and public threats to defund various aspects of the department, including the special counsel currently investigating former President Trump. Fox News Digital reached out to the DOJ for comment on the contempt resolution against Garland. TRUMP GUILTY VERDICT REVEALS SPLIT AMONG FORMER GOP PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARY OPPONENTS Garland took an indirect shot at Republicans’ pushback on the DOJ in a Washington Post op-ed on Tuesday morning. “In recent weeks, we have seen an escalation of attacks that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism, and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work. They are baseless, personal and dangerous,” he wrote. “These attacks come in the form of threats to defund particular department investigations, most recently the special counsel’s prosecution of the former president.”
7 most dramatic moments from US v Hunter trial: Wild testimony from exes, Jill Biden takes front-row seat
WILMINGTON, Del. — Hunter Biden’s whirlwind, and at times emotional, criminal trial came to a close Tuesday when the jury found the first son guilty on all counts related to his purchase of a firearm in 2018. “I am more grateful today for the love and support I experienced this last week from Melissa, my family, my friends, and my community than I am disappointed by the outcome. Recovery is possible by the grace of God, and I am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time,” Hunter Biden said in a statement after the verdict. After roughly six and a half days in court, the jury agreed with the prosecution team that Hunter Biden lied on a federal firearm form, known as ATF Form 4473, in October 2018 when he ticked a box labeled “No” when asked if he was an unlawful user of drugs or addicted to controlled substances. Fox News Digital was present in the courtroom throughout the majority of the trial and has compiled the seven most dramatic moments and testimony that unfolded between June 3 and June 11. HUNTER BIDEN FOUND GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS IN GUN TRIAL Three of Hunter Biden’s exes took the stand and testified during the trial, including his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, who was married to the first son for more than 20 years and with whom she shares three adult daughters. Buhle and Biden divorced in 2017 after Buhle found a crack pipe on the side porch of their home in Washington, D.C., in 2015, she told the court. Buhle was soft-spoken and appeared emotional during her testimony as she detailed her suspicions of his rampant drug use after he was discharged from the Navy Reserves for testing positive for cocaine. “I was definitely worried, scared,” she said, describing how she would scour his car for drugs and drug paraphernalia to ensure their daughters would not drive the vehicle around with the substances. HUNTER BIDEN TRIAL ENTERS DAY 5 AFTER TESTIMONY FROM SISTER-IN-LAW-TURNED-GIRLFRIEND: ‘PANICKED’ Biden’s ex-girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, also took the stand last week, walking the jury through Biden’s rampant drug abuse throughout their relationship, including him smoking crack in hotel rooms, stealing away to public bathrooms to smoke crack and how she helped pick up drugs for him. She said the crack cocaine he purchased often was the size of a “ping pong ball,” which he broke into pieces and lit up in glass pipes. Kestan testified under immunity. READ THE VERDICT Kestan met Hunter Biden when she was 24 and he was 48 at a New York City gentleman’s club where she worked as a dancer. Kestan said their whirlwind relationship was a “distraction” for Biden as he allegedly smoked less when they were hidden away, sometimes for days at a time, in ritzy hotel rooms such as New York City’s Four Seasons or in a bungalow at Los Angeles’ Chateau Marmont. Kestan’s testimony was accompanied by photos depicting crack pipes in hotel rooms, a photo of a bare-chested Biden in a bubble bath with Kestan, and a screenshot of a FaceTime video showing Biden’s back tattoo that resembled claw marks. The jurors were told amid Kestan’s remarks that Biden learned how to cook crack cocaine, and they were shown a photo of baking soda in one hotel room that was used to cook cocaine into crack. Hallie Biden, Hunter Biden’s sister-in-law turned girlfriend, also took the stand. Hallie Biden was a key figure in the trial: She was the one to toss Hunter Biden’s gun in a trash can outside a Wilmington supermarket, which led to police involvement ahead of the indictment last year. She also provided further insight into his addiction to crack cocaine during the year he purchased the gun. ‘LIKE A SON’: FORMER TOP BIDEN ADVISER WITH DEEP BUSINESS TIES TO CHINA SPOTTED INSIDE HUNTER BIDEN GUN TRIAL Hallie Biden is Beau Biden’s widow and began a relationship with Beau’s brother, Hunter Biden, in 2015, after her husband’s death from brain cancer. The pair had an on-and-off romantic relationship until about 2019, when they called it quits. Hallie Biden testified about her discovery that Hunter Biden used crack, that he introduced her to crack cocaine, and how she became sober before discovering the handgun at the heart of the case in Hunter Biden’s truck on Oct. 23, 2018. ”It was a terrible experience I went through, and I was embarrassed and ashamed. … I regret that period of my life,” Hallie Biden told the court on Thursday about her use of crack cocaine. Hallie Biden was joined in court by her husband, who she married the weekend before her testimony. Similar to Kestan, Hallie Biden also testified under immunity. First lady Jill Biden became a fixture of the Wilmington, Delaware, courtroom throughout the trial. She took a front-row seat in the courtroom, sitting behind her stepson as he faced testimony regarding his repeated use of crack cocaine before and after his illegal purchase of a firearm. HUNTER BIDEN TRIAL ENTERS DAY 4 AFTER WILD TESTIMONY FROM EXES ON RAMPANT DRUG USE, TRASHED HOTEL ROOMS Jill Biden only missed one full day of court last week, when she traveled to Normandy, France, with President Biden to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day. She also notably missed former daughter-in-law Kathleen Buhle’s testimony, but she returned to the court after Buhle left the stand. The first lady was frequently joined by family members such as President Biden’s siblings Valerie Biden and James Biden, daughter Ashley Biden, daughter-in-law Melissa Cohen Biden, and allies, such as former Biden adviser Francis “Fran” Person and lawyer and producer Kevin Morris. Jill Biden seldom looked around the courtroom during her days in the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building, which is named after the Republican Delaware senator President Biden defeated in 1972, subsequently catapulting the 46th president’s political career. The first family and allies also walked past large portraits of President Biden and Vice President Harris when entering and leaving the
Who has the ‘Keys to the White House’? Historian with ace record calling elections weighs in on Trump verdict
Former President Trump’s criminal conviction in his historic New York trial may have thrown the 2024 presidential election into unprecedented upheaval – or it may not have, according to Dr. Allan Lichtman. The American University historian, who has correctly predicted the outcome of nine of the last 10 U.S. presidential elections, told Fox News Digital that instant analysis of Trump’s conviction is meaningless as the country looks forward to Election Day. “We’re not going to know much until the sentencing hearing on July 11, right before the Republican convention,” Lichtman said in an interview. Allowing himself to speculate, the proven prognosticator said Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records does not appear to have fundamentally cracked his base, which Trump will need united to defeat President Biden in November. But no one knows, neither Lichtman nor the pundits he perennially outperforms, how Americans outside Trump’s base will react to a convicted criminal on the presidential ballot. “We don’t know how this might affect moderate and swing independent voters. So really, we have got to look over time and not rely on instant, unreliable punditry,” said Lichtman. TRUMP GETS WARM RECEPTION AND PILES OF CAMPAIGN CASH DURING SUNNY BLUE STATE SWING Lichtman is a historian, not a psychic. The formula he’s used to correctly predict nearly every presidential race since 1984, his “Keys to the White House,” was developed in 1981 with mathematician Vladimir Keilis-Borok and is based on their analysis of presidential elections dating back to 1860. The secret to his success, Lichtman says, is to keep his own personal preferences out of his predictions. “We reconceptualize presidential elections not as Carter versus Reagan, Republican versus Democrat, liberal versus conservative, but in geophysical terms,” he explained. “Stability: The White House party keeps power. Earthquake: The White House party is turned out.” The “keys” consist of 13 true or false questions, parameters that, if true, favor stability. When eight or more of the keys are false, the incumbent White House party is the predicted loser. This formula helped Lichtman correctly predict that Trump would prevail in 2016, when the polls, debate performances and political commentators all favored Democrat Hillary Clinton. Previously, he said President Barack Obama would win re-election when Republican Mitt Romney was favored. And he correctly called the 2020 election for Biden. “The keys are an alternative to the polls, which are not predictors. They’re snapshots, they’re abused, not used as predictors. And the pundits, you know, who are a lot of fun, but they’re sports talk radio. They have no scientific basis for any of their predictions,” Lichtman argued. TRUMP RILES UP FIERY SWING STATE CROWD IN FIRST RALLY SINCE NEW YORK CONVICTION The 2024 election is still in flux, and so Lichtman has not made a final projection for this year. But a lot would have to go wrong for Biden to lose to Trump, he claims. Lichtman’s keys are as follows: party mandate, contest, incumbency, third party, short-term economy, long-term economy, policy change, social unrest, scandal, foreign/military failure, foreign/military success, incumbent charisma and challenger charisma. As things stand, Biden has definitively lost two of Lichtman’s keys. “He’s lost what I call the mandate key based on midterm elections, because the Democrats lost seats in 2022, they needed to win seats to win that key. And he loses the charisma key because he’s no Franklin Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy,” Lichtman said. If six keys turn against Biden, he is likely to lose. The four keys to watch are whether Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., or another third-party candidate wins at least 10% support in national polls; social unrest linked to widespread anti-Israel protests on college campuses, and success or failure for Biden’s foreign policy endeavors amid the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. POLLING GURU FLOATS THE IDEA OF BIDEN DROPPING OUT: AT SOME POINT ‘CONTINUING TO RUN IS A BIGGER RISK’ Several Democratic strategists and a number of pundits are losing confidence in Biden’s campaign as polls show Trump ahead in several key swing states. Election data guru and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver suggested Monday that the president’s “all-time low” in approval ratings might be enough justification for him to drop out or for the party to nominate someone else at the Democratic convention in August. Lichtman warns that replacing Biden would be a massive unforced error for Democrats. “With Biden running, he wins my incumbency key: sitting president. He wins the party contest: uncontested. Essentially, that means he wins two keys off the top,” Lichtman explained. Without Biden on the ticket, the Democrats would automatically lose two more keys, meaning just four more would have to fall to predict their defeat. JAMES CARVILLE REGRETS THAT BIDEN IS RUNNING, WORRIES YOUNGER GENERATION UNINTERESTED IN POLITICS “This nonsense about Biden stepping down points to the dangers of off-the-top-of-the-head punditry and commentary that is not based on any scientific understanding of how elections work,” Lichtman said. Doom and gloom punditry is part of what Lichtman calls the “political industrial complex” – an iron triangle of pollsters and political consultants who profit from campaigns, news reporters eager to cover negative soundbites and politicians who are afraid to challenge the other two points of the triangle. The horse race theory of elections creates drama and makes money for those involved, Lichtman claims, but it’s not very helpful to inform Americans about the direction of the country. “The keys provide a way of breaking the iron triangle,” said Lichtman. “The candidates themselves have to run different kinds of campaigns,” he added. “Campaign by the keys, which is, you campaign on your vision. If you’re an incumbent, what it is you have done and what you expect to do. If you’re a challenger, what’s your clear vision for America?” Nobody remembers conventional campaigns. The ones that make history, Lichtman argues, are the substantive campaigns that articulated a vision for the country – think Barry Goldwater in 1964, who lost in a landslide but defined conservative principles for generations to
World Bank: India to maintain fastest-growing economy status, expected to achieve 6.7% GDP growth in..
The World Bank has upwardly revised India’s GDP growth forecast for the current financial year 2024-25 by 20 basis points to 6.6 per cent from its earlier projection of 6.4 per cent made in January.