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    Facebook Admits ‘Mistake’ In Censoring Iconic Trump Assassination Attempt Photo

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    Photo via Pixabay images

    On Monday, a Facebook spokesperson admitted the platform wrongly called the popular image of Donald Trump pumping his fist in the air after an assassination attempt against him an “altered photo.”

    Meta Public Affairs Director Dani Lever later explained on X it was done in error as the systems were meant to detect a separate version of the image.

    “This was an error. This fact check was initially applied to a doctored photo showing the secret service agents smiling, and in some cases our systems incorrectly applied that fact check to the real photo. This has been fixed, and we apologize for the mistake,” Lever wrote.

    Lever confirmed the mistake when Fox News Digital reached out for a comment.

    The altered image Lever referenced featured the Secret Service members surrounding Trump smiling. USA Today and AFP United States previously fact-checked the images as “altered,” though it confirmed the accuracy of the original image.

    “None of the agents in the original image are smiling as they surround Trump, who has blood on his face and his right arm in the air. The image – which was captured by Associated Press photographer Evan Vucci and distributed by the AP – appeared with coverage of the shooting by CNN, The Atlantic, Business Insider and many other legitimate news outlets,” USA Today explained.

    USA Today’s fact-check on the altered photo was used as a “third-party fact-checker” when Facebook corrected the photo.

    Google has recently come under criticism for omitting search results for Trump’s recent assassination attempt.

    SCOTUS Rejects Bid To Stop Trump’s Criminal Sentencing

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    3
    Duncan Lock, Dflock, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

    On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected Missouri’s bid to block former President Trump’s criminal sentencing and gag order in his hush-money case.

    In a brief order, the justices turned away Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s (R) attempt to go straight to the Supreme Court by invoking its exclusive, original jurisdiction over disputes between two states.

    Bailey’s state of Missouri directly sued New York, accusing the Empire State of violating Missourians’ First Amendment rights and interfering with the presidential election in the state. 

    Read:

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    Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two of the court’s leading conservatives, said they would’ve allowed Missouri to file the suit but “would not grant other relief.” No other justice publicly dissented. 

    Missouri’s lawsuit sought to block Trump’s Sept. 18 sentencing and gag order in his hush-money case until after the presidential election. 

    Trump was convicted in May on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in connection with a hush money deal during his 2016 campaign, marking the first-ever criminal conviction of a former U.S. president.  

    AG Bailey has vowed to appeal, but Trump is scheduled to be sentenced weeks before the election.

    The Hill noted, that by suing the state directly, Bailey forced New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) to defend Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s (D) prosecution of the former president. 

    James’s office called on the justices to turn away the suit, criticizing it for containing “bare assertions of bad faith” and arguing it wasn’t an actual controversy between two states. 

    “It’s disappointing that the Supreme Court refused to exercise its constitutional responsibility to resolve state v. state disputes,” Bailey wrote on the social platform X, vowing to continue to “prosecute our lawsuit.”

    Report: Mar-A-Lago Staff, Members Subpoenaed In Classified Docs Probe

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    Marine One lifts-off after returning President Donald J. Trump to Mar-a-Lago Friday, March 29, 2019, following his visit to the 143-mile Herbert Hoover Dike near Canal Point, Fla., that surrounds Lake Okeechobee. The visit was part of an infrastructure inspection of the dike, which is part of the Kissimmee-Okeechobee Everglades system, and reduces impacts of flooding for areas of south Florida. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian) [Photo Credit: The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

    At least a dozen people ranging from members to employees of Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate have been subpoenaed as part of the Justice Department’s ongoing probe into the former president’s handling of classified materials.

    According to an exclusive report from CNN, multiple sources close to Trump’s inner circle confirmed that multiple individuals have been subpoenaed to testify to a federal grand jury, intentionally casting a “wide net.”

    The report noted that Trump’s communications aide Margo Martin, who worked in the White House and then moved with Trump to Florida, appeared before the grand jury in Washington, DC earlier this week.

    Special counsel Jack Smith has sought testimony from a range of people close to Trump. He’s targeted Trump’s own attorneys who represent him in the matter as well as staffers who work on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago, including a housekeeper and restaurant servers.

    The staffers are of interest to investigators because of what they may have seen or heard while on their daily duties around the estate, including whether they saw boxes or documents in Trump’s office suite or elsewhere.

    “They’re casting an extremely wide net – anyone and everyone who might have seen something,” said one source familiar with the Justice Department’s efforts.

    For instance, federal investigators have talked to a Mar-a-Lago staff member seen on security camera footage moving boxes from a storage room with Trump aide Walt Nauta, who has already spoken with investigators.

    The report noted that many of the Mar-a-Lago staffers are being represented by counsel paid for by Trump entities.

    The Justice Department has been investigating potential mishandling of national security records and possible obstruction. Last August, FBI agents conducted a raid on Mar-A-Lago and recovered more than 100 classified documents during a search.

    Earlier this year, documents marked classified were found in the Penn Biden Center thinktank in Washington, D.C. Shortly after a subsequent search found classified documents in President Biden’s Delaware homes.

    Massachusetts Judge Dismisses Trump Ballot Challenge

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    0
    Gavel via Wikimedia Commons Image

    Former President Trump will be allowed on Massachusetts’s presidential primary ballot.

    On Monday, the Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission rejected two attempts to keep Trump off the ballot, stating it “does not have jurisdiction over the matters presented.”

    The two ballot eligibility challenges followed the same line of argument as a series of others across the nation that invoke the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause, according to The Hill. The challenges argued Trump cannot appear on the primary or general ballots because he “engaged in a rebellion against the Constitution.”

    On Tuesday, Trump celebrated the victories.

    “Yesterday, the Massachusetts State Ballot Law Commission dealt another blow to Biden Democrats and their Election Interference attempt to disenfranchise millions of American voters by trying to remove President Trump from the ballot,” the campaign wrote in a statement.

    “In discarding this latest hoax, the commission sided with the Constitution, ensuring that the people of Massachusetts will have the right to vote for the candidate of their choice in 2024.”

    Massachusetts will hold its primary on March 5, or Super Tuesday, along with 15 other states.

    The state’s Ballot Law Commission met last week for a pre-hearing conference where they heard arguments on procedural matters.

    “There is nothing in the case law or the statutes that the commission is required to follow that says qualification to be on a ballot is a precondition to appear on the ballot,” Trump lawyer Marc Salinas said, per CNN.

    This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates.

    Officers Apprehend Escaped Criminal Threatening Trump

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    1
    Police image via Pixabay free images

    It’s over…

    Arizona law enforcement agents have detained the man accused of threatening to assassinate Donald Trump.

    Ronald Lee Syrvud, 66, was arrested by Cochise County authorities while Trump was visiting Arizona to address the southern border crisis.

    Syrvud, who had an outstanding warrant for felony failure to register as a sex offender, was charged with a sex offender violation upon his arrest. The 66-year-old man could also be charged for the alleged threats he made toward Trump, pending an investigation.

    The Republican nominee said he was grateful for the Secret Service agents protecting him, adding that he wasn’t surprised that someone had allegedly threatened to kill him, the Daily Mail reported.

    According to the Mail, Syrvud was a registered Democrat in the past and had an extensive rap sheet, including pleading no contest to second-degree sexual assault of a child in 2000.

    The alleged assassination threats come just six weeks after Trump was shot by a would-be assassin while speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania.

    Trump was visiting the U.S. southern border on Thursday before heading to Glendale on Friday for a rally. Trump held his first outdoor rally since the assassination attempt on Wednesday in North Carolina where he stood behind bulletproof glass that was installed at the behest of the Secret Service.

    On Thursday, Trump admitted that he had not been told about the potential threat posed by a suspect who threatened his life in Arizona — or the manhunt that was underway at the time to find him.

    Watch:

    One reporter asked Trump directly whether he’d been informed that someone had threatened his life — and that there was a manhunt still underway to track down the suspect — and Trump simply replied: “No.”

    “For the Daily Mail, today there was a manhunt going on in this county, somebody made death threats to you,” he said. “Did you hear about that before coming?”

    “No,” Trump said.

    “What are your thoughts coming down here? Some people told me it’s dangerous for you to be here,” the reporter followed up.

    “I’ve heard it’s dangerous, but I also have a job to do,” Trump said. “I heard it’s very dangerous, I hadn’t heard about that. They probably want to keep it from me.”

    “Thank you for telling me,” he added with a laugh, looking over his shoulder and joking to his Secret Service detail, “Let’s get outta here, right now. No, thank you very much for saying, but no, and I have great respect for Secret Service, the job they do — including a month and a half ago when they were jumping on top of me with bullets flying right at them, so … no, I haven’t heard that, but I’m not that surprised. The reason is because I want to do things that are very bad for the bad guys.”

    Kamala Harris Unveils Baffling Plans In Oprah Town Hall – Word Salad On Steroids

    By
    Patrick Houck
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    0

    Vice President Kamala Harris discussed her plan to reduce the cost of living in a town hall hosted by Oprah Winfrey on Thursday. The recently-anointed Democratic nominee stated that she would achieve this by lowering the prices of essential items.

    The question posed to Harris was straightforward enough and, quite frankly, on the minds of most persuadable voters: “What will you do to lower costs?”

    Here’s exactly what she said:

    “Yeah. I first of all, thank you both for being here and yours is a, a story I hear around the country as I travel, and in terms of both rightly, having the right to have aspirations and dreams and ambitions for your family and working hard and finding that the American dream is for this generation and so many recently far more elusive than it’s been, and we need to deal with that. And there are a number of ways. One is bringing down the cost of everyday necessities, including groceries.”

    Yesterday’s Michigan town hall has since been ridiculed by numerous MAGA celebrities.

    As Newsweeek reports:

    During the 90-minute livestreamed interview, where Harris also took questions from the audience, the vice president discussed a number of key 2024 topics, such as abortion rights, immigration and gun violence.

    A number of Donald Trump‘s supporters have mocked Harris for her at times lengthy responses during the event in the key swing state, with some suggesting that the vice president’s answers were a “word salad.”

    During the interview, Harris told Winfrey that Americans are an “optimistic people,” adding: “Americans, by character, are people who have dreams and ambitions and aspirations. We believe in what is possible. We believe in what can be, and we believe in fighting for that.

    “That’s how we came into being because the people before us understood that one of the greatest expressions for the love of our country—one of the greatest expressions of patriotism—is to fight for the ideals of who we are, which includes freedom to make decisions about your own body; freedom to be safe from gun violence; freedom to have access to the ballot box; freedom to be who you are and just be, to love who you love openly and with pride; freedom to just be.”

    Reflecting on the perceived train wreck, politico and MAGA influencer Collin Rugg concluded, “After watching this and then watching the debate, I realize how much practice she had for that debate.”

    “This interview is what Harris sounds like on a normal day.”

    And television appearances as a presidential candidate don’t get friendlier than this…

    READ NEXT: Republicans Suddenly Turn On Their Own Party, Stab Their Top Leader In The Back In Stunning Vote

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    Trump Asks Supreme Court to Intervene in Tax Docs Battle

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    5
    Duncan Lock, Dflock, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

    UPDATE: Chief Justice John Roberts put a temporary hold on the handover of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to a congressional committee. Roberts’ order gives the Supreme Court time to weigh the legal issues in Trump’s emergency appeal.

    On Monday, former President Trump filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court after a lower court declined to reverse its ruling mandating that he turn over his tax records to the House Ways and Means Committee. 

    “No Congress has ever wielded its legislative powers to demand a President’s tax returns,” Trump argued to the high court, expressing outrage about the “far-reaching implications” of the D.C. Circuit’s ruling.

    “The Committee’s purpose in requesting President Trump’s tax returns has nothing to do with funding or staffing issues at the IRS and everything to do with releasing the President’s tax information to the public,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in the filing according to The Washington Examiner. 

    The request was made to Chief Justice John Roberts, who has authority over such appeals stemming from the District of Columbia.

    Last week, Trump lost his latest bid to block the House Committee from accessing his records after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reconsider a unanimous August ruling from one of the court’s panels ordering their release.

    Committee chairman Richard Neal(D-MA) celebrated the lower court’s ruling last week.

    “The law has always been on our side,” Rep. Neal said in a statement. “Former President Trump has tried to delay the inevitable, but once again, the Court has affirmed the strength of our position. We’ve waited long enough—we must begin our oversight of the IRS’s mandatory presidential audit program as soon as possible.”

    In December, federal court Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, ruled that the Treasury Department must turn over the tax returns, holding that despite Trump’s claims that the pursuit of records by the House committee was politically motivated, the committee’s chairman, Democrat Richard Neal, held a “valid legislative purpose” with his request, according to The Hill.

    “The Chairman has identified a legitimate legislative purpose that it requires information to accomplish,” Judge David Sentelle, wrote in the panel’s opinion. “At this stage, it is not our place to delve deeper than this.”

    Democrats have engaged in a yearslong battle for Trump’s tax records, claiming they need to probe how the Internal Revenue Service conducts its routine presidential audits, however, Trump and his legal team have argued the matter is purely political. 

    Former Trump Official Dies After Carjacking

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    0
    Police image via Pixabay free images

    A former Trump administration has passed away after being shot during a carjacking last week in Washington, D.C.

    “It is with profound sadness that I wish to inform the community of the passing of my husband, Mike Gill,” Gill’s wife, Kristina Gill, wrote in a statement. “His sudden departure has left a void in our lives that can never be filled.”

    Gill, a married father of three who worked at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission during former President Trump’s White House tenure, was shot last Monday while inside of a car at the 900 block of K Street NW (RELATED: Trump Admin. Member Shot During DC Carjacking)

    Kristina remembered her husband as “a devoted husband and father” and a cherished son, brother and friend in a state to The Hill.

    “Over the course of his remarkable life, Mike brought people together and made them feel included, supported, and loved,” she wrote. “His heart was evident in everything he did, as demonstrated by his mentorship and deep friendships with those who worked with him professionally. Above all, Mike spoke with pride and love about his family, especially our children, Sean, Brian, and Annika. “

    Ed DeMarco, president of the Housing Policy Council, remembered Gill as “outstanding lawyer, public servant, colleague, and community member” who gave “his time and talent in service to his country, his city, his church, and his community. “

    “Mike’s death is also a huge loss for the Housing Policy Council and for the Washington, DC community, which has lost an outstanding citizen, neighbor, co-worker, and friend,” he wrote in a statement to The Hill.  

    Report: Republican Governor Expected To Launch Presidential Campaign In June

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    1
    North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, greets U.S. President Donald J. Trump arrives at the North Dakota Air National Guard Base, Fargo, N.D., Sept. 7, 2018. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Senior Master Sgt. David H Lipp)

    The Republican presidential primary field is still growing.

    Fresh reports indicate another Republican governor is planning to launch his presidential campaign in the coming weeks.

    Sources close to two-term North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum told Fox News that the former software company CEO is planning to officially launch his campaign during an event in Fargo on June 7.

    Fox News has more:

    Sources close to Burgum say the governor would likely focus a presidential campaign on two issues — the economy and energy. However, Burgum, who served as chair of the Western Governors Association, could also point to his recent moves as governor to sign into law a strict measure that bans abortions six weeks after gestation with limited exceptions, as well as legislation to restrict transgender rights and a bill making gender-affirming care for minors in the state a criminal offense.

    Fargo, where Burgum is expected to make his announcement, is close to his tiny hometown of Arthur and sources with knowledge of the governor’s thinking say “it underscores that a theme of the campaign is that he’s the only candidate from a small town in the heartland and Americans want more small town values. One of his greatest perceived weaknesses is actually his best virtue.”

    Despite the North Dakota Gov. being a relatively unknown name compared to others in the race, Burgum would enter the 2024 presidential race as one of the wealthiest members of the Republican field.

    Before entering politics, Burgum steered his one-time small business, Great Plains Software, into a $1 billion software company. His business was eventually acquired by Microsoft while Burgum stayed on board as a senior vice president.

    Gov. Burgum, who would widely be considered a dark horse candidate, would enter a competitive primary field. Earlier this week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his highly anticipated campaign. Former ambassador and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, tech mogul Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson have also launched campaigns against frontrunner Donald Trump.

    Maine Sec. Of State Withdraws Trump Ballot Ban

    By
    Madeleine Jackson
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    1
    Donald Trump via Gage Skidmore Flickr

    Hours after the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously sided with Donald Trump, Maine’s Secretary of State withdrew her determination that former President Trump should be blocked from the state’s ballot under the 14th Amendment’s insurrection clause.

    “The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that individual states lack authority to enforce Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment with respect to federal offices,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows wrote in a modified ruling, obtained by The Hill. “Consistent with my oath and obligation to follow the law and the Constitution, and pursuant to the Anderson decision, I hereby withdraw my determination that Mr. Trump’s primary petition is invalid.”

    “As a result of the modified ruling, votes cast for Mr. Trump in the March 5, 2024 Presidential Primary Election will be counted,” Bellows continued.

    In December, Maine became the second state to block Trump from its primary ballots.

    The decision made Bellows (D) the first state official to remove a presidential candidate via the 14th Amendment, as the Colorado decision was made by a court.

    “I do not reach this conclusion lightly. Democracy is sacred,” Bellows said at the time.

    “I am mindful that no Secretary of State has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment,” she wrote. “I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

    Bellows wrote in a 34-page decision at the time that Trump “was aware of the tinder laid by his multi-month effort to delegitimize a democratic election, and then chose to light a match.”

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