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Wikimedia CommonsFormer Donald Trump attorney Michael Cohen is the only witness who has the slightest chance of proving anything in New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s highly publicized hush money case. But Cohen’s recycled plea-deal testimony still won’t be enough to convict the former president. Trump was charged by Bragg with using false business records to cover up another crime. But, as I pointed out in Chronicles last month, the indictment failed to identify the underlying crime. Based on media coverage of this tawdry sham, it does not appear that the district attorney has been able to fill this gaping...

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday visited Ukraine, telling the country that soon-to-arrive U.S. military aid will make a “real difference” in its effort to fend off Russia's war. Blinken's trip comes amid a fierce new Russian offensive, according to the Associated Press. “We know this is a challenging time,” Blinken said in the Ukrainian capital on Kiev where he met with President Volodymyr Zelensky.

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) announced Monday that the Committee will hold a markup later this week to consider the a resolution recommending that Attorney General Merrick Garland be found in contempt of Congress. The announcement came after Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a report recommending that the House of Representatives cite AG Garland for Contempt of Congress for defying a lawful subpoena. “The House Committees on Oversight and Accountability and Judiciary issued subpoenas to Attorney General Garland on February 27, 2024 for records, including transcripts, notes, video, and audio files, related to...

President Biden doesn't believe his bad poll numbers, and neither do many of his closest advisers, according to people familiar with the matter. Why it matters: The dismissiveness of the poor polling is sincere, not public spin, according to Democrats who have spoken privately with the president and his team. That bedrock belief has informed Biden's largely steady-as-she-goes campaign — even as many Democrats outside the White House are agitating for the campaign to change direction, given that Biden is polling well behind where he was four years ago. The public polling simply doesn't reflect the president's support, they say....

A New York county executive plans to "deputize" legal gun owners to help law enforcement officers during emergencies, but the move is facing pushback from critics who say it will lead to acts of vigilantism. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said the deputies must be over 21 years old, be U.S. citizens and Nassau County residents, undergo a full background check, take a drug test and have a valid firearm license. They would be paid $150 a day for their service, according to the plan. "They will have to be trained on the law and use of force," Blakeman, a...

On Monday, conservative attorney, legal scholar, and commentator Jonathan Turley weighed in on the day's testimony by Michael Cohen in the ongoing New York trial of former President Donald Trump. Mr. Turley's comments about Cohen were, to say the least, sharply pointed.Michael Cohen apparently wants a reality show but, if his testimony Monday is any indication, reality is about to sink in for not just Cohen but the prosecutors and the court.In stoking interest in his own appearance, the former Trump counsel promised the public that they should be “prepared to be surprised.” Thus far, however, Cohen has offered nothing...

“I had the hormonal urges,” said Prof Camille Parmesan, a leading climate scientist based in France. “Oh my gosh, it was very strong. But it was: ‘Do I really want to bring a child into this world that we’re creating?’ Even 30 years ago, it was very clear the world was going to hell in a handbasket. I’m 62 now and I’m actually really glad I did not have children.” Parmesan is not alone. An exclusive Guardian survey has found that almost a fifth of the female climate experts who responded have chosen to have no children, or fewer children,...

When are we going to run out of energy? You don’t hear that as much as you used to, since Those Who Know Best are working to plug up all our energy sources anyway. Most energy sources put out carbon dioxide, and that’s going to make all the plants grow and devour us all, or it will heat the planet up and make Minneapolis a desert — and we’ll all fry. Or something. But we don’t hear much any more about running out of energy. What do the experts say about it? “According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA)...

MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill said Monday on “Deadline” that there were so many weird things about the supporters and rallygoers of former President Donald Trump. McCaskill said, “Yeah, and there are so many things that are weird about the people who have this undying loyalty to Donald Trump. There is two categories. There’s the category of the cowardly Republicans who are afraid not to be for Donald Trump publicly, even though behind his back, they think he’s a horrible person, a horrible leader, and a horrible, horrible president. Then there’s the bucket of people who really believe in this guy.”...

An American soldier was detained on charges of criminal misconduct in the Russian Far East city of Vladivostok last week while on leave after finishing his tour of duty in South Korea, officials said Monday. US Army spokesperson Cynthia Smith said that the soldier, whose name was withheld, was detained Thursday, and that the US Army notified his family of his detention. The soldier was on leave in Russia following the completion of his tour of service in South Korea, a US official told Yonhap News Agency. He was in the process of returning to the United States for his...

Iranian member of Parliament Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani said in an interview this weekend that he believed his country had successfully developed a nuclear weapon, contrary to international law, but would not admit to it. Ardestani claimed that Iran would still claim to be abiding by the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA), the 2015 agreement brokered by American President Barack Obama that dramatically reduced sanctions on Tehran in exchange for promises not to expand its nuclear development. Iran has consistently violated the nuclear deal for years; President Donald Trump withdrew from the deal in 2018 but the other four countries...

Voters by a wide margin seek action against National Public Radio (NPR) after a whistleblower last month came forward and accused the station of liberal-biased news coverage, a poll shows. Fully 44 percent of respondents to a DailyMail.com/TIPP survey said the broadcaster should lose its taxpayer cashflows over its political leaning. Another 26 percent of more than 1,400 US adults said it should keep its government support; and 31 percent said they were not sure.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s paralegal testified on Friday that his office deleted from their evidence three pages of phone records between convicted liar Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Keith Davidson without notifying former President Donald Trump’s legal team, according to reports. Trump attorney Emil Bove questioned paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider on Friday about three pages of 2018 phone records between Davidson and Cohen that Bragg’s office had deleted, according to CNN. Additional phone records between Daniels manager Gina Rodriguez and then-National Enquirer editor Dylan Howard regarding Daniels’ claim about her alleged affair were also deleted, according to The Epoch...

President Joe Biden’s policy of mass migration is forcing up housing inflation, so pushing up interest rates and mortgage rates, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Housing prices should have dropped amid the recent supply of new apartments and homes, but have “not behaved the way we thought it would,” said Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.. “I still think it will, but if it doesn’t, we’re going to have a hard time” bringing inflation back down to the target of 2 percent, Goolsbee told the Journal for a May 11 article.

Former President Donald Trump is leading President Biden in five critical, toss-up swing states — all of which Biden had won in 2020, a new set of polls revealed. Surveys by The New York Times, Siena College and The Philadelphia Inquirer found that Trump was more popular than Biden among voters in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania, while Biden led among voters in only one battleground state, Wisconsin. All six of the battleground states looked at in the polls were won by Biden in 2020, and victories in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2024 would be enough for Biden...

We’ve seen politicians go to jail. We’ve seen a vice president of the United States — Spiro Agnew — resign to avoid any chance of going to jail. We have seen President Richard Nixon pardoned in order to keep him out of jail. What we have never seen is a former president of the United States in jail. But now that is a real possibility, because Donald Trump can’t shut up and abide by a simple gag order. Justice Juan Merchan has repeatedly tried to enforce his gag order with fines. Trump pays the fines and keeps violating the gag...

UPDATE (4:33 p.m.): News 5 has learned more about a deadly shooting that happened at a May Day celebration in the quiet community of Stockton. About 1,000 people attended a May Day event Saturday night in an open field on Upper Bryant’s Landing Road, according to the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office. “According to witnesses, the event was peaceful until an argument took place, which led to at least one subject shooting multiple rounds into the large crowd,” a BCSO spokesperson said. Eighteen people were shot, three of whom died from their injuries, according to the BCSO. “We do believe that...

The Republican Party is enjoying an 11-point swing their way against the Democrat Party as the number of Americans expressing affiliation with their party has increased. A Gallup poll conducted between April 1 and 22 showed that the Republican Party was enjoying a net average of 11 points in voters expressing affiliation with their party over the Democrats, compared to results in 2016.

A paralegal from Manhattan Attorney General Alvin Bragg’s office testified on Friday during former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial that some phone call records between Michael Cohen and Stephanie Clifford’s (a.k.a. Stormy Daniels) lawyer were deleted, raising questions about evidentiary integrity.In a bid to challenge some of the evidence being put forward in President Trump’s business records falsification trial in Manhattan, Trump attorney Emil Bove asked paralegal Jaden Jarmel-Schneider in court on May 10 about roughly three pages worth of records that the attorney claimed Mr. Bragg’s office had deleted.Mr. Jarmel-Schneider confirmed some deletions. He acknowledged that some phone...

Professor Bill McGuire is a well-known vulcanologist and climate scientist who doesn't care much for humanity. He tweeted out a scathingly brilliant idea if you're in the mortuary business or work as a grave digger. "If I am brutally honest, the only realistic way I see emissions falling as fast as they need to, to avoid catastrophic #climate breakdown, is the culling of the human population by a pandemic with a very high fatality rate." https://t.co/hzga69EhV3— Bill McGuire (@ProfBillMcGuire) May 11, 2024Ooopsie. McGuire deleted the tweet a few hours later but had no regrets. The trouble is, we just don't...