Connect with us

News

Trump Enjoys his Winning Run on the Debate Stage and in the Courts

Trump Enjoys his Winning Run on the Debate Stage and in the Courts

(CTN News) – Former President Donald Trump once told his supporters they would grow weary of his victories. That may well be the case this week.

As he attempts to win a non-consecutive second term and pull off a dramatic political comeback, President Joe Biden’s confusing and unpleasant debate performance in Atlanta on Thursday night handed Trump a significant victory at the most critical juncture of the 2024 White House campaign so far.

At a rally on Friday in Virginia, Trump reveled in the debate’s aftermath and connected his remarks to what he saw as the “decline” of both America and his opponent. “This election is a choice between strength and weakness, competence and incompetence, peace and prosperity, war or no war, as every American saw firsthand last night,” Trump said.

Shortly after the debate, the presumed Republican candidate celebrated on social media as he had secured a “big win” when the US Supreme Court ruled that the Justice Department had overreached itself in accusing Capitol rioters on January 6. The day after he attempted to use the discussion to cover up the biggest assault on democracy in modern times, the ex-president won a symbolic triumph with a 6-3 vote.

Legal repercussions may also arise; some academics argue that the decision may limit the scope of Trump’s federal election interference trial, even though special counsel Jack Smith maintains that his case will go unhindered. Lawyers for the former president have already hinted that they plan to try to have the evidence thrown out and the obstruction charges against him dropped.

The court’s ruling was made public before a far more significant case that would directly affect Trump’s illegal activities. The court’s ultimate decision on his broad request for immunity for conduct done while president is anticipated on Monday. Even if the long-awaited decision by the conservative majority court does not immediately limit some components of the special counsel’s prosecution, it may have the impact of dragging Smith’s election interference trial far beyond November’s election if it requires further action in a lower court.

Trump’s year of highs and lows

Given Trump’s contentious belief that he would have nearly unrestricted authority in the Oval Office, effectively placing the presidency above the law, the justices’ assessment of never-before-considered arguments on the limits of executive power is especially important as he looks to return to the White House.

More positive legal news for Trump in Florida came on Thursday when he nominated federal Judge Aileen Cannon, who furthered the pretrial proceedings involving his purported handling of confidential information at his Mar-a-Lago club.

Another of Trump’s criminal indictments won’t go to trial before the election because Cannon handled the case and her many disagreements with Smith’s staff. Similar to the federal election interference case, the papers issue may be dismissed by a second administration’s attorney general, whom Trump would select. Another 2020 election case in Georgia has also been put on hold, partly because of an appeals procedure and controversy sparked by District Attorney Fani Willis’s connection with an appointed prosecutor.

Trump has had a lot of bad weeks this year, particularly after the lengthy hush money trial that saw him become the first former president and front-runner of a major party to be found guilty of a felony. His humiliation intensifies when he appears before Judge Juan Merchan for a sentence in New York on July 11.

It will be only a few days before the former president heads to the Republican National Convention to officially accept his third consecutive presidential nomination, so his forced attendance will perfectly capture his year of highs and lows on the political and personal fronts. It is also anticipated that Trump will introduce his vice presidential candidate at the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, rally.

The election is still four months away; unanticipated incidents and international and domestic problems might change the contest’s outcome during this political period. However, Thursday night’s debate could not have gone much better for Trump, who has been in a dead heat with Biden and has a little advantage in the swing states that will determine the election.

Though it’s too soon to predict how people will react, Democrats are already discouraged and wondering whether Biden should stay on the ticket due to the president’s appalling performance.

Even if Biden can recover, his campaign will never be able to take away from the memories of millions of television watchers who witnessed an old man having difficulty pronouncing words correctly, losing his train of thought, and gaping at Trump with an apparent open mouth in confusion—a more vigorous, if dishonest, figure.

The president is 81 years old, and most Americans believe he is too elderly to serve a second term. The optics of the night and the Republican party support these narratives.

On a night when his torrent of falsehoods and conspiracy theories demonstrated that, if anything, Trump has become more resentful and dangerous to the rule of law since he departed office in disgrace after a tumultuous one-term administration in January 2021, Biden’s difficulties also provided him with a pass.

Had the president performed well in the debate, Trump’s campaign could have suffered irreversible harm. Even though Biden didn’t pass the debate’s vitality test, the former president refrained from playing into Biden’s claims that he is “unhinged” and that something “snapped” in him because of his usually composed conduct in the crucial opening exchanges. Even if the president could expose Trump’s outrageous actions and lies later in the evening, Biden may have lost many votes due to the early acrimony.

Just three years separate Trump and Biden in age, yet Trump often speaks incoherently at campaign appearances. However, surveys indicate that people are less concerned about their age and mental capacity.

Senior Democrats explicitly said on Friday that the election’s reality—a Republican candidate who has already attempted to undermine democracy and may do so again—does not alter just because there was a poor debate. However, Biden must face the harsh reality that his dismal performance will further heighten worries among many voters who find it impossible to see him carrying out a second term that will expire when he is 86.

The Supreme Court delivers another piece of good news for Trump.

The Justice Department went too far by charging hundreds of protesters who rioted at the Capitol with obstruction, the Supreme Court said on Friday in the case from January 6. At least some of those cases will probably be reopened. However, The high court decided that if prosecutors could demonstrate that the rioters were trying to prevent the 2020 election from being certified rather than merely forcing their way inside, charges may still be brought against them. Smith could continue accusing Trump of the same offense because of this nuance.

According to a person who spoke with CNN’s Paula Reid, Trump’s team plans to submit motions to have the obstruction charges against the former president dropped. However, Smith’s argument against the likely GOP candidate is supported by a broader range of incidents and proof than the ones used against the pro-Trump rabble.

However, even if Trump’s team’s latest legal maneuver is successful in postponing the trial via more litigation, it would support his long-term objective of doing so. As things stand, there doesn’t seem to be much likelihood that a jury will hear the case in the next few months unless the high court rejects Trump’s claim of immunity in its entirety next week.

Even the possibility that Trump’s attorneys may reduce his criminal liability, should the election result in a loss and the lawsuit go without incident, could be very useful to the former president.

On Thursday, Cannon said that she would want to see further hearings about Trump’s effort to contest important evidence about the Florida papers issue. She would also let his attorneys cross-examine witnesses regarding the inquiry and the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago for classified materials.

It has been alleged that Cannon has prolonged the matter through many sessions. Some opponents have blamed her inexperience for the delays. Others argue that she is biased towards the president who nominated her. But the court chastised detractors in an 11-page judgment on Thursday.

According to Cannon, “there is a difference between an evidentiary hearing geared to adjudicating the contested factual and legal issues on a given pre-trial motion to suppress” and a “mini-trial” that wastes resources and causes delays. Regarding Trump, Cannon is free to pursue the case for as long as she pleases, particularly if it continues his current upward trend.

 

News

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.

According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.

Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.

google

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.

Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.

Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.

To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.

Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.

In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.

Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

google

Pixa Bay

Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding

On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.

TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.

When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.

And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.

Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.

A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.

google

Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.

But today, it feels more like reality.

Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.

Could we remember Google in the same way that we remember Yahoo or Ask Jeeves in decades? These next few years could be significant.

SOURCE | CNN

Continue Reading

News

2024 | Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

trump

Washington — Trump Media,  The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear an appeal from social media platform X about a search warrant acquired by prosecutors in the election meddling case against former President Donald Trump.

The justices did not explain their rationale, and there were no recorded dissents.

The firm, which was known as Twitter before being purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, claims a nondisclosure order that prevented it from informing Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.

The business also claims Trump should have had an opportunity to exercise executive privilege. If not reined in, the government may employ similar tactics to intercept additional privileged communications, their lawyers contended.

trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

Two neutral electronic privacy groups also joined in, urging the high court to hear the case on First Amendment grounds.

Prosecutors, however, claim that the corporation never shown that Trump utilized the account for official purposes, therefore executive privilege is not a problem. A lower court also determined that informing Trump could have compromised the current probe.

trump

Trump utilized his Twitter account in the weeks preceding up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, to spread false assertions about the election, which prosecutors claim were intended to create doubt in the democratic process.

The indictment describes how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to travel to Washington on Jan. 6, pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification, and falsely claiming that the Capitol crowd, which battered police officers and destroyed glass, was peaceful.

musk trump

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Appeal From Elon Musk’s X Platform Over Warrant In Trump Case

That case is now moving forward following the Supreme Court’s verdict in July, which granted Trump full immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.

The warrant arrived at Twitter amid quick changes implemented by Musk, who bought the company in 2022 and has since cut off most of its workforce, including those dedicated to combating disinformation and hate speech.

He also welcomed back a vast list of previously banned users, including Trump, and endorsed him for the 2024 presidential election.

SOURCE | AP

Continue Reading

News

The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

Supreme Court

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.

The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.

Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.

This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.

In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.

The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.

This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.

The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.

In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.

According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.

Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.

The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.

Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.

For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.

Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.

As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.

As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.

The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.

SOURCE: AP

SEE ALSO:

Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.

Scientists Awarded MicroRNA The Nobel Prize in Medicine.

US Inflation will Comfort a Fed Focused on Labor Markets.

Continue Reading

Trending