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If you were president of the United States, would you hire an alleged former spy for Fidel Castro to be ambassador to El Salvador, a country teetering on the brink of hard-core socialism? President Obama just did. On Dec. 9, Obama nominated Mari Del Carmen Aponte to be ambassador to El Salvador, despite the fact that in the late 1990s, the FBI discovered that she was working with Cuban intelligence officers. According to Insight Magazine, "When the FBI eventually questioned her about her involvement with Cuban intelligence, she reportedly refused to cooperate." Why would Aponte escape the Obama administration's scrutiny?...

Joe Biden on Wednesday excoriated President Trump for promoting on Twitter the dubious claims of Dr. Stella Immanuel, the Houston doctor who’s claimed to have effectively treated hundreds of COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine, who the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee called a “crazy woman.” In a virtual event with the UnidosUS Action Fund, a nonprofit advocating for Latino political power, Biden was asked to respond to Trump having repeatedly pushed for public schools to reopen this fall without putting into place effective measures to keep teachers and students safe. Biden replied that Trump should “stop tweeting and start doing something about...

Standing five feet and five inches tall with her signature ruby red lips, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, now the youngest woman in Congress and leader of The Squad, was once known as Sandy, the dorky kid with big front teeth living in the working class Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx. 'I was born in a place where my zip code determined my destiny,' she says in biography AOC: The Fearless Rise and Powerful Resonance of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by Lynda Lopez, out June 2. 'My parents did everything in their power to move me out of that zip code'. From scrubbing toilets...

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor will recuse herself from a case regarding the electoral college according to a new report from Wapo. A letter explains her rationale as she is friends with one of the parties. Last month, reacting to a Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s claim that the GOP appointed Justices are being biased in his favor, President Trump called for both Sotomayor and Ginsburg to have to recuse themselves from “Trump related” matters. “Sotomayor accuses GOP appointed Justices of being biased in favor of Trump.” @IngrahamAngle @FoxNews This is a terrible thing to say. Trying to “shame” some into...

The Trump administration told the Supreme Court that a foreigner who entered the country unlawfully and was thrice denied asylum during administrative proceedings doesn’t have the legal right to challenge an expedited removal order in the courts. If the government loses the appeal in the case, known as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) v. Thuraissigiam, the flow of illegal aliens and would-be asylees to the United States could accelerate at a time when the Trump administration has been trying to curb the flow of such people into the country. In ruling on the case, the Supreme Court could clarify what,...

Before Sonia Sotomayor, the “wise Latina” as she once referred to herself, was nominated by President Barack Hussein Obama in May 2009 and confirmed as Supreme Court justice that August, her legal expertise and judgment were being questioned by those noting her high reversal rate by the court she was being elevated to: Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed, providing a potent line of attack raised by opponents Tuesday after President Obama announced he will nominate the 54-year-old Hispanic woman to...

Bernie Sanders reveals his new government programs to be funded by new taxes, massive lawsuits, military cuts Bernie Sanders unexpectedly released a fact-sheet Monday night explaining that he'd pay for his sweeping new government programs through new taxes and massive lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, as well as by slashing spending on the military, among other methods. The move sought to head off complaints from Republicans and some rival Democrats that his plans were economically unrealistic, especially after a head-turning CBS News interview in which the frustrated Vermont senator said he couldn't "rattle off to you every nickel and...

In a remarkable public rebuke, President Trump late Monday called on Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse themselves from any cases involving his administration over their past comments. Trump has proven in the past that he is not bashful about criticizing justices, but he seemed to be particularly bothered by a recent dissent by Sotomayor hinting that conservative-leaning justices have a bias towards Trump. The president's tweet cited Laura Ingraham's Fox News show, "The Ingraham Angle," and he accused Sotomayor of attempting to shame other justices to vote with her.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Friday night in a case that contested the president’s “public charge” rule, which critics have called a “wealth test” for legal immigrants. The policy in question, the Immigration and Nationality Act, would make it harder for immigrants who are “likely at any time to become a public charge” to obtain green cards. The policy discourages legal immigrants in the process of obtaining permanent legal status or citizenship from using public assistance, including Medicaid, housing vouchers and food stamps. The case heard by the court, Wolf v. Cook County, sought...

Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing rebuke of the court's decision to allow the Trump administration to enforce its "public charge" rule in the state of Illinois, limiting which non-citizens can obtain visas to enter the U.S. Sotomayor's problems with the conservative majority's ruling went far beyond this case, claiming that it was symptomatic of the court's habit of siding with the government when they seek emergency stays of rulings against them. "It is hard to say what is more troubling: that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that...

The Supreme Court on Friday issued a 5-4 ruling upholding the Trump administration's public charge rule, which withholds green cards from immigrants that are dependant on government welfare programs. Typically, the government looks at cash assistance programs but the Trump administration recently expanded that rule to include non-cash assistance programs, like food stamps, the Washington Free Beacon reported.  The policy follows under the Immigration and Nationality Act and makes a legal immigrant ineligible for a green card if they are deemed “likely at any time to become a public charge."Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, at which point she...

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a blustering dissent in an ideologically split 5-4 Supreme Court ruling released Friday night in which she accused the five conservative justices who voted in the majority of repeatedly favoring the Trump administration. The case involved an appeal by the Department of Homeland Security for an injunction in a ruling against the imposition by the administration of a “public charge rule” regarding immigrants in an Illinois case that the Court has already allowed for the other 49 states. (DHS fact sheet on public charge rule.) Sotomayor’s dissent is in the context of the growing pushback...

I’ll leave it to others to debate the merits of San Francisco’s new district attorney Chesa Boudin, who (according to this San Franciso Examiner article) won election in the face of “intense opposition” from the city’s police union and political establishment and who has plans “to immediately begin reforming the criminal justice system.” I am very surprised, though, to learn that Justice Sotomayor somehow saw fit to send Boudin a video of ardent congratulations at his swearing-in yesterday. In her video, Sotomayor tells Boudin that she is sending “this message to tell you how much I admire you” and that...

John Sexton wrote last night about yesterday’s Supreme Court decision on the White House’s new asylum rules. By a seven to two margin, the justices agreed that the rule, which essentially acts as a safe third country agreement (without Mexico’s participation) could remain in effect while the case continued through the appeals process.The two dissenting justices were Sotomayor and Ginsburg, with the former writing the dissent. As Newsweek points out, Sotomayor was rather blunt in her objections, but I can’t help wondering precisely what it was she was objecting to. “Once again the Executive Branch has issued a rule...

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Tuesday that Hispanics may have a “rational fear” of their answers to the census being misused by the Trump administration, as she argued against including a question about citizenship in the 2020 count. The Supreme Court heard oral argument on the thorny question, with the liberal justices saying they feared millions of people — Hispanics in particular — will toss the forms into the trash rather than fill them out, distorting the entire 2020 count. “Are you sure they don’t have a rational fear?” Justice Sotomayor challenged the government’s lawyer. The government said the question has...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says that newly appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh is already like “family.” Sotomayor recently sat down with David Axelrod, for an episode of CNN’s “Axe Files” that will air Saturday, and spoke about welcoming in the new justice. Kavanaugh was confirmed after a highly publicized Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September. He was accused by Professor Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault in the 1980s when they were both teenagers. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusation and was eventually confirmed with a 50-48 vote in the Senate. Sotomayor said among Supreme Court justices, typically a lifetime appointment,...

Despite acknowledging that she should not do so, on her current book tour United States Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor nevertheless waded into politicking, bashing both the Federal Government’s response to Hurricane María in Puerto Rico and exhorting Latino voters to go to the polls “to change this life for us Latinos.” In separate interviews with Telemundo and Univision, Sotomayor’s partisan edge was evident. On its October 16 national evening newscast, Telemundo featured Sotomayor’s message as part of that network’s Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) campaign, currently being deployed in partnership with an array of politically liberal-aligned voter mobilization organizations (including Voto Latino,...

SONIA SOTOMAYOR, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE, UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT: Ah, a very complicated question. After becoming a lawyer and judge of two courts, before going to the Supreme Court, the greatest difficulty is the expectation of others that, because I was Latina, I didn’t have the intelligence to be able to do this job. I don't know if you know that during this process of confirmation to the Supreme Court there were many who said, ´she does not have the intelligence to do this job well.’ There are many who have changed their minds about that, with the passage of time.

Brett Kavanaugh took his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court for the first time Tuesday and asked a handful of questions about two cases involving a law that requires enhanced sentences for repeat offenders, creating the appearance of a routine day at the court even as protesters massed outside to complain about his appointment. Protesters gathered outside Tuesday morning, including many women dressed in red robes, a nod to the show “The Handmaid’s Tale,” to oppose Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault by three women during his confirmation. “This isn’t over, we’re still here,” they chanted. . . ....

It is very simple. If anyone fears ANY Supreme Court Justice, he or she should embrace the Liberty Amendments: ~~~ First off, supreme Court justices are term limited. -- secondly -- Chapter Four "empowers congress, upon three-fifths vote in the House and Senate, to override a majority opinion of the scotus. Likewise, so may the states, by three-fifths vote, override a majority opinion of the scotus. This power is ... limited to twenty-four months after the date of the opinion. Knowing that the states and a newly federalized congress stand ready to look over their shoulders, the wild social justice...