<Most of the headlines this past week concerning former President Donald Trump’s legal woes have focused on developments in two of his four criminal cases.

Last Monday, in the federal 2020 election subversion case, US District Judge Tanya Chutkan imposed a narrow gag order to restrict Trump from making public statements attacking potential witnesses, prosecutors and court personnel. (On Friday, the judge put a temporary hold on this gag order to give the defense and prosecution more time to brief her on the issue after Trump appealed the order.)

Later in the week, there were potentially significant developments in Trump’s criminal case in Fulton County, Georgia, where he’s charged with 13 felonies over alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election in that state. Two of Trump’s co-defendants in that case — Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro — pleaded guilty to various charges and pledged to testify for the prosecution in future cases, which could include Trump’s.

(Trump has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges stemming from attempts to overturn the 2020 election.)

But the case that may pose the greatest threat to Trump’s candidacy in 2024 is not one of his criminal cases. Rather, it’s a lawsuit in Colorado that not only saw some bad news for Trump last week but also is scheduled to start trial this month.

This case involves a lawsuit initiated by a liberal watchdog group on behalf of six Colorado voters to disqualify Trump from holding office by way of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment over his role in events leading to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

It seeks to block him from the 2024 primary ballot in Colorado over the amendment’s provision disqualifying from future office US officials who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution if they have “engaged in insurrection” and/or “given aid or comfort” to insurrectionists.

On Friday, Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace rejected three arguments by Trump and the Colorado GOP to dismiss the case before the scheduled October 30 trial date. One of the most powerful points the judge made was rebuffing the argument that state officials have no discretion over who is placed on the ballot if a political party wants that person listed.

In her ruling, Wallace wrote, “If the Party, without any oversight, can choose its preferred candidate, then it could theoretically nominate anyone regardless of their age, citizenship, residency.” She added, “Such an interpretation is absurd; the Constitution and its requirements for eligibility are not suggestions, left to the political parties to determine at their sole discretion.”

And Wallace — to the likely chagrin of Trump — cited in support of this point a 2012 opinion from Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, when he was a federal appellate judge. In that case, Gorsuch wrote that states do have the legal authority to “exclude from the ballot candidates who are constitutionally prohibited from assuming office.”

Wallace did not, however, conclude that “the Fourteenth Amendment can be used to exclude a presidential candidate from the primary ballot, or that the Secretary of State is empowered to evaluate such a question.” Those issues — and others — are to be decided in the upcoming trial.

But this suit — if successful — could be more of a threat to Trump’s candidacy than his criminal cases. Why? Trump could be convicted in any of his criminal cases, yet there is no constitutional prohibition that bars him from running for president. In fact, Trump could be in prison and still run.

However, if Trump loses this case over the 14th Amendment — or any of the similar ones in states such as Michigan and Minnesota — his name would not appear on the ballot in those states since he would be deemed constitutionally disqualified to be a candidate for president.

Trump still has a motion pending to throw out the Colorado lawsuit, and his campaign has criticized the Colorado judge’s rulings. “She is going against the clear weight of legal authority. We are confident the rule of law will prevail, and this decision will be reversed — whether at the Colorado Supreme Court, or at the US Supreme Court,” a Trump campaign spokesperson said. “To keep the leading candidate for President of the United States off the ballot is simply wrong and un-American.”....>

<.....But regardless of the decision in Colorado, even legal scholars who have opined that Trump violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment have acknowledged that ultimately this issue must go to the US Supreme Court for a final decision. And that is the way it should be given the importance of this issue. But the Colorado case could be the one that makes it to our nation’s highest court.

To those who dismiss the prospect of Trump being disqualified from the ballot, check out the case of former New Mexico elected official Couy Griffin, who had been the head of a group called Cowboys for Trump.

A lawsuit was brought against Griffin alleging he violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment over his actions in connection with the January 6 attack. After a trial was held, the judge concluded — based on expert testimony — that the January 6 event was an “insurrection” as contemplated by the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War. Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was intended to keep former Confederates from holding office after the war.

In 2022, Griffin was found guilty of a misdemeanor of trespassing on US Capitol grounds but was acquitted of a second misdemeanor charge of disorderly and disruptive conduct.

The judge deemed Griffin to have “engaged in” the insurrection by his conduct of being on the Capitol grounds. As the judge explained, “One need not personally commit acts of violence to ‘engag[e] in’ insurrection. … Engagement thus can include non-violent overt acts or words in furtherance of the insurrection.”

Consequently, Griffin was removed from office as a commissioner in Otero County and barred from being on the ballot in the future in New Mexico. The September 2022 ruling marked the first time an elected official had been removed from office for participation or support of the Capitol riot. The state’s Supreme Court rejected Griffin’s final appeal to overturn the decision earlier this year.

To those who think it’s undemocratic to ban officials from the ballot if they are found to have violated the 14th Amendment, I have two responses. First, it’s far more undemocratic to “engage in” an insurrection designed to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. And second, we can’t ignore the conditions clearly imposed on candidates set forth in the US Constitution. At least, not if we want to remain a democratic republic.>

<With the MAGA wing of the Republican Party dominant in the presidential race and the speaker-less House of Representatives, the Senate is looking like the last bastion of old-school Republican influence.

Why it matters: The party's leaders are looking to keep it that way by quietly boosting the prospects of more mainstream Senate candidates.

The big picture: Republicans hold solid odds of winning back the Senate in 2024, with a historically favorable map putting Democrats on defense in numerous red-state and purple-state battlegrounds.

So far, Senate Republicans — and those working to elect future GOP senators — have been successful in creating one remaining safe space for normalcy in a party that's grown increasingly nihilistic.

The odds are growing that Republicans flip the Senate but lose control of the dysfunctional House in 2024.

What to watch: If Senate Republicans have a good night in the 2024 elections, their majority would likely be powered by traditional conservatives like Gov. Jim Justice in West Virginia, military veteran Tim Sheehy in Montana, businessman Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania and former House Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers in Michigan.

These are all candidates that would fit in well in the pre-Trump Republican Party. The list of GOP Senate recruits is heavy on military veterans, business experience and political know-how.

McCormick, in a striking sign of party unity, won the endorsement of the Pennsylvania Republican Party and all GOP lawmakers in the state's congressional delegation — from moderate Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick to Freedom Caucus chairman Rep. Scott Perry.

Driving the news: Some Senate Republicans are growing increasingly optimistic that businessman Eric Hovde will enter the race against Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), giving the party a more credible and well-funded challenger than other right-wing alternatives.

Hovde unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 2012, losing to former Gov. Tommy Thompson in the GOP primary.

Between the lines: If Republican donors critical of former President Trump don't know where to spend their money — and are holding their donations as a result — the emerging lineup of traditionally conservative Senate candidates is looking like a safer bet.

While top GOP donors are growing resigned to the likelihood of a Trump nomination and the House looking vulnerable to a Democratic takeover, the prospect of maintaining a check on Democratic power with a GOP-controlled Senate will look enticing.

Zoom in: Many of the GOP's touted candidates face right-wing primary challenges — offering a critical test of National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Steve Daines' (R-Mont.) effectiveness in getting electable candidates nominated.

Former Detroit police chief James Craig, positioning himself to the right of Rogers in the Michigan Senate race, announced his candidacy against the former congressman this month. Craig's launch video featured glowing commentary from former Fox host Tucker Carlson.

Justice is also facing a right-wing primary challenger from Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.). Trump endorsed Justice this week, giving the governor a clear advantage in the race.

Sheehy boasts party backing and numerous endorsements from GOP senators, but still faces the possibility of a primary threat from Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.), one of the eight House Republicans who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Reality check: The overall trendlines are all pointing to the GOP moving in a much more populist and isolationist direction, even in the establishment-minded Senate.

At least two-thirds of Republican voters are backing presidential candidates touting the MAGA line — Trump, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Even some of the more traditional candidates have made nods to the rising populism within their party. Rogers, for instance, slammed the Department of Justice as "politically motivated" in a campaign video this month — all but echoing Trump's conspiratorial view of his indictments.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chair of the GOP conference, endorsed MAGA favorite Kari Lake in Arizona's Senate race last week.

The bottom line: That's why the top Senate races will be critical in charting the future direction of the Republican Party.

If the traditional wing of the GOP can maintain its beachhead in the Senate, it would bode well for its ability to still have a strong voice despite the party's MAGA-aligned orientation.>

<Last year, all three candidates in the Republican race for Michigan Attorney General proudly confirmed that they believed the 1965 Supreme Court case Griswold v Connecticut was “wrongly decided” on privacy grounds and that it was an infringement on a state’s right to imprison women, regardless of marital status, who use birth control.

Yes, birth control.

Each described himself as a “Christian” and implied his opposition to Griswold was grounded in his religious faith.

For over a hundred years in heavily Catholic (39% of the population) Connecticut it had been a crime punishable by imprisonment for a married couple to possess any form of birth control. Estelle Griswold, the head of Connecticut Planned Parenthood, sued to overturn the law and the Court agreed, saying a couple’s “right to privacy” in their own bedroom couldn’t be violated.

That was followed, in 1972, by the Supreme Court legalizing possession of birth control for unmarried men and women in their Eisenstadt v. Baird decision; it was also based on a reading of the Bill of Rights starting with the 14th Amendment’s Due Process clause that guarantees legal process before government can violate our privacy.

Starting with Griswold in 1965, the Court asserted every American’s right to privacy as a function of that clause (among others) in several cases.

The following year, 1973, the Court used that same rationale of “an individual’s right to privacy” over what goes on with, in, and about their own body to legalize abortion in Roe v Wade. The right to privacy argument also undergirds the Court legalizing gay relationships in Lawrence v Texas (2003) and gay marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015).

The Michigan Republicans weren’t the only ones saying that the entire idea of a “right to privacy” is a bunch of hooey. In his concurring opinion in the 2022 Dobbs decision that struck down Roe, billionaire fanboy Clarence Thomas wrote:

“The resolution of this case is thus straightforward. Because the Due Process Clause [of the 14th Amendment] does not secure any substantive rights, it does not secure a right to abortion. … For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

In other words, bring back the power of states to criminalize birth control, gay sex, and to outlaw gay marriage. (Interestingly, the only other big case SCOTUS decided based on this rationale was Loving v Virginia, which struck down state laws against interracial marriage: Thomas, a Black man married to a white woman, chose not to name that one.)

Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn recently jumped on the bandwagon, telling her peers on the Senate Judiciary Committee that:

“Constitutionally unsound rulings like Griswold v Connecticut … confused Tennesseans and left Congress wondering who gave the Court permission to bypass our system of checks and balances.”

Last year, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) brought legislation to the Senate that would enshrine the Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell decisions in federal law by establishing a federal “right to privacy.”

The bill passed the House and had enough votes to pass the Senate, too, unless any senator objected to “unanimous consent” and threw up a filibuster. Sure enough, on July 28, 2022 Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) rose to object, after Senator John Cornyn had said:

“[C]oming to the floor and listening to some of my colleagues talk about their concern for lack of access to contraception … reminds me of the old story about the little boy who cried wolf. He cried wolf when there wasn't any danger; and then, once there was danger, people didn't come to his aid because they thought it was another phony crying wolf.

“I can understand our colleagues -- given inflation, given crime, given the broken borders -- wanting to change the subject to something else, but that is all this is. This is mere posturing pre-November, pre-midterm elections. This isn’t about changing the law because the law already permits ready access to contraceptives.”

The bill, which would have definitely and finally established an American’s right to use birth control, died at the hands of Ernst’s Republican filibuster....>

<.....A few weeks ago, David D. Kirkpatrick wrote an in-depth piece for The New Yorker profiling Alan Sears, the head of the rightwing culture-wars juggernaut Alliance Defending Freedom. The group reportedly has a $100 million a year budget, over 70 lawyers, and has won 14 Supreme Court and other cases including:

— Overturning Roe v Wade,

— Letting employers refuse to pay for health insurance that covers birth control,

— Allowing a baker to refuse to make a cake for a same-sex wedding,

— Blowing up some pandemic-related masking, vaccine, and other requirements,

— Eviscerating federal transparency requirements for nonprofit donors,

— Gutting federal regulations on religious organizations’ use of federal money, and

— Outlawing the abortion pill, Mifepristone (this one is being appealed).

The most startling part of the article, though, is when Sears tells Kirkpatrick:

“We are on a winning trajectory. It may be that the day will come when people say the birth-control pill was a mistake.”

Earlier this year, the Republican Attorney General of Iowa, Brenna Bird, suspended payments for emergency contraception for rape victims.

Two years ago, Republicans in the Idaho legislature made it a crime for people working in state-funded student health centers in that state’s colleges to discuss abortion with their patients or distribute Plan B emergency contraception.

Last year, Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert tried to bar all federal funds for “abortifacient contraceptive drugs” (which is how groups like Students For Life define garden-variety birth control pills) and when discussing a Republican nationwide abortion ban, Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale tried to add in a ban on emergency contraception.

In almost every case, these are not secular or scientific arguments: they’re based in religion and Republican efforts to pander to rightwing Catholics and evangelicals.

I’ve seen this up-close and personal. On August 2, 1998 Louise and I spent an evening with Pope John Paul II and about two dozen other VIPs who’d been invited to his summer palace, Castel Gandolfo, to hear a concert and have private audiences with His Holiness afterwards.

Watching all the pomp and ceremony, it struck me that if that man were to just say a few words, for example, “Kill all the Muslims,” it could plunge the world into war and turn civilization on its head. In fact, several of his predecessors had done just that, kicking off the Crusades hundreds of years earlier. This was a head-spinning level of political power.

When we met privately with him later that evening, it had all the trappings of a visit to a head of state. The power was palpable and the security as tight as I’d experienced when dining with Obama and Putin.

The day before we went up to Castel Gandolfo, one of the Pope’s personal assistants gave Louise and me a private tour of the Vatican. The art, gold, and wealth were astonishing; this is more than a church: it’s an actual nation-state, complete with a seat at the United Nations where they can weigh in on decisions around family planning.

Here in the US, the Catholic Church lobbies aggressively on a variety of fronts; during the pandemic, according to the AP, that effort brought it more than a billion dollars in federal money. And one in seven hospitals in the US is Catholic-owned and thus unwilling to provide birth control or perform abortions.

Just a few years before our visit to Rome, John Paul II had said that the Church was unalterably opposed to “all propaganda and misinformation directed at persuading couples that they must limit their family to one or two children.”

Seven years earlier, I’d been in Bogotá, Colombia and met with the Archbishop of Bogota, Mario Cardinal Revollo Bravo, at his headquarters, the Cathedral-Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, a massive church and building structure off Bolivar Square....>

<....I was then doing relief work for Salem International out of Germany, and we’d been offered an abandoned church property down near Medellin to house homeless people. A Colombian/German co-worker, Elizabeth, accompanied me to serve as a translator, although we soon discovered that the archbishop spoke fluent English.

When we determined that the property in Medellin wasn’t appropriate for our needs, Elizabeth and I made an appointment to meet with the archbishop. He kept us waiting for several hours and then we were ushered into a huge space converted from a wing of an old Spanish church to meet him.

The massive room was filled with ancient art and stained-glass windows, and the Archbishop sat on a huge carved chair resembling a throne.

I got off to a bad start, as he extended his hand apparently expecting me to kiss his ring, but being Protestant I instead shook his hand. He looked offended, and didn’t bother to extend it to Elizabeth, who he merely scowled at and then ignored.

I thanked him for the possibility of the land in Medellin and told him it wouldn’t work for us, but we appreciated his consideration and looked forward to working closely with the Church in the future on our projects in Colombia and the region. He said a few words about how there were so many street children, and all help was appreciated.

At which point Elizabeth, standing to my side and a step behind me, spoke up, very simply and gently asking him what he thought of the possibility of some sort of special dispensation (she was speaking in Spanish and I didn’t get all the nuance) for people who worked in family planning, or even pharmacists and drug store-owners so they wouldn’t fear going to hell if they sold condoms or other means of birth control.

The lack of birth control in Colombia, she said, was one of the things driving the epidemic of homeless children who were then taking over entire parts of Bogotá and Medellin.

His face turned red and the muscles bunched around his jaw and neck. His thinning hair seemed to bristle.

He refused to look at Elizabeth and instead turned to me, pushing his right index finger into my face and pounding his left fist on the arm of his throne, shouting angrily. I’d not seen somebody become so furious so fast in years.

In English he shouted words to the effect of:

“This population explosion is all the fault of women! It began with Eve, the original deceiver of the first man. They know when they’re fertile and when they’re not. They must learn to be chaste and control themselves!”

He was trembling with rage, and Elizabeth and I backed out of his throne room, saying “Sorry, sorry,” in English and Spanish, as fast as we could.

At the end of the day, it’s all about the power. Power of men over women. Power of the state over the individual. And, for the anti-birth-control religious fanatics, power of their church over the state and, by extension, over the rest of us.

Don’t expect much action on the birth control front over the next 13 months; Republicans know that more than 90 percent of Americas are okay with birth control staying legal and they don’t want to risk the 2024 election.

But if they can hold the House and take back the Senate or — G-d forbid — take the White House, you should sign up now with a Canadian pharmacy while you still can.

The next step for Republicans, like the Texas counties that have authorized their police to stop cars they think are transporting women to other states for abortions, will be to have postal inspectors open your mail looking for contraband birth control pills.

And warming up the jail cells they want to put American women into who have the temerity to continue using them after the GOP’s bans take effect.>

<In a decision that conservatives are mostly applauding, the Supreme Court will hear a case that will set a precedent on how far the government can go in suppressing free speech on social media.

On Friday, the nation's highest court announced it had issued a writ of certiorari in a case known by various names that basically pits the states of Louisiana and Missouri against the Biden administration, in which the states aimed to curtail the federal government's goading of platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter/X to censor unpopular opinions without directly telling them to -- which would be an obvious breach of the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech.

Louisiana Solicitor General Liz Murrill hailed the decision in a statement Friday.

"We are pleased to learn that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear this case, giving us yet another opportunity to defend the people from this assault on our First Amendment rights," Murrill said.

"It brings us one step closer to reestablishing the protections guaranteed to us in the Constitution and under the First Amendment," she said.

"We hope that the Supreme Court will agree that this gross abuse of power must stop and never happen again."

The lawsuit, initially filed by Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt in May 2022, dealt with how the government put pressure on tech giants to censor certain information, particularly as it related to the COVID-19 pandemic -- and the efficacy of and/or dangers potentially posed by mask-wearing, vaccines and other measures.

In a ruling on July 4, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty fired the first shot in the legal volley on the case, issuing a decision that blocked a number of federal agencies -- specifically, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Census Bureau, the FBI and the Department of Justice -- from interacting with companies in a way that could be construed as "encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech."

In September, according to The Associated Press, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled mostly in favor of the two states while it "tossed out broader language in an order that a Louisiana-based federal judge had issued July 4 that effectively blocked multiple government agencies from contacting platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) to urge the removal of content."

And here we come to the part that has conservatives only mostly applauding the decision to grant a writ of certiorari to hear the case: According to CBS News, while the case is being presented to the nation's highest bench, the injunction issued by Doughty will be paused, period.

Three justices on the conservative end of the bench -- Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas -- signed on to a dissent of the stay of the injunction.....>

<...."Despite the Government’s conspicuous failure to establish a threat of irreparable harm, the majority stays the injunction and thus allows the defendants to persist in committing the type of First Amendment violations that the lower courts identified," Alito wrote in the dissent. "The majority takes this action in the face of the lower courts’ detailed findings of fact."

"Applying our settled test for granting a stay, I would deny the Government’s application, but I would specify in the order that in the unlikely event that a concrete occurrence presents a risk of irreparable harm, the Government can apply for relief at that time, including, if necessary, by filing an emergency application here," he continued. "Such an order would fully protect the ability of Executive Branch officials to speak out on matters of public concern.

"At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news. That is most unfortunate."

Justice Alito continued:

"Moreover, it does not appear that any of the Government’s hypothetical communications would actually be prohibited by the injunction. Nor is any such example provided by the Court’s unreasoned order." pic.twitter.com/Bwg0kdKGck

— Benjamin Weingarten (@bhweingarten) October 20, 2023

Nevertheless, the fact that this is before the court at all is reason enough to celebrate.

As we know from the "Twitter files" and "Facebook files," arms of the government made it clear in no uncertain terms that they wanted certain information restricted -- particularly on COVID-19, but also in regard to Hunter Biden's laptop of doom.

Is this censorship? Is a swampy, angry unelected government apparatchik promising to make themselves a nuisance to you if you don't do what they so clearly want you to do any different from a government directive?

That's what the Supreme Court will decide, and one hopes the decision is an easy one.

Yes, the administration will certainly make the argument that its obvious intimidation of these tech giants didn't constitute de jure suppression of speech, but de facto government intimidation ought to be reason enough to prohibit the kind of behavior this lawsuit seeks to end.

Friday was likely just the first step in a long and grueling process for conservatives and other free speech proponents to claw back our most precious of rights as Americans from nanny-state bureaucrats and pusillanimous tech companies who know the only entity more powerful and monopolistic than themselves is the government.>

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has built a reputation in her first two congressional terms as one of the most anti-LGBTQ+ politicians in the U.S.

But it seems that she is willing to stand up for LGBTQ+ rights when she has a chance to attack Muslim people.

She shared a video on X that showed a clip of a pro-Palestinian protester in D.C. chanting, “Let Gaza live!” and “Murderers go home!” The video was spliced with clips from the rightwing Real America’s Voice news network showing that the protestors were generally left-of-center and that some refused to answer when a conservative activist shouted, “Do you denounce Hamas?” at them, an act many consider Islamophobic.

“This ideology is dangerous on college campuses,” Greene wrote. “Young people do NOT know that an Islamic state will murder gays and will not tolerate gender lies, does not care about climate change or women’s rights or western culture, and will force everyone to convert to Islam or face death.”

The protestors were not attempting to convert Americans to Islam.

Greene is no friend to LGBTQ+ people. In her short three years in office, she introduced a bill to end gender-affirming care for trans youth and make it more difficult for adults to access, shut down the House twice and wasted everyone’s time in an attempt to stop Congress from passing the LGBTQ+ Equality Act, cosponsored a bill to ban trans kids from participating in school sports, shared anti-LGBTQ+ music with HIV jokes in it on social media, accused gay Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten Buttigieg of creeping on underage girls, hired an “ex-gay” intern and praised his claim that he changed from gay to straight as a “great story,” accused the parents of trans kids of turning their kids transgender as a fashion statement, and posted a transphobic sign outside her office door that she replaces each time it gets stolen or vandalized.>

<The U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Moore v. United States, will soon consider whether Americans can be taxed on the increased value of their assets—their property or their businesses—even if those assets have not been sold. The case could not be more timely, as there has been a flurry of misguided proposals in Washington—both from Congress and the White House—to tax these unrealized gains under the guise of "wealth taxes."

As a lifelong Democrat and longtime member of the Senate Finance Committee, I have advanced and supported ideas to uphold our progressive tax system, where those who make more pay more. But taxes on unrealized gains make absolutely no sense and would do more harm than good.

That's why I have co-signed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to reaffirm that gains have to be realized before they are taxed as income under the Sixteenth Amendment. Upholding this principle is important. Upending it would wreak all kinds of havoc on families, on businesses, and on our economy as a whole.

Under new taxes on unrealized gains, taxpayers would have to go through the arduous process of assessing the value of their illiquid assets every year—and face penalties if their estimates differ from the IRS' estimates. But there is simply no objective, reliable way to measure that value if the assets go unsold. It's a "guess tax," plain and simple—one that would bring generational consequences. Family businesses in particular would suddenly find themselves in the precarious position of having to sell assets just to pay the tax. It's not hard to see how this could quickly turn a liquidity crunch into a liquidity crisis. Capital that could be used for further investment or expansion of a business would have to be liquified and sold, and then a tax on the proceeds would have to be paid to the government.

The chilling effect that taxing unrealized gains would have on everyday investments, savings, and the economy would be enormous. Incentives for aspiring entrepreneurs would diminish and many would conclude the financial risks of starting a new venture could not be justified.

Moreover, how would the IRS—an already beleaguered and under-resourced agency—be able to effectively collect a tax that is based on ever-changing assessments of wealth? An unthinkable amount of time and resources would have to be devoted to creating systems for Americans to appraise their illiquid assets and for the IRS to then defend those assessments. All of this would distract from what our main focus should be: enforcing the current tax code and closing the tax gap—the estimated $688 billion that goes uncollected every year under existing tax law.

And while these proposals are often marketed as "wealth taxes," history shows that new taxes often expand incrementally to eventually encompass the middle class—even if their initial target is the wealthy. This is exactly what happened with the income tax, which began as a "class tax" and ended up as a mass tax.

Here's what needs to happen. The Supreme Court must uphold the integrity of our progressive tax system, and recognize that new taxes on unrealized gains are both unconstitutional and unworkable. Then, instead of further complicating an already loophole-laden system, the federal government should focus on ensuring that the wealthy pay what they owe under the law. This is the best path forward to protect family businesses and hard-working taxpayers....>

<Lubbock County, Texas, joins a group of other rural Texas counties that have voted to ban women from using their roads to seek abortions.

This comes after six cities and counties in Texas have passed abortion-related bans, out of nine that have considered them. However, this ordinance makes Lubbock the biggest jurisdiction yet to pass restrictions on abortion-related transportation.

During Monday's meeting, the Lubbock County Commissioners Court passed an ordinance banning abortion, abortion-inducing drugs and travel for abortion in the unincorporated areas of Lubbock County, declaring Lubbock County a "Sanctuary County for the Unborn." The ordinance is part of a continued strategy by conservative activists to further restrict abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade as the ordinances are meant to bolster Texas' existing abortion ban, which allows private citizens to sue anyone who provides or "aids or abets" an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.

The ordinance, which was introduced to the court last Wednesday, was passed by a vote of 3-0 with commissioners Terence Kovar, Jason Corley and Jordan Rackler, all Republicans, voting to pass the legislation while County Judge Curtis Parrish, Republican, and Commissioner Gilbert Flores, Democrat, abstained from the vote.

At the helm of legislation and the campaign to ban abortion-related transit in Texas is Mark Lee Dickson, a Christian pastor who began pushing communities to outlaw abortion by declaring themselves "sanctuary cities for the unborn" in 2019.

According to Reuters, Dickson stressed the importance of passing the transport ban at a time when "a lot is changing in our culture."

In response to the ordinance, Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas said in a press release emailed to Newsweek the decision adds another layer of complexity to an already challenging landscape for individuals seeking essential healthcare services.

"Texans already live under some of the most restrictive and dangerous abortion bans in the country, yet anti-abortion extremists continue to push additional unnecessary, confusing, and fear-inducing barriers to essential healthcare," Autumn Keiser, Spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas said. "Though banned from providing abortions by Texas' statewide bans, the Planned Parenthood Health Center in Lubbock is a trusted resource for reproductive and sexual healthcare and education for West Texans in Lubbock and surrounding communities.

"With high rates of uninsured residents and sexually transmitted infections in Lubbock County, Planned Parenthood is focused on ensuring that Texans can access high-quality, affordable healthcare safely and without the stigma and judgment that these political ordinances create," Keiser added.

However, abortion rights supporters believe the transport bans will backfire on the anti-abortion movement as abortion rights advocates continue to fight against them as they head into the 2024 elections.

"We're going to make sure that there are political and electoral consequences for this," Rachel O'Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women's March activist organization, told Reuters.

Lubbock's ordinance also comes as Amarillo City Council is expected to weigh its own abortion-related bans on Tuesday, according to Amarillo Globe-News.

This is particularly significant as Lubbock and Amarillo are both traversed by major highways that connect Texas to New Mexico, where abortion is legal.

Voters in the city of Lubbock previously approved of a "sanctuary city" proposition in May of 2021.

In response to the May 2021 decision in Lubbock, Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas said in a press release, "Access to healthcare services, including abortion, should not be determined by someone's zip code, especially when these restrictions will disproportionately impact low income women and women of color. We remain committed to advocating for access to abortion for any Texan, including here in Lubbock."

The continued fight over abortion restrictions in Texas began after Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed into law one of the nation's strictest abortion measures, banning procedure as early as six weeks into a pregnancy in 2021.

"Our creator endowed us with the right to life and yet millions of children lose their right to life every year because of abortion," Abbott said in a bill signing ceremony, captured on videos posted on social media.>

<Special Counsel Jack Smith preemptively destroyed former President Trump's recent claim that Sidney Powell "never" served as his lawyer, according to MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin.

Powell, who promised to "release the Kraken" of lawsuits that she claimed would prove massive fraud was to blame for Trump's presidential election loss in November 2020, took a plea deal last week in Georgia, where she had initially been accused of multiple felonies alongside the ex-president.

The former president has seemingly attempted to distance himself from Powell since the agreement was announced, claiming in a Truth Social post on Sunday that she "WAS NOT MY ATTORNEY, AND NEVER WAS," while lamenting what he called "Fake News reports to the contrary."

However, Trump himself seemingly welcomed Powell to his legal team on Twitter, now known as X, in a tweet on November 14, 2020. Trump included Powell's name alongside lawyers including Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis as part of a "great team" joining "other wonderful lawyers and representatives!"

Rubin argued in a series of posts to X on Monday that Smith's federal indictment of Trump in Washington, D.C.—where the ex-president is accused of four felonies related to 2020 election subversion and the January 6 Capitol attack that followed—had already severely undercut Trump's claim.

"As you think about Trump's insistence that Sidney Powell was never his or the campaign's lawyer, lots of folks will point to his own November 2020 tweet announcing her role," Rubin wrote. "Jack Smith, however, has one better in Paragraph 20 of his D.C. indictment."

In the indictment, Smith notes that Trump's then-assistant Molly Michael had sent Powell and others "a document containing bullet points critical of a certain voting machine company"—likely Dominion Voting Systems—alongside instructions to "include as is, or almost as is, in lawsuit."

Powell purportedly responded to the email minutes later, enthusiastically arguing that the bullet points "must go in all lawsuits" filed in Georgia and Pennsylvania, "with a fraud claim that requires the entire election to be set aside."

The "Kraken" lawyer went on to file a lawsuit November 25, 2020, claiming that there was "massive election fraud" in Georgia, which Trump publicly promoted with a retweet, despite having privately called Powell's claims "crazy," according to the indictment.

"Smith alleges Powell not only did as told, but that Trump promoted the resulting case via Tweet before it was filed," Rubin wrote, suggesting that Smith had further called into question Trump's claim that Powell never acted as his lawyer.

Newsweek reached out for comment to lawyer Christopher Kise, who is representing the former president in D.C., and Trump's office via email on Monday.

Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, former Trump lawyer accused of being the architect of the so-called "fake electors" scheme, both reached plea agreements in Georgia last week.

The total number of co-defendants who have "flipped" on the ex-president in the Peach State is three, with bail bondsman Scott Hall last month pleading guilty to lesser charges in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors.

Legal analysts and experts have predicted that the agreements could lead to serious legal trouble for Trump and an avalanche of similar moves from other co-defendants, with 15 in Georgia still facing felony charges.

There are two other co-defendants in Trump's federal documents case—the former president's aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker Carlos De Oliveira.

Trump is facing a total of 91 felony charges across four separate federal and state indictments. He had pleaded not guilty to all charges, maintaining that he is the victim of a politically motivated "witch hunt.">

<Things are looking to get even dicier in one of the nation's most prominent swing states as an influx of new residents raises the stakes on what could be the key to the presidency in 2024.

State-to-state migration numbers released by the U.S. Census on Thursday show that while less Californians are moving to Texas, more are moving to Arizona—the state that President Joe Biden ultimately won by some 10,000 votes over ex-President Donald Trump in 2020.

Although a mass exodus from California has been observed in recent years, the pipeline to Arizona shows a unique path that more than 69,000 Californians took in 2021 and that 74,000 took in 2022. Knowing that California is solidly blue, the migration patterns raise questions about whether the residents moving across state lines are Americans who will bring their liberal ideologies to Arizona or if they're Americans seeking to leave those progressive beliefs behind.

"In swing states with razor-thin margins, everything matters," Republican strategist Alex Patton told Newsweek. "While we don't have a great demographic profile of what type of Californians are moving to AZ, it is definitely something to explore and message accordingly."

Arizona was the second-closest state in the 2020 election, behind Georgia. Biden's victory marked the first time a Democratic presidential nominee had carried the state since former President Bill Clinton in 1992 and only the second time since Harry Truman's win in 1948.

"Arizona is the ultimate swing state," Paul Bentz, senior vice president of research and strategy at Arizona-based public affairs firm HighGround, told Newsweek. "It's likely that the road to the White House goes through Arizona this year, instead of through Ohio or through Florida."

Since the last presidential election, Democrats have made significant gains in Arizona, with Senator Mark Kelly winning reelection and Katie Hobbs winning the governorship during the midterms. But while those electoral shifts suggest that Democrats have made Arizona a more welcoming home for left-leaning Californians, Bentz said it will ultimately depend which ex-Californians come to The Grand Canyon State.

"If you look at places outside of Maricopa County in places like Yavapai County ... which is north, and then in Pinal County, which is south—They're both growing suburban areas," he said. "Those are getting much, much redder, and much more conservative-leaning. Whereas, the more metro pieces are getting much more progressive-leaning."....>

<.....GOP strategist Matt Klink told Newsweek that while he believes most of the people moving from California are trying to "escape" liberal policies, Arizona is a unique "outlier" of a destination because of those recent Democratic wins.

"The Arizona Republican Party needs to focus first and foremost on candidate quality and on selecting candidates who attract a broad swath of conservative Arizona voters. That's the best defense for what will be a continued out-migration of California voters," Klink said.

Political consultant Jay Townsend told Newsweek that despite the possibility these new residents could sway Arizona more Democrat or more Republican, there is a greater chance that they present an opportunity to both parties.

"Fewer than half who have migrated since 2020 have registered with either party. Most of the newly registered voters since 2016 are either nonpartisan or independent," Townsend said.

"One can argue that the fastest growing party in Arizona are swing voters," he said.

Independents make up the largest political sector in Arizona. The most recent voter registration statistics from Arizona's secretary of state show that around 34.6 percent of residents, or 1.45 million people, identify as affiliated with "other," compared to approximately 34.4 percent who identify as Republican and 30 percent who identify as Democrats.

"We've got two major coasts in Phoenix and Tucson, and then you've got rural outside of those regions that are very much acting like flyover states, the heartland and then you've got the suburban areas, which is really the battleground states," Bentz said. "So we kind of have a microcosm of the country going on."

Bentz said the ages of these new residents will also change voter demographics. Although Arizona has traditionally been a landing spot for people from the Midwest hoping to retire in the sun, because these retirees grew up in the 1960s, "their overall level of conservatism has started to decline."

"It was a decade ago, the older electorate very much opposed the legalization of marijuana, but as that demographic aged out and got closer to folks who grew up into the '60s, we saw a lot less reticence to marijuana," Bentz said. "There's a big age contingent that is probably more of a driving factor than a regional continuing."

Townsend added, "The Arizona Republican Party is deeply reliant on the senior vote, many of whom will disappear from the voting universe over the next decade."

But others note that it's not just older people who are moving to Arizona. More young Americans, who see economic opportunities in Arizona's booming semiconductor industry or who are seeking lower housing costs as they start families, are moving east from California.

"Arizona's economy is changing with more high-tech jobs," Barbara Norrander, political science professor at the University of Arizona, told Newsweek.

Norrander added that Arizona bears a lot of similarities to Texas, which remains the No. 1 destination for Californians who migrate to other states, but has the added benefit of being closer to The Golden State, making it easier for ex-Californians to visit family and friends still there.>

<Sidney Powell was present for a now-infamous December 2020 meeting at the White House where participants hatched far-fetched schemes to keep Donald Trump in power and was so tied to the then-president that he once considered naming her a special counsel to probe claims of election fraud.

Kenneth Chesebro was part of a small coterie of advisers who prosecutors say prodded Republicans in battleground states to submit slates of fake electors who would falsely assert that Trump, not Democrat Joe Biden, was victorious.

Yet rather than continue to stand behind Trump, the two lawyers cut deals last week with prosecutors in Fulton County, Georgia, agreeing to plead guilty and cooperate instead of face trial in the indictment that charged them, the ex-president and 16 others with illegally plotting to overturn the 2020 election.

The deals ensure the cooperation of two witnesses who could presumably offer insider accounts of the desperate scheming to help Trump remain president — a boon for prosecutors striving to develop incriminating evidence against higher-profile targets. Even so, it's hard to forecast how much their assistance heightens the legal peril for Trump, especially since Powell's own history of outlandish and ill-supported claims of fraud could open her to attacks on her credibility and a bruising cross-examination.

“It's not a slam dunk that she is the knife to the heart of the former president, but it’s not a good day for him when she pleads guilty," John Fishwick, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, said of Powell. “She's going to do something that hurts him. The level of the hurt, we don't know yet.”

Neither agreement — Powell pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, Chesebro to a felony — called for prison time. That's a generous resolution for two defendants alleged to have played significant roles in what Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has called a “criminal racketeering enterprise to overturn Georgia’s presidential election result.” But such an outcome could nonetheless signal to other defendants the benefits that await them if they, too, plead guilty while also helping prosecutors winnow down an unwieldy racketeering case so they can focus their attention on even bigger names.

“In terms of immediate things that might shake out of it, I think it’s a question of what the people next down in the pecking order might do in order to free up the DA’s office a little bit more,” said Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor. "I think that’s really what the DA’s office is trying to do now. They’re trying to shake as many of these codefendants loose as they can and focus on the people they want to focus on and just step on the accelerator and get things moving.”

Beyond the Georgia case, the cooperation could potentially aid Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who in August charged Trump with conspiring to undo the election. Powell and Chesebro are referenced, though not by name, as unindicted coconspirators in that case, making their statements to investigators in Georgia of potential interest to Smith in his prosecution of Trump, which is set for trial next March....>

<.....“There's considerable overlap in the case that Jack Smith has charged and the case that Fani Willis has charged,” said Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. “They're clearly part of the story in Jack Smith's indictment.”

The plea deals ushered in a predictable pattern of once-close Trump allies turning against him in their own interests, followed by Trump moving to distance himself from them. That happened Sunday when Trump posted on social media, in capital letters, that Powell “was not my attorney, and never was."

The about-face was striking given that just three years ago, Trump introduced Powell on the social media platform then-known as Twitter as part of his “great legal team” challenging election results.

That same month, she filed a since-dismissed lawsuit attacking Georgia's election results that was embraced by Trump and was part of a news conference with two fellow Fulton County co-defendants, Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, where baseless claims of vast election fraud were raised. Powell also participated in a raucous meeting at the White House one month later, with the then-president, where Trump allies discussed potentially invoking the Insurrection Act as a way to seize voting machines.

“That might be one small part of the picture that nobody else can paint and that is particularly damning for Donald Trump in terms of showing that this was not a good-faith effort to ensure the election’s accuracy but rather was a bad-faith effort to overturn it,” Kreis said.

Even so, he noted, she'd likely be an easy witness for the Trump team to attack, potentially lessening the impact of any testimony she'd give.

Smith's indictment notes Trump privately told others that he thought her election fraud ideas sounded “crazy." And Giuliani and Ellis moved to separate themselves from her days after their news conference in which Powell incorrectly suggested that a server hosting evidence of voting irregularities was located in Germany, that voting software used by Georgia and other states was created at the direction of late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and that votes for Trump had probably been switched in favor of Biden.

“Not only is she easy to discredit, I think she’d be a very hostile witness," Kreis said.

Campaigning in New Hampshire on Monday, Trump appeared to refer to Powell and Cheesbro as “good people” and said prosecutors worked to “hound” and “scare” them.

Steve Sadow, Trump's lead attorney in the Georgia case, expressed confidence that Powell’s plea wouldn’t hurt Trump, saying last week that any truthful testimony offered would be "favorable to my overall defense strategy."

The Georgia indictment accuses Powell in a plot to illegally access a county's voting equipment.

In Chesebro's case, though prosecutors don't say he communicated directly with Trump, he's alleged to have played an instrumental role in a scheme underpinning both the Georgia prosecution and the federal prosecution — efforts to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Biden.

Georgia prosecutors say had the case gone to trial, they would have shown Chesebro conspired with Trump, Giuliani, conservative law professor John Eastman and others to get several Georgia Republicans to falsely present themselves as the state’s “duly elected and qualified” electors to “disrupt and delay” the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

Chesebro's lawyer said last week that he didn't foresee his client's cooperation harming Trump, but nonetheless, the fake elector plot is being investigated in multiple states and is “much more a central part of the overall conspiracy,” said George Washington University law professor Randall Eliason. That could make his cooperation important in implicating others.

“Anytime that you've got co-conspirators pleading guilty” and admitting to engaging in criminal activity, “that's pretty significant,” he said.>

<House Republicans will embark on their third attempt to break the Speaker stalemate this week, heading back to square one as they huddle to pick a nominee for the top spot — and hope that their new candidate can muster enough support to win the gavel on the floor.

The conference reset comes after a majority of members voted to drop House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as their nominee after he failed to win the Speakership on three ballots, having bled support on each consecutive vote. Before that, Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) withdrew his name from the race as Jordan backers said they would not support him on the floor.

Now, nine Republicans are vying for the top spot. But it remains unclear if any of the candidates will be able to drum up the votes to secure the gavel on the House floor.

Tuesday marks exactly three weeks since eight Republicans joined Democrats in voting to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from his post, leaving the House without a Speaker.

On the Senate side, President Biden’s roughly $100 billion supplemental request — which includes money for Israel, Ukraine, the border and allies in the Indo-Pacific — will be a key focus, as the U.S. looks to aid its allies abroad. Senators are also nearing a deal on amendments for a “minibus” that would help resume consideration of the legislation.

Senators return to the Capitol on Tuesday.

House GOP back to square one amid Speaker stalemate

House Republicans are scheduled to return to Washington this week to restart the process for nominating a Speaker candidate after the conference’s first two picks were rejected by lawmakers.

Nine Republicans are in the race: Reps. Tom Emmer (Minn.), Mike Johnson (La.), Gary Palmer (Ala.), Kevin Hern (Okla.), Byron Donalds (Fla.), Jack Bergman (Mich.), Austin Scott (Ga.), Pete Sessions (Texas) and Dan Meuser (Pa.).

On Monday night, Republicans will convene in the Capitol for their third candidate forum, where those vying for the gavel will have an opportunity to make their pitch to the rest of the conference.

Each candidate will receive two minutes to deliver introduction speeches, then there will be an hour-and-a-half of questions and answers, followed by one-minute closing speeches, a source familiar told Axios.

On Tuesday, the conference will hold an internal election to select their next nominee, which will be conducted by a secret ballot.

Emmer, currently the majority whip, is likely to surge ahead as an early front-runner in the race. The third-highest ranking Republican in the conference, Emmer has run in leadership races in the past, and he received a major boost even before announcing his candidacy: an endorsement from McCarthy....>

<.....“He knows how to do the job,” McCarthy told NBC’s “Meet the Press” about Emmer, adding, “We need to get him elected this week and move on, and bring not just party together, but focus on what this country needs most.”

McCarthy did, however, note that nominating Emmer is “going to be an uphill battle.”

In the past week of the Speaker standoff, Republicans have wondered which, if any, GOP lawmaker can muster enough support to win the gavel on the House floor.

“Getting 217 is obviously going to be very difficult and is the sort of Rubik’s Cube of the answer to all of this,” Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

One lawmaker is leading an effort to try and avoid another embarrassing showdown on the House floor over the party’s Speaker nominee. Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) is urging his colleagues to sign a pledge to back whomever the conference nominates in their internal election.

“Electing the next Speaker of the House will require unity from House Republicans,” Floor wrote in a statement. “This pledge is a new effort to help our conference put our differences aside and come together. I’m urging all my colleagues to join this pledge so we can move forward with electing a Speaker and get on with the people’s business.”

The signatory would pledge to “support the Speaker Designate duly elected by the House Republican Conference—regardless of who that candidate is—when their election proceeds to the House Floor” and “pledge to vote for the Speaker Designate on the House Floor for as long as they remain the Speaker Designate.”

As the nine-way race heats up, a number of lawmakers are starting to take sides — and some are backing their home-state colleagues.

In addition to McCarthy, Emmer has endorsements from Reps. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), Pete Stauber (Minn.) and Brad Finstad (R-Minn.). Donalds has secured backing from Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Cory Mills (R-Fla.). And a quartet of GOP Michigan lawmakers — Reps. Tim Walberg, John James, John Moolenaar and Lisa McClain — all threw their support behind Bergman.

Congress considers supplemental request as Israel, Ukraine wars continue

Lawmakers in both chambers this week will weigh in on the White House’s roughly $100 billion supplemental request, which was unveiled Friday.

The package includes roughly $61 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel’s defense, almost $14 billion for personnel and operations at the U.S.-Mexico border, $10 billion in humanitarian aid and $2 billion for Indo-Pacific security assistance.

The request comes as wars in Israel and Ukraine continue, and a record number of migrants are seen at the southern border.

The supplemental, however, is already receiving an icy reception among some lawmakers.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) called the package “dead on arrival,” and House Republicans have opposed sending additional aid to Ukraine.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), for their parts, have called for quick action on the funding request.

But the lack of a Speaker in the House could stall that process; without a Speaker, the House is unable to conduct legislative business.

McConnell spoke to that dynamic Sunday.

“I hope they can get a Speaker sometime soon, because it does send a — I think a poor message to our allies and our enemies around the world. And we also have work to do. We have appropriation bills to pass. We have the supplemental to deal with. So, I’m pulling for them to finally wrap this up sometime soon,” McConnell told “Fox News Sunday.”

Senate nears deal on minibus

The Senate is nearing an amendment agreement for the chamber’s minibus appropriations bill, which could unlock the package for consideration. The minibus includes legislation funding military construction and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development.

On Thursday, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said he reached a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on an amendment that would allow military veterans whose finances go into conservatorship to keep their firearms.

Kennedy had sought to get a vote on his amendment — an effort that held up consideration of the minibus — but Schumer previously called it a “poison pill.”

But Kennedy agreed to modify the language, and he now expects to receive a vote on the proposal. Because of that, he said he will allow the minibus to proceed for consideration.

Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Thursday, after news broke of the Kennedy deal, said she thinks the chamber is “very close” to settling the minibus issue.

<<In Yankee Stadium DiMaggio had 148 HRs in 3360 ABs. That's one home run every 22.70 ABs. Here are similar figures in other stadiums:

St. Louis 507 AB/45 HR = 11.27
Chicago 483/30 = 16.10
Boston 476/29 = 16.41
Washington 495/30 = 16.50
Detroit 518/30 = 17.27
Philadelphia 481/27 = 17.81
Cleveland 501/22 = 22.77.

Now, let's take this a little further and figure out how many additional home runs DiMaggio would have in each stadium had he played half of his games there rather than just one-seventh. However, we also have to subtract 6/7s of the 148 he actually hit at Yankee Stadium. Final figures:

St. Louis 481
Chicago 413
Boston 410
Washington 408
Detroit 399
Philadelphia 396
Cleveland 360>

It's surprising to see Memorial Stadium so much worse than any other-then again, after Indians started playing home games outside League Park after 1931, their batting numbers dropped and the pitchers' stats conversely improved.

<Sidney Powell may have pleaded guilty to interfering in the 2020 presidential election, but she still seems to think President Joe Biden's victory was illegitimate.

On her social media accounts, Powell has continued to push claims that the 2020 election was rigged and that prosecutors in Georgia who brought the criminal case against her are politically motivated. The newsletter published by her dark money group has shared articles arguing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis "extorted" her guilty plea.

Powell is a co-defendant in Willis' sprawling RICO lawsuit against Donald Trump and more than a dozen of his allies who sought to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. She initially represented Trump, alongside Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis (who pleaded guilty on Monday), as part of the former president's "Elite Strike Force" team of lawyers challenging his election loss.

The charges against Powell specifically accused her of racketeering, tampering with election equipment, stealing voter data, and lying to public officials about it. According to the indictment, Powell and Trump met in the White House in December 2020, where they discussed strategies for overturning the election. Powell also filed her own conspiratorial and typo-filled lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results in four swing states, all of which failed.

In her hearing Thursday, Powell pleaded guilty to six charges related to her scheme to tamper with election equipment and steal voter data in Coffee County.

None of that — nor the ongoing defamation lawsuits from election technology companies Dominion and Smartmatic — appear to have changed her tune.

On X, formerly known as Twitter, she has shared posts purporting the 2020 election was rigged and that law enforcement was politically biased against conservatives.

Over the weekend, Powell shared a post complaining that Trump "can't even have attorney client privilege." She also shared a post about a survey that claimed many Democrats believe "cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election."

On Monday, she asked her followers to watch "Police State," a new movie from conservative activist Dinesh D'Souza, which argues that law enforcement is biased against former President Donald Trump, who currently faces four pending criminal cases.

"Go see this movie!! It is so important and terrifying because it is true," Powell wrote, tagging right-wing media figures including catturd2, Dan Bongino, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

(D'Souza himself had previously pleaded guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution and was pardoned by Trump.)

Powell also reposted a video from Tim Fitton, who runs the right-wing watchdog organization Judicial Watch and has reportedly advised Trump on his legal issues. In the video, Fitton claimed Trump was under attack "for daring to dispute the Biden election," which he lost.

Her pinned post on her X profile is a graph suggesting that Georgia counted an unusual number of ballots voting for Democrats at the last minute. Biden won the state by more than 11,000 votes, a result confirmed by both an audit and a recount of the state's ballots.

Powell has also been promoting posts about the testimony of a witness in a separate, ongoing California disbarment trial for John Eastman, a co-defendant in the Atlanta criminal case and former Trump Justice Department official who sought to overturn the election results.

One post she promoted on the subject claimed there was "lots of evidence of election fraud being presented" in the trial. Another claimed there was "Too much evidence of the rigging."....>

<.....Powell's newsletter promoted a claim that Willis 'extorted' her guilty plea

The Substack newsletter for Defending the Republic, Powell's dark money group that she used to fund her lawsuits, has made even more inflammatory claims.

The newsletters — which Powell has promoted through her accounts on Truth Social and Telegram — are unsigned and there's no indication she writes them herself. No one responded to an inquiry sent to an email address associated with the newsletter.

Since her guilty plea, the newsletters have urged her followers to "hold fast." They told supporters to read and share articles and YouTube videos that argue her guilty plea was "extorted" and amounted to a blow to Willis, the Fulton County district attorney.

Saturday's newsletter quoted a Federalist article claiming "Willis basically extorted a guilty plea from Powell." The newsletter bolded a passage arguing she couldn't get a fair trial with "a jury culled from deep-blue Fulton County" and pointing out that the misdemeanors she pleaded guilty to "would be discharged from Powell's record following probation."

Powell's followers were directed to the same Federalist article again in her Monday newsletter. It also cited an Epoch Times article quoting Trump's attorney Steve Sadow, who said Powell only pleaded guilty because of "pressure" from Willis.

The arguments contract Powell's claims in her Thursday plea hearing, where she agreed her plea was "voluntary" and the charges had "a sufficient factual basis."

Neither Powell nor a representative for the Fulton County district attorney's office responded to a request for comment.

Ronald Carlson, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law, told Insider that Powell's comments are unusual for a cooperating witness, who is likely to be asked to testify on behalf of the prosecution at a trial.

"Usually after a guilty plea, the defendants do not want to rock the boat," Carlson said.

If the district attorney's office were to ask for a gag order on Powell, she would likely — like Trump in his criminal cases — argue she has a right to free speech, according to Carlson.

"It's very likely a situation where she's kind of saying, 'I'm going to exercise my right to free speech,' but one has to exercise care not to jeopardize anything in the plea agreement," Carlson said.

Before the 2020 election, Powell represented Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security advisor, who had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia's ambassador to the United States. With Powell as his lawyer, Flynn sought to withdraw his guilty plea and was ultimately pardoned by Trump.

If Trump is reelected president in 2024, he and his co-defendants would still have virtually no way to obtain a pardon in the Georgia case. But in Monday's newsletter, Defending the Republic shared a Truth Social post from Trump praising Powell's "valiant job of representing a very unfairly treated and governmentally abused General Mike Flynn."

"His prosecution, despite the facts, was ruthless," Trump wrote. "He was an innocent man, much like many other innocent people who are being persecuted by this now Fascist government of ours, and I was honored to give him a Full Pardon!">

<Sen. Kyrsten Sinema will face an exceedingly difficult re-election race in Arizona next year, if she chooses to run. But the Democrat-turned-independent may not be sweating it all that much.

According to reporter McKay Coppins's new book, "Romney: A Reckoning," Sinema once told Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah that she could "do anything" once she's out of office and feels that what she's done in the Senate is "good enough."

"I don't care. I can go on any board I want to. I can be a college president. I can do anything," she told Romney, according to the book. "I saved the Senate filibuster by myself. I saved the Senate by myself. That's good enough for me."

Hannah Hurley, a Sinema aide, disputed the characterization of the senator's remarks as presented in the book.

"Private conversations are easily misconstrued and mistaken during the game of telephone," Hurley said in a statement to Insider. "When asked about whether she was concerned that her stance on the filibuster could endanger her reelection changes, Kyrsten stated what she has stated for years now; she is not worried about winning the next election, and instead she is laser-focused on her ability and the Senate's ability to deliver lasting results for our country."

It's not unusual for former lawmakers to cash in on their service by joining corporate or philanthropic boards — or becoming college presidents — after leaving office. Former Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska resigned last year to become the president of the University of Florida.

Additionally, Sinema wasn't the only Democrat who opposed weakening the filibuster — the Senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation — last year; Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia also opposed the move.

Since her election to the Senate in 2018, Sinema has cut an unusual path, styling herself as a bipartisan dealmaker even as she has steadily alienated long-time Democratic allies. Romney, according to the book, admired how Sinema held firm as top Democrats pressured her to relent.

"The two senators bonded over their parallel descents into pariah status in their respective parties, and together they relished their self-perceptions as truth tellers and rebels," Coppins wrote. "Sinema affectionately nicknamed Romney 'trouble.'"

During the first two years of President Joe Biden's presidency, she has been involved in some of the most consequential bipartisan initiatives to emerge from the Senate, including the bipartisan infrastructure law, gun violence legislation, and the Respect for Marriage Act.

At the same time, she and Manchin prevented the passage of more ambitious policies pursued by Democrats, including refusing to support the weakening of the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation in January 2022 and killing the original "Build Back Better" social spending and climate bill.

Those moves earned her plaudits from senior Republicans, but ultimately cost her support within the Democratic Party. In December 2022, she left the Democratic party, and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego launched a campaign for her seat the following month.

If she decides to run in 2024, she's likely to face Gallego and the former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in the general election. Polling suggests that Sinema would trail both candidates, but her campaign argues that she can build a coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and independents to power her to victory.>

<BRETT ARENDS'S ROI

The tax year ends in less than three months, and financial advisers are facing a challenge reassuring their clients about changes to the laws on required minimum distributions, or RMDs, from retirement plans.

In the last four years, two laws have changed the rules about RMDs. “There is confusion,” says Scott Bishop, managing director at Presidio Wealth Partners in Houston — both about RMDs for IRAs inherited after Jan. 1, 2020, when the Secure Act 1.0 went into effect, and about the rules related to the new, higher age of 73 for RMDs that were set by the Secure Act 2.0, which became law on December 29, 2022 .

“The IRS has released several notices providing RMD relief, but it also seems to be adding to the confusion,” he adds.

“We are getting lots of questions about this from clients,” says Jude Boudreaux, a financial planner at the Planning Center in New Orleans. “This year it’s super confusing, since the RMD age has changed so much recently. Is it 70.5? 72? 73? The changes to inherited IRA rules are still not very clear.”

Advisers are “getting hammered” on this issue, says veteran financial planner and tax adviser Ed Slott, who is an expert on IRAs. He adds that RMD rule changes “are confounding advisers this year like never before.”

The original rules for RMDs were already complicated. You had to start withdrawing money from tax-deferred retirement plans, such as IRAs, once you turned 70½, but who keeps track of their 70½th birthday? The deadline for starting to make withdrawals was the year after this demibirthday.

Meanwhile, regarding the amount you need to to withdraw, the IRS explains, “a RMD is calculated for each account by dividing the prior Dec. 31 balance of that IRA or retirement plan account by a life expectancy factor that the IRS publishes in Tables in Publication 590-B, Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs).”

Oh, and there isn’t just one table to use for your long division. There are three: The Uniform Lifetime Table III, the Joint and Last Survivor Table II, and the Single Life Expectancy Table I.

“Choose the life expectancy table to use based on your situation,” the IRS says helpfully.

The penalties for making a mistake and withdrawing too little, or too late, were not merely onerous but confiscatory: 50% of the amount not withdrawn.

Those arguing that this system is designed to punish rich people trying to cheat the IRS should ask themselves who is more likely to get tripped up by rules like this: Rich people, with their army of professional accountants and lawyers, or everybody else?

In 2019, Congress passed the Secure Act — which stands for Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement. It raised the required starting age to 72. In 2022 Congress passed Secure 2.0, raising the age to 73. It also lowered the penalty to 10% — if you fix your mistake within two years.

Adding to the complexity, under the new law, the starting age is scheduled to rise again, to 75 — but not until 2033, just in time for Social Security’s financial crisis. This may be a coincidence.

The multiple changes to a complicated system have inevitably led to more confusion and uncertainty.

The first Secure Act “raised the RMD age from 70½ to 72,” says Nicholas Bunio, a financial planner with Retirement Wealth Advisors in Downington, Pa. “So, for those 70½ and 71, they could pause their RMDs … until they turned 72. The confusing thing started when Secure Act 2.0 passed right at the end of last year. This now increased the RMD age to 73 (not 72) for 2023 and beyond. So for those 72 this year, they can still pause their RMD until next year.”....>

<....But when you cut through all the fog, the key rule for 2023 is surprisingly simple, advisers confirm. If you were born in 1950 or earlier, you have to take RMDs this year. If you were born any later, from one minute after midnight on Jan. 1, 1951, you don’t.

“Bottom line: If you were born in 1950 or earlier, you will have an RMD this year,” Bishop says. “If you were born in 1951 or later, you will not have one this year.”

Slott says the same thing.

Clark Randall, a planner with Creekmur Wealth Advisors in Dallas, adds: “The easiest way to understand when RMDs need to start is by looking at the participant’s date of birth. Those born in 1950 or earlier have a 72 RMD age. Anyone born between 1951 and 1959 must take their RMDs starting at age 73. Finally, for those born in 1960 or later, they will have to start required minimum distributions at age 75.”

This applies to your own tax-deferred retirement accounts, including IRAs, Simple IRAs and, if you’re retired, 401(k)s, but not to inherited accounts. The rules on those are complex. Roth accounts, which are financed with after-tax dollars, do not have RMDs.

Oh, and there’s one more wrinkle. ”For those who do need to take their very first RMD, they technically can wait until April 15 of the following year,” says Bunio. “Otherwise, it’s Dec. 31 of the current year for future RMDs.” So even if you were born in 1951 and you turn 73 this year, you actually can wait till next April 15 to make this year’s RMD.

Got that?>