Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
Three students of Palestinian descent shot in Vermont, suspect arrested
A suspect, identified as Jason J. Eaton, 48, was arrested on Sunday afternoon, the department later confirmed. Burlington police and the mayor's office will hold a news conference later on Monday to discuss the incident and arrest, the police said.
Two of the victims are U.S. citizens and the third is a legal U.S. resident, all 20 years old, police said. At the time of the attack, two of the men were wearing a keffiyeh, the traditional black-and-white checkered scarf worn in Middle East, police said.
The victims were reported to have been speaking Arabic when attacked, according to the Institute for Middle East Understanding, a nonprofit pro-Palestinian advocacy organization. It also said the assailant opened fire on the three men after he began to shout at and harass them. Police say he fired four shots without saying a word.
Speaker Johnson singed by a blast of conservative fury
The brewing storm, crystallized by Johnson’s comments during a Wednesday meeting with GOP senators, is threatening to end what is left of the Louisiana Republican’s honeymoon running the House. On his right flank, some members are already asking behind closed doors whether Johnson might meet the same fate as the deposed McCarthy — though other GOP lawmakers see that speculation as bluster.
The new speaker showcased his willingness to stand up to conservatives, as well as its limits, during his visit to the Senate. Inside the room, he delivered two messages: that he would call up an extension of government funding through the end of the fiscal year if lawmakers can’t reach a deal, and that he wants to see much of the House’s conservative border bill as part of any potential Senate agreement to aid Ukraine.
A growing series of alarms blaring in federal courtrooms, less than a year before 2024 presidential election
A review by CBS News of court proceedings in Jan. 6th criminal cases, including the federal prosecution of former President Donald Trump, reveals a growing series of alarms being issued about the prospects of violence, conspiracy theories and election denialism during the 2024 campaign cycle.
Some of the alarms are being sounded by judges, others by prosecutors. At the Nov. 20 sentencing of Jamie and Jennifer Buteau, it was their daughter's letter that warned of the danger of "conspiracy theory rabbit holes."
The ‘Trump Isn’t So Bad’ Mind-Set
We shouldn’t be here. We have a president who, on the whole, has had a successful first term and has capably performed the principal function for which he was elected: to return the country to normalcy and prevent more damage being done to it by his predecessor.
That president, Joe Biden, will almost certainly be running again against Donald Trump, a former president facing a mound of legal troubles born of his own deceptions and antidemocratic impulses.
So the choice next year should be clear, but the electorate keeps telling anyone listening that it’s not. The results of a New York Times/Siena College poll released this month showed Biden trailing Trump in five of six important battleground states. A recent NBC News national poll found that Trump was narrowly ahead of Biden. Pretty clearly, voters aren’t satisfied with their choices, but they’re also not rewarding Biden or punishing Trump in the ways that one might expect.
Rosalynn Carter Returns for a Final Time to the Place She Found Most Comfort
“She was happiest whenever there was a new baby,” Josh Carter, one of her grandsons, recalled on Wednesday from the pulpit of Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, the small town in Georgia farm country from which she never strayed too far even as she was drawn out into the world.
The simple red brick church, where Mrs. Carter had worshiped for decades, was filled for her funeral on Wednesday with the people who had known her as a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, aunt, neighbor and friend. Her husband, Jimmy, who is 99 and has been in hospice care since February, was also there, sitting in a wheelchair near the front of the church.
Elon Musk Visits Israel Amid Backlash Against His Endorsement of Antisemitic Post
But his visit did draw criticism from some who accused the Israeli government of giving Mr. Musk cover.
“Welcoming such a toxic mogul with open arms and taking him around sites of a massacre that has been belittled, demeaned and denied on his watch should be a stain on Netanyahu’s legacy,” wrote Ben Samuels, the U.S. correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Since Mr. Musk’s post, dozens of major brands including IBM, Apple and Disney have paused their advertising campaigns on X, and the company, which Mr. Musk purchased in October last year for $44 billion, could lose as much as $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of the year. Other major companies, including Amazon, Coca-Cola and Microsoft, have also halted or are considering pausing their ads on the social network, according to internal documents.
Lock Him Up? A New Poll Has Some Bad News for Trump
A new POLITICO Magazine/Ipsos poll provides some bad news for Trump: Even as he remains the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination, the cascading indictments are likely to take a toll on his general election prospects.
The survey results suggest Americans are taking the cases seriously — particularly the Justice Department’s 2020 election case — and that most people are skeptical of Trump’s claim to be the victim of a legally baseless witch hunt or an elaborate, multi-jurisdictional effort to “weaponize” law enforcement authorities against him.
Supreme Court seems poised to limit power of SEC
For more than two hours of arguments the justices were receptive to a key section of a lower court opinion that scaled back on the agency’s ability to enforce securities law, although they did not seem poised to address some broader aspects of the controversial ruling.
Conservative justices suggested that the agency’s decision to allow some disputes to be heard by in house administrative law judges, instead of filing suit in federal court, violates an individual’s right to trial by jury under the Seventh Amendment.
If the court holds that the SEC’s method of adjudicating certain fraud claims violates the Constitution, it could impact other agencies that use similar proceedings such as the Social Security Administration.
Influential GOP donors are betting their millions on Haley in a new push to beat Trump
Nikki Haley will be the lavishly funded vessel carrying the hopes of the influential network funded by billionaire Charles Koch and top industrial and corporate donors who think Donald Trump is a risk too far next November.
Their bet is that the former South Carolina governor can succeed where busted 2016 $100 million front-runner Jeb Bush, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, two impeachments, old school Republicans like Mitt Romney, millions splashed by the Club for Growth and the Lincoln Project and allied groups, a 2020 election defeat, a pliant House GOP majority and several special counsels failed.
Antisemites supporting Israel is weird. Jewish support of them is even weirder
Perhaps the most bizarre spectacle of the past month has been watching some of the world’s most wretched antisemites lining up to give their unalloyed support to Israel. Even more jarring has been their embrace by those who are supposed to advocate for Jewish safety.
These people include the radical US pastor John Hagee, who previously claimed that Adolf Hitler had been born from a lineage of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews” and sent by God to help the Jews reach the promised land. (He apologized in 2008 for some of his remarks.) He was invited to speak last Tuesday to an audience of thousands at the March for Israel in Washington, organised by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, to help “condemn the rising trend of antisemitic violence”.
Iowa Kingmaker Vander Plaats Thinks State Will ‘Rise Up’ Against Trump
Vander Plaats is predicting a real January shocker in Iowa, as Mediate reports:
Bob Vander Plaats, a top evangelical leader in Iowa, told the Blaze’s Steve Deace on Monday that he believes Iowa Republicans “will rise up” against former President Donald Trump when they head to the polls in January …
“The number one hurdle for Donald Trump is I’ve never met a dad or a mom or a grandpa or a grandma who have told me they want their son or daughter, grandchild to grow up to be like him. That’s a big deal” [said Vander Plaats].
Students are lawyering up in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war
Hafez is among the politically and ethnically diverse students across the country who are filing lawsuits in the wake of October 7. Some are invoking the Civil Rights Act, claiming their schools aren’t protecting them from religious discrimination. Others are suing third-party organizations. More are seeking legal advice for claims of stifled First Amendment rights.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has for decades sparked contention on college campuses. Since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel and the resulting war in Gaza, Middle Eastern politics have become even more of a hot-button issue on college campuses — and an emotionally taxing one for many students grieving the destruction and loss of life.
States Fights
Arizona gave families public money for private schools. Then private schools raised tuition
State leaders promised families roughly $7,000 a year to spend on private schools and other nonpublic education options, dangling the opportunity for parents to pull their kids out of what some conservatives called “failing government schools.”
But now, some private schools across the state are hiking their tuition by thousands of dollars. That risks pricing the students that lawmakers said they intended to serve out of private schools, in some cases limiting those options to wealthier families and those who already attended private institutions.
University of Florida turns against Joe Ladapo
Ladapo was the perfect fit as surgeon general for DeSantis. Like the governor, he had gained prominence by criticizing safety measures early in the pandemic, including questioning the effectiveness of boosters or the need for mandatory masking. Both of them also supported the Great Barrington Declaration, which called on governments to adopt the herd approach for Covid-19, which occurs after enough people in the population recover from the virus and develop antibodies to fight it off in the future.
And while the UF staff was initially enthusiastic about Ladapo, faculty staff began expressing concerns almost immediately over how quickly he was given a tenured position, his inability to bring over pledged grant funding, conflicts with colleagues and issues with how much time he spent at the university versus his job as surgeon general.
Henry Kissinger Is Dead at 100; Shaped the Nation’s Cold War History
Few diplomats have been both celebrated and reviled with such passion as Mr. Kissinger. Considered the most powerful secretary of state in the post-World War II era, he was by turns hailed as an ultrarealist who reshaped diplomacy to reflect American interests and denounced as having abandoned American values, particularly in the arena of human rights, if he thought it served the nation’s purposes.
Mass. public universities have Thursday deadline to submit abortion readiness plans to state
It also required all public colleges and universities to create an abortion readiness plan for their students.
The deadline to submit those plans is Thursday.
Through a toolkit that was created and distributed by the Department of Public Health and Reproductive Equity Now, public higher education institutions were tasked with building relationships with nearby abortion providers, developing a plan to help inform students and faculty of their rights and their options, and detailing what the school has done and will continue to do to help students receive a medical abortion, the document said.
Idaho asks Supreme Court to let abortion law that penalizes doctors to take full effect
The case comes to the high court more than a year after the justices overturned a constitutional right to abortion, altering the landscape of abortion rights nationwide and triggering more than half the states, including Idaho, to outlaw or severely restrict the procedure.
Idaho’s Defense of Life Act is a near total ban on abortion, but there is an exception to prevent the mother’s death. The law imposes penalties on doctors who perform prohibited abortions unless the “physician determined in good faith medical judgement and based on the facts known to the physician at the time, that the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman.” Physicians who violate the law could face criminal penalties and risks the suspension of their licenses.
But a district court blocked the law in hospital emergency rooms that receive Medicare funding, holding that the state law interferes with a federal Medicare statute.
Trump’s gift to Florida Democrats
Congressional Republicans failed to undo Obamacare under Trump, largely because they couldn’t agree on a replacement. Since then, Democrats have used Obamacare as an effective rallying cry to win elections by focusing on the popular parts of the law that would go away under GOP repeal, such as how it forbids insurers from turning away or out-pricing sicker customers.
Ahead of 2024, Democrats are vowing to protect and improve the law again, including former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.), who is running for the Democratic nomination to unseat Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.). In an interview, she accused Trump and Scott — who endorsed Trump — of wanting “to take away affordable health care from millions of Floridians.”