New York

Subterms

    More stories

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      E Jean Carroll says she sued for rape on advice of Trump adviser’s husband

      by

      The advice columnist E Jean Carroll sued Donald Trump for rape after she was encouraged to take legal action by George Conway, the husband of a top aide to the then president.On her third day on the witness stand, Carroll told the jury hearing her lawsuit for battery and defamation over the alleged sexual assault in a New York department store changing room in 1996 that she did not intend to sue Trump until he called her a liar when she went public with her accusations more than two decades later.Shortly afterwards she met Conway, a lawyer who was at the time married to Kellyanne Conway, one of the Trump White House’s most visible officials. George Conway was a vocal critic of the then president, to the embarrassment of his wife.Carroll said that they spoke at a party where Conway laid out the difference between criminal case and civil cases.“George said: you should seriously think about this,” she told the jury of six men and three women.Two days later, Carroll filed her first lawsuit against Trump, for defamation, after he called her a liar in denying the alleged rape at the luxury Bergdorf Goodman store.Trump’s lawyer, Joe Tacopina, sought to characterise the lawsuit as politically motivated, in part through the association with Conway who went on to recommend a lawyer to Carroll.Tacopina contrasted that move – and a second more recent civil lawsuit for rape after a change in the law allowed for it – with Carroll’s decision not to take legal action against the former head of CBS, Les Moonves, who she also accused of sexual assault in an elevator.Carroll said that Moonves had not called her a liar.“He simply denied it,” she said. “He didn’t call me names. He didn’t grind my face into the mud like Donald Trump did.”Carroll said Moonves was accused of sexual abuse by a dozen women and that his denial of her allegation was one among many.Under cross-examination, Carroll defended her decision not to call the police after the alleged rape, as the typical response of women of her generation who are “ashamed” to have been sexually assaulted.She acknowledged that she frequently advised people to go to the police in her Elle column, Ask E Jean.“I was born in 1943. I’m a member of the silent generation. Women like me were taught to keep our chins up and to not complain,” she said. “I would never call the police about something I am ashamed of.”Carroll acknowledged she did call the police on one occasion, when she saw “loutish behaviour by some kids”.Tacopina responded: “So your testimony is you’ll call the police if a mailbox is attacked but not if you are attacked?”Carroll said it was.“I will never, ever go to the police,” she said.Asked why, then, more than two decades after the alleged rape she decided to go public, Carroll said that times had changed.“I reached a point in my life at 76 where I was no longer going to stay silent,” she testified.Tacopina pressed Carroll about her continued shopping trips to Bergdorf Goodman where she spent thousands of dollars in the following years.“Bergdorf’s is not a place I’m afraid to enter,” she responded.Tacopina also highlighted Carroll’s complimentary comments about Trump’s television show The Apprentice. Carroll said she was praising the construct of the programme as “witty”.On Monday afternoon, in re-cross-examination, Tacopina asked Carroll if she was happy now and she responded that she was “with undertones of unhappiness”.Then after three days of intense testimony, Carroll’s stint on the witness stand ended.Later this week, Carroll’s legal team is expected to call her friend, Lisa Birnbach and another woman, Carol Martin, to testify that Carroll told them about the alleged assault shortly after it occurred. Both have since corroborated the account.Carroll testified that Birnbach told her the alleged attack was rape and to call the police. But Martin advised her to keep quiet because Trump was a powerful businessman who would “bury” her.Carroll kept her silence for more than two decades but changed her mind as other women came forward to recount their experiences of sexual assault and harassment as the #MeToo movement swept the US. She wrote a book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, detailing abuse of one kind or other by a number of men, including Trump. Excerpts were published in New York magazine in 2019.Trump called Carroll’s allegations “a complete con job” and said her book “should be sold in the fiction section”.“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City department store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a hoax and a lie,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.Carroll’s legal team is also expected to call two other women. Natasha Stoynoff, a writer for People magazine, is expected to testify that in 2005 Trump led her into an empty room and forcibly kissed her until he was interrupted. Jessica Leeds accuses Trump of assaulting her on a plane in 1979 by grabbing her breasts and trying to put his hand up her skirt. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ‘not planning’ to run for Senate seat in 2024

      by

      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will not run for a seat in the US Senate next year, according to her office, clearing the way for incumbent New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat, to run for re-election unopposed by the progressive congresswoman.“She is not planning to run for Senate in 2024. She is not planning to primary Gillibrand,” Lauren Hitt, Ocasio-Cortez’s spokesperson, told Politico.Gillibrand, who launched her re-election campaign in January for a third Senate term, was widely believed to be facing a number of potential challengers in the state primary, including Ocasio-Cortez.The announcement follows indications from other New York progressives, including Mondaire Jones and representatives Jamaal Bowman and Ritchie Torres, that they are not considering a challenge.New York Democrats were hit hard in the midterm elections last year and the loss of four seats to Republican candidates is widely blamed for the party losing control of Congress. Avoiding an acrimonious challenge from the progressive wing of the party, and concentrating on recovering the 2022 losses, is considered to be Democrats’ political priority.“I think it’s divisive. And unless you think you can win, it’s divisive unnecessarily,” Jay Jacobs, chair of the New York Democratic party, told Politico. “It’s using up resources we need to preserve for more coordinated work and the rest.”Camille Rivera, a New York-based progressive strategist, said that an intra-Democrat contest “could be pretty bruising and give a Republican a leg up”.Signs of a deal between Ocasio-Cortez and Gillibrand came after rumors of a Senate seat challenge began to circulate last year. Gillibrand has faced criticism for her part in forcing former senator Al Franken’s resignation, accepting donations from indicted crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried and ties to Wall Street.But Ocasio-Cortez’s staff’s choice of language – “not planning to run” is not the same as “not running”. Bronx representative Jamaal Bowman told the outlet he heard AOC’s name “weeks ago or months ago maybe” as a primary contender but hadn’t heard it since.Ocasio-Cortez’s indication comes as high-profile progressives have said they’ll support Joe Biden’s re-election bid, despite misgivings about parts of his agenda. Ocasio-Cortez has said she “unequivocally” supports the party’s nominees.Since Biden’s re-election soft launch on Tuesday, the sitting president has received endorsements from congressional progressive caucus leader Pramila Jayapal, representative Ro Khanna, and squad members Ilhan Omar, Greg Casar and Delia Ramirez.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe endorsements come despite disquiet about Biden’s recent push to the middle on crime, energy policy and immigration.“I think that people are looking at the incredible accomplishments, particularly the investments in climate change and equity, racial justice, and seeing that this is night and day from what anyone else has been able to do,” Jayapal told the Hill.Senator Elizabeth Warren has said she’s “delighted” about Biden’s decision. “I’m in all the way,” she told the outlet. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who ran for the Democrat nomination against Biden in 2020, told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday: “If you believe in democracy, you want to see more people vote, not fewer people vote, I think the choice is pretty clear, and that choice is Biden.”But Sanders leaned on Biden to be stronger on working-class issues, and urged the president and the party “to make it clear that we believe in a government that represents all, not just the few; take on the greed of the insurance companies, the drug companies, Wall Street, all the big money interests; and start delivering for working-class people.”“You do that, I think Biden is going to win in a landslide,” Sanders added. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Guiliani admits using ‘dirty trick’ to suppress Hispanic vote in mayoral race

      by

      Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani has admitted to a “dirty trick” that his campaign used to suppress the Hispanic vote during the city’s 1993 mayoral race.On Tuesday, Giuliani revealed his voter suppression tactics to the far-right Donald Trump ally Steve Bannon and Arizona’s defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake during a discussion on his America’s Mayor Live program.In the conversation, Giuliani – who was central to Trump’s efforts to subvert the result of the 2020 presidential election – lamented that he had been “cheated” during the 1989 mayoral race in which he lost before explaining his 1993 campaign strategy, saying: “I’ll tell you one little dirty trick,” to which Lake replied: “We need dirty tricks!”“A dirty trick in New York City? I’m so shocked,” Bannon sarcastically responded. Giuliani then interrupted the former Trump adviser, saying: “No, played by Republicans!”“Republicans don’t do dirty tricks,” Bannon said before Giuliani enthusiastically said: “How about this one?” Bannon replied: “Okay give it to me.”Giuliani explained that he spent $2m to set up a so-called Voter Integrity Committee which was headed by Randy Levine, current president of the New York Yankees baseball team, and John Sweeney, a former New York Republican congressman.“So they went through East Harlem, which is all Hispanic, and they gave out little cards, and the card said: ‘If you come to vote, make sure you have your green card because INS are picking up illegals.’ So they spread it all over the Hispanic …” said Giuliani, referring to the now defunct US Immigration and Naturalization Service before trailing off.“Oh my gosh,” Lake replied as she raised her eyebrows.Following its closure in 2003, the INS transferred its immigration enforcement functions to other agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Giuliani went on to reveal that following the election, which he won against then incumbent mayor David Dinkins by around 53,000 votes, then president Bill Clinton’s justice department launched an investigation into him.“[Then-attorney general] Janet Reno is coming after us, we violated civil rights,” Giuliani recalled his lawyer Dennison Young telling him. Giuliani then reassured Young, saying: “What civil rights did we violate? They don’t have civil rights! All we did was prevent people who can’t vote from voting. Maybe we tricked them, but tricking is not a crime.”“In those days, we didn’t have crazy prosecutors. Nowadays, they’ll probably prosecute you for it … and that’s the way we kept down the Hispanic vote,” Giuliani said.“Not the legal vote, the illegal vote,” Lake interjected.“Of course! The Hispanic illegal vote, which takes away the Hispanic legal vote,” Giuliani responded.The Huffington Post compiled a handful of media reports from the time which collectively point towards Giuliani’s voter suppression tactics during the election.A 1993 New York Times article published at the time of the election reported that Dinkins had called for a news conference to “accuse the Giuliani camp of waging ‘an outrageous campaign of voter intimidation and dirty tricks’”.One of the charges included English and Spanish pro-Dinkins posters that were allegedly put up at the time in Washington Heights and the Bronx, predominantly Hispanic and Black areas. “The posters suggested that illegal immigrants would be arrested at the polls and deported if they tried to vote,” the New York Times reported.An article published in the socialist journal Against the Current months after the election also mentioned the posters.“Cops put up phony Dinkins posters in mostly Dominican Washington Heights, saying the INS would be checking voters’ documents at the polls. In some cases police themselves asked Latino voters for their passports,” wrote labor and social activist Andy Pollack.Similarly, a Washington Post report published days after the election cited complaints surrounding voter suppression in the city.“Among the complaints are the placing of signs on telephone poles and walls in Latino areas warning that ‘federal authorities and immigration officials will be at all election sites … Immigration officials will be at locations to arrest and deport undocumented illegal voters,’” the Post reported.A statement issued by the then justice department on 2 November 1993 said: “The Department of Justice is aware that posters have been placed throughout New York City misinforming voters about the role of federal officials in today’s elections … Federal observers are in New York to protect the rights of minority voters. They are not there to enforce immigration laws.”Speaking to the Huffington Post, Sweeney dismissed Giuliani’s claims as “nonsense” and said that he ran a “legitimate” operation alongside Levine. Levine echoed similar sentiments to the outlet, explaining that the purpose of the operation was “getting poll watchers and attorneys when there was a dispute”.He added that he had “no knowledge” of the trick Giuliani described.Since the 1993 mayoral elections, voter suppression tactics have continued to be carried out in various ways across the city.In December 2021, the New York City council approved a bill that would have allowed for non-US citizens to vote in local elections. However, the law was struck down months later in June 2022 after state supreme court judge Ralph Porzio of Staten Island ruled the law “unconstitutional”.The same month Porzio struck down the law, the Democratic New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the John R Lewis Voting Rights Act into law, which seeks to prevent local officials from enacting rules that may suppress voting rights of individuals as a result of their race.In addition to local governments or school districts with track records of discrimination now being required to obtain state approval before passing certain voting policies, the new law expands language assistance to voters for whom English is not a first language, as well as provides legal tools to fight racist voting provisions.“We’re going to change our election laws so we no longer hurt minority communities,” Hochul said as she signed the bill into law. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Who is E Jean Carroll, the woman who alleges Trump sexually assaulted her?

      by

      E Jean Carroll is an 80 year-old former journalist who, until she accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her, was best known as an advice columnist for Elle magazine for 26 years.The column was praised for its forthright writing including Carroll’s view that women should never build their lives around men and the compassion of her replies to readers seeking advice. Elle terminated Carroll’s contract in 2019. She said the magazine fired her because of her dispute with Trump. Elle denied it.Born in Detroit and raised in Indiana, Carroll began writing for leading magazines of the era, including Rolling Stone and Playboy, after drawing attention with a “witty literary quiz” about Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald for Esquire.Carroll left her husband and moved to New York where she established herself as “feminism’s answer to Hunter S Thompson”. By the mid-1980s she was writing for Saturday Night Live. A decade later she turned the advice column into a television talk show, Ask E Jean.Carroll was well known within New York’s literary set. But she is now likely to be best remembered for her book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, and for suing Trump. The book describes the alleged assault by the now former president and attacks by other men, including the former chief executive of CBS Les Moonves, who was forced out over allegations of sexual harassment. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      AOC: ‘Better for country’ if Dominion had secured Fox News apology

      by

      Dominion Voting Systems would have better served the US public had it refused to settle its $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News until the network agreed to apologise on air for spreading Donald Trump’s lie about voter fraud in the 2020 election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said.“What would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that,” the New York congresswoman said.Dominion and Fox this week reached a $787.5m settlement, shortly before trial was scheduled to begin in a Delaware court.Legal filings laid out how in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s election win and the run-up to the January 6 attack on Congress, Fox News hosts repeated claims they knew to be untrue, as executives feared viewers would desert the network for rightwing competitors One America News and Newsmax.Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media mogul and Fox News owner, was among witnesses due to testify.Fox faces other legal challenges but its avoidance of an apology to Dominion caused widespread comment, with some late-night hosts moved to construct their own on-air mea culpas.Ocasio-Cortez, popularly known as AOC, acknowledged Dominion was not beholden to public opinion.“This was a corporation suing another corporation for material damages,” she told the former White House press secretary Jen Psaki, now an MSNBC host, on Sunday. “Their job is to go in and get the most money that they can. And I think that they did that. They are not lawyers for the American public.”The congresswoman continued: “I think what is best for the country, what would have been best for the country, would have been to demand that and to not settle until we got that. But that is not their role.“And so for us, I think this really raises much larger questions. Very often, I believe that we leave to the courts to solve issues that politics is really supposed to solve, that our legislating is supposed to solve.“We have very real issues with what is permissible on air. And we saw that with January 6. And we saw that in the lead-up to January 6, and how we navigate questions not just of freedom of speech but also accountability for incitement of violence.”Nine deaths have been linked to the January 6 Capitol attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand arrests have been made and hundreds of convictions secured. Trump was impeached a second time for inciting the attack. Acquitted by Senate Republicans, he is the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.Asked if media platforms should be held accountable for incitement, Ocasio-Cortez said: “When it comes to broadcast television, like Fox News, these are subject to federal law, federal regulation, in terms of what’s allowed on air and what isn’t.“And when you look at what [the primetime host] Tucker Carlson and some of these other folks on Fox do, it is very, very clearly incitement of violence. And that is the line that I think we have to be willing to contend with.” More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      New York trial could confer new title on Donald Trump: rapist

      by

      Donald Trump won’t be there to see it, but the former US president’s deeply tarnished reputation may be about to take another serious hit as a New York jury decides whether he is a rapist.E Jean Carroll, a former advice columnist and author, will finally get her day in court this week, nearly four decades after she alleges that Trump pinned her against the wall of a New York department store and sexually assaulted her.Carroll is suing Trump for damages under a recent New York state law opening a one-year window for adult victims of sexual assault to file civil cases after the statute of limitations has expired. Jury selection is scheduled to begin in a Manhattan court on Tuesday.The trial comes as Trump already faces criminal fraud charges over the payment of hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels, and the prospect of looming federal and state prosecutions over attempts to fix the 2020 election, the January 6 storming of the Capitol and the hoarding of classified documents.But Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, said the case stands out even amid Trump’s myriad legal problems because it revives memories some of his most egregious behavior as he once again runs for president.“One of the things that happened because of Trump’s election in 2016 was this collective outrage from women across the country for a whole host of reasons, but in many ways encapsulated by that video of him talking about grabbing women by their genitalia. There was this moment for many women who thought it would not be possible for someone caught saying that to ever become president of the United States. And then he was,” she said.“This case brings all that up and in some ways adds to that outrage that women feel about him. He has been accused of this kind of behaviour so many times and he’s never been held accountable. This time it seems like he may in fact be held accountable.”Carroll accuses Trump of raping her in a dressing room of the New York department store, Bergdorf Goodman, some time in late 1995 or early the following year. She claims that the New York businessman recognised her as she shopped and asked for help in choosing a present for a woman who is not named in the litigation.Carroll told National Public Radio she thought it was “just charming” that Trump wanted advice on buying a present. But then he led the way to the lingerie department.“He had grabbed up from the counter a little see-through bodysuit and told me to go try it on,” said Carroll. “And that’s where I got into trouble, because we went into the dressing room and he closed the door and that was it.”Carroll alleges that Trump pushed her against a wall and forcibly kissed her until she pushed him away.“Then he pressed her against the wall once more, pulled down her tights, and forcibly raped her for several minutes until she managed to push him off and fled the store,” according to the lawsuit.Carroll said that she immediately told one friend about the assault and a second in the following days. Lisa Birnbach and Carol Martin have since corroborated the account.But Carroll did not file a complaint with the police because she “was in shock and did not wish to think of herself as a rape victim”.“The two friends in whom she confided gave her conflicting advice about reporting the event. Ultimately, she was persuaded by the advice of the friend who advised her to keep quiet. That friend stressed that Mr Trump was powerful and would ‘bury’ Ms Carroll if she came forward,” the complaint alleges.Carroll changed her mind when Trump was elected president and following the accusations against the film producer Harvey Weinstein that led to the #MeToo movement. She wrote a book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, detailing abuse of one kind or other by a number of men, including Trump. Excerpts were published in New York magazine.Trump responded with his usual vigor, claiming never to have met Carroll even though there is a photograph of the pair with their respective spouses a few years before the alleged assault. He called her allegations “a complete con job” and said Carroll’s book “should be sold in the fiction section”.“She completely made up a story that I met her at the doors of this crowded New York City Department Store and, within minutes, ‘swooned’ her. It is a Hoax and a lie,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social.“And, while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!”Trump said that Carroll’s inability to pin down an exact date for the assault was evidence that it never happened.“Now all I have to do is go through years more of legal nonsense in order to clear my name of her and her lawyer’s phoney attacks on me. This can only happen to ‘Trump’!”Trump’s defence team appears likely to accuse Carroll of a politically motivated attack on the former president. The judge is permitting the defence to submit evidence that her lawsuit is funded in part by the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, who is a harsh critic of Trump.The former president told the trial judge, Lewis Kaplan, that he would not be attending the hearing as he did not want to disrupt New York’s traffic with his motorcade. Kaplan scoffed at that explanation.But Carroll will give testimony along with the two friends who corroborate her account that she sought their advice immediately after the alleged assault.Walsh said this could be a dangerous moment for Trump because Carroll is likely to make a highly credible witness.“It’s not that you hear this story from her, and you go, ‘Oh, that couldn’t be. That’s not him.’ It fits a pattern with him,” she said.Nonetheless, Walsh is not sure if the Carroll trial will prove the moment of reckoning she says Trump deserves to face.“It’s sometimes quite astonishing to watch how much he can get away with. Is this all a moment of reckoning? With these other cases that are pending, could this be the moment where he finally can’t talk himself out of this stuff? I don’t know,” she said.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said that if the jury finds that Trump did rape Carroll, there will be a political consequence but it will not be immediate.“It will not affect his base that is powering him potentially to another nomination. They don’t care. Not only will this not hurt him, it’s going to reinforce the image that his core supporters have that he is being persecuted. So, for the nomination, it could even be a plus, I’m sorry to say,” he said.“But it’ll hurt him in a general election. Carroll is very believable and it should have some effect on Americans who are not in the Maga base.”Walsh agrees, saying that, combined with Trump’s other legal problems, it will remind white female Republican voters, who supported him in 2016 despite the comments about grabbing genitalia, why they then turned away from him four years later and played an important part in his defeat.“It’s one thing when you are boasting to your buddy and showing off. It’s another thing when you have a woman stepping forward saying ‘you raped me’,” she said.“College-educated white women who are Republicans have pulled away from the party. In the past, the party sort of trumped everything. In a way, that’s what happened in 2016. But after watching Trump be the president, it became harder and harder for those women to continue to pull the lever for Donald Trump. These women who used to be pretty solid Republican women voters couldn’t go there. I think these women would have a very hard time if he is the nominee again.”Carroll has two separate cases against Trump. The first accuses him of defaming her in 2019 when he denied her accusations.But that case is on hold pending the second lawsuit made possible after New York passed the adult survivors act last year opening the window for people who were sexually assaulted as adults to bring legal actions against their attackers in the wake of the #MeToo movement. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Democratic states stockpile abortion pills as legal fight for access looms

      by

      Despite a reprieve by the US supreme court, a growing number of Democratic states are stockpiling abortion pills as the legal fight for access to the abortion drug mifepristone is set to continue.On Friday, the supreme court decided to temporarily block a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the availability of mifepristone, an FDA-approved abortion medication.Nevertheless, as the case continues to wind through America’s court system and remains challenged by anti-abortion groups, more Democratic states are now stockpiling abortion pills amid an unpredictable legal battle.Earlier this month, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction that suspended the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, calling it a drug that is used to “kill the unborn human”.Swiftly after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Democratic states have been stockpiling abortion pills including mifepristone as well as misoprostol, the second drug in the abortion regimen which can also be used on its own, although less effectively.At the Massachusetts governor Maura Healey’s request, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has purchased approximately 15,000 doses of mifepristone. The stockpile is expected to offer “sufficient coverage” in the state for over a year.“Mifepristone has been used safely for more than 20 years and is the gold standard. Here in Massachusetts, we are not going to let one extremist judge in Texas turn back the clock on this proven medication and restrict access to care in our state,” Healey said last week.Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of New York and California both announced plans to stockpile misoprostol in attempts to safeguard their states’ abortion access.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that New York will be purchasing misoprostol in order to stockpile 150,000 doses, a five-year supply.Hochul also pledged that if mifepristone is removed from the market, New York will commit up to an additional $20m to providers to support other abortion methods.In a similar move, governor Gavin Newsom of California announced last week that the state has secured an emergency stockpile of up to 2m misoprostol pills“We will not cave to extremists who are trying to outlaw these critical abortion services. Medication abortion remains legal in California,” Newsom said, adding that California has shared the negotiated terms of its misoprostol purchase agreement to assist other states in securing the pill at low cost.Since then, additional Democratic states have followed suit.The governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, recently announced a partnership with the University of Maryland’s medical system to purchase a “substantial amount of mifepristone”.“This purchase is another example of our administration’s commitment to ensure Maryland remains a safe haven for abortion access and quality reproductive health care,” said Moore, who also released $3.5m in previously withheld funding for the state’s abortion care clinical training program.On Thursday, Oregon made a similar announcement, with its governor Tina Kotek revealing the state has secured a three-year supply of mifepristone, regardless of the supreme court’s ruling on the pill.“Here in Oregon, I will make sure that patients are able to access the medication they need and providers are able to provide that medication without unnecessary, politically motivated interference and intimidation,” Kotek said.With Democratic states rushing to stock up on abortion pills, the tumultuous legal fight for abortion access is far from over. In the last nine months, 13 states have banned abortion. With anti-abortion groups fighting for increased pill restrictions nationwide, even states that have legalized the procedure may become affected.Following the supreme court’s decision to temporarily block mifepristone restrictions, the next stage of the litigious battle over the drug will take place in the fifth circuit, with oral arguments scheduled for 17 May. The case will then likely return back to the supreme court.In a statement to the New York Times, Erik Baptist, a senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization representing a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors, pledged to continue fighting against abortion care.“The FDA must answer for the damage it has caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by failing to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is and unlawfully removing every meaningful safeguard, even allowing for mail-order abortions,” he said about the 23-year-old FDA-approved drug.Meanwhile, the Joe Biden administration and civil rights organizations promised to continue fighting for reproductive rights.“I’ll continue to fight attacks on women’s health. The American people must also continue to use their vote as their voice and elect a Congress that will restore the protections of Roe v Wade,” Biden tweeted shortly after the supreme court issued its decision.The American Civil Liberties Union echoed similar sentiments, with Jennifer Dalven, ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project director saying: “Make no mistake, we aren’t out of the woods by any means … And as this baseless lawsuit shows, extremists will use every trick in the book to try to ban abortion nationwide.”Dalven added: “But if our opponents think we will allow them to continue to pursue their extreme goals without fierce backlash, they are sorely mistaken.” More

    • 163 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump rebuked by judge over jury request in New York civil rape trial

      by

      Donald Trump on Thursday was rebuked by the judge in his looming civil rape trial over a request for jurors to be told that if the former president did not testify, it would be out of concern that his presence would adversely affect New York City.This week, a lawyer for Trump, Joe Tacopina, first tried to delay the trial then requested the jury instruction.In a letter to federal judge Lewis A Kaplan on Wednesday, Tacopina said jurors should be told: “While no litigant is required to appear at a civil trial, the absence of the defendant in this matter, by design, avoids the logistical burdens that his presence, as the former president, would cause the courthouse and New York City.“Accordingly, his presence is excused unless and until he is called by either party to testify.”The next day, Kaplan responded: “The decision whether to attend or testify is [Trump’s] alone to make.”Noting that Trump’s accuser, the writer E Jean Carroll, has said she does not intend to call him, Kaplan said: “There is nothing for the court to excuse.”Kaplan also said he did not accept Trump’s claim about “alleged burdens on the courthouse or the city”, because he was confident the US Secret Service – which protects all former presidents – and the US Marshals Service, in charge of federal courthouse security, would cope.Trump, Kaplan said, “will speak at a campaign event in New Hampshire on 27 April, the third day of the scheduled trial in this case. If the Secret Service can protect him at that event, certainly the Secret Service, the Marshals Service, and the city of New York can see to his security in this very secure federal courthouse.”The case concerns an alleged rape in the changing rooms of a New York department store in the mid-1990s, a claim Carroll made in 2019.Trump denies it. Carroll sued him for defamation, then sued again, for defamation and battery, under New York state’s Adult Survivors Act, a law that eliminates civil filing deadlines for alleged victims of long-ago sexual assaults.The trial in the first suit has been delayed while lawyers wrangle over whether Trump’s remarks were part of his duties as president, and thus protected. The trial next week concerns the second suit.Kaplan said the start date had been known since early February.“There has been quite ample time within which to make whatever logistical arrangements should be made for [Trump’s] attendance,” he said, “and certainly quite a bit more time than the five or six days between recent indictment on state criminal charges and his arraignment on that indictment approximately one block from the site of this case.”In the other case mentioned by Kaplan, Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsification of business records, related to his hush money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels, who claims an affair he denies.Since then, Trump has surged in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, notwithstanding the fact he also faces state and federal investigations of his 2020 election subversion, a federal investigation of his handling of classified material, and a civil suit in New York over his business and tax affairs.In the Carroll case, Kaplan stressed, “the question of the requested jury instruction is premature. Mr Trump is free to attend, testify or both. He is free also to do none of these things.”Trump’s attorneys, Kaplan said again, would not be allowed to tell the jury he wanted to testify but had chosen to spare court and city the “burdens” of his presence. More