<.....And yet, Trump isn't entirely buying it. In the past week, the ex-president has asked confidants, with clear annoyance in his voice, why his former chief of staff would be telling prosecutors anything about Trump's activities "at all," two people familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone. The former president's position is that Meadows should invoke claims of executive privilege in these cases - the doctrine that some communications with a president should be shielded from outside scrutiny in certain circumstances.

It's a similar move to what former Trump administration official Peter Navarro attempted in defying a congressional subpoena from the Jan. 6 committee, landing him a conviction for contempt of Congress.

If Meadows and other witnesses indulged Trump's demands for a blanket defiance of prosecutors, Trump's ex-chief could also risk jail time. Trump's attorneys had attempted to block Meadows from testifying before a federal grand jury investigating the effort to overturn the election, citing executive-privilege claims. But in March, Judge Beryl Howell rejected the argument.

Navarro, a former top trade aide in the Trump White House, stonewalled a subpoena from the congressional Jan. 6 inquiry demanding he appear before the panel and turn over documents related to its investigation of the 2021 insurrection. Navarro's defiance earned him a criminal referral and a conviction on contempt of Congress charges in September. Steve Bannon, Trump's former White House chief strategist and campaign aide, also defied a subpoena from the Jan. 6 House committee and earned a conviction for contempt of Congress. Both men have appealed their convictions.

Trump's lack of loyalty to allies facing legal jeopardy for allegedly assisting him in various crimes has landed him in difficult spots in a number of cases.

"Trump's view of loyalty is one way, and that one way benefits only him. Donald has a history of using and abusing his associates, and he has shown no hesitation in throwing them under the bus when it suits his needs," Michael Cohen, a former Trump fixer and attorney who experienced that lack of reciprocal loyalty firsthand, said. "This is not the kind of person that people are willing to or should sacrifice their freedom for.">

<Former New York mayor and former Donald Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that American politics should "get rid" of the Democratic Party because it's "too corrupt" at the top.

In an interview with journalist Dan Ball on Wednesday for his show Real America, which airs on far-right, pro-Trump channel One America News (OAN), Giuliani praised the Republican Party as "a patriotic conservative movement" and blasted the Democratic Party as a self-serving organization.

"Political parties do their best job when they serve the country, not when the country is serving them," Giuliani told Ball, as shown in a clip shared on X, formerly known as Twitter, by OAN.

"Right now the Republican Party is a means to an objective, if you want to get there through conservative party, independent party... gosh, if you want to be a Democrat and vote Republican," he continued.

"I think you got to get rid of the Democrat Party, I think it's become too corrupt at the top," the former Trump lawyer added. "They probably should get rid of it if they're not hypocrites. Think of all the statues they take down because of slavery and whatever. Nobody had more to do with slavery than the Democrat Party, they were the architects of it."

Before the Civil War, the Democratic Party generally supported or tolerated slavery, but by the mid-20th century, it embraced progressive reforms and was supportive of the civil rights of minorities.

Calling the Democratic Party the "party of slavery," Giuliani and Ball mocked "made-up liberal facts" and the Democrats' "fact-checkers."

"Me and I like the truth, screw facts, we like the truth," Ball said.

In August, Giuliani was charged in Georgia alongside Trump and 17 other co-defendants in a sweeping racketeering indictment related to their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.

Both Trump and Giuliani were charged with 13 counts including, in the case of the former New York mayor, one count of violation of the Georgia RICO Act; three counts of solicitation of violation of oath by public officer; three counts of false statements and writing; two counts of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings; two counts of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree; one count of conspiracy to commit impersonating a public officer; and one count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.

Prosecutors in Fulton County said that Giuliani made false statements to state election officials in order to overturn the election's results, repeatedly pressing them on voting fraud claims he was told were false, and contributed to the harassment of two election workers.

The two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, are reportedly seeking between $15.5 million and $43 million from Giuliani at a defamation trial set to begin in December in Washington, D.C.

Giuliani, whose loyalty to Trump has been unfaltering through the years, called the indictment "an affront to American Democracy and does permanent, irrevocable harm to our justice system" and "a travesty." He surrendered to authorities at Fulton County jail in late August and his bond was set at $150,000.>

<fredthejackal>, I hope those fine ladies break Giuliani; how 'bout you? Would it give you a swift thrill? Hmmmm?

<Judge Caitlin Halligan’s recusal from the case that could overturn New York’s congressional maps could turn out to play a pivotal role.

During oral arguments Wednesday, the six remaining judges on the court of appeals seemed to fall into step with their opinions in last year’s 4–3 decision that tossed out New York’s congressional maps.

The crux of the Democrats’ case is that last year’s decision by the high court only applied to 2022 congressional elections and therefore the state’s redistricting commission and legislature should get another chance to redraw the maps for 2024.

“We’re at a different juncture,” Associate Judge Jenny Rivera said laying into the Republican’s [sic] lawyer, Misha Tseytlin.

Judge Caitlin Halligan. Selendy Gay Eisberg Rivera along with now-Chief Judge Rowan Wilson and Judge Shirley Troutman dissented in last year’s decision.

In an unusual decision, Wilson appointed 1st Judicial Department Presiding Judge Dianne Renwick to sit in for Halligan. Prior to Wilson, who was confirmed to the role by the state legislature earlier this year, judges would only be called up to fill-in if the panel couldn’t meet its five-person quorum.

Renwick only offered a few questions, primarily to Tseytlin, but offered little context tipping her hand on where she might land in her decision.

The other three judges still on the court from last year, Madeline Singas, Michael Garcia and Anthony Cannataro, hammered the Democrats’ lawyer and appeared sympathetic of Republicans’ assertion that the current lawsuit wasn’t filed soon enough.

Halligan offered little detail as to why she recused herself other than that she had a previous professional or personal relationship with one of the parties or lawyers involved in the case. She was confirmed to the bench earlier this year to fill the role of Wilson after he took over as chief judge.>

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) makes a striking claim in her new upcoming book, "MTG": that no Democrats were willing to defend the House chamber from the MAGA rioters breaching the Capitol on January 6.

“Several of the Republican congressmen said, ‘We’re going to stay right here and defend the House chamber,’" she wrote. "As they began barricading the door with furniture, I noticed not one Democrat was willing to stay to defend the chamber.”

But some of her Democratic colleagues are calling this out as untrue, reported The Guardian on Wednesday — including Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), who recounts he actually did just that.

“I got into ranger mode a little bit. Most of the members didn’t know how to use the emergency masks, so I was helping them get their emergency masks out of the bags and helped instruct a bunch of folks on how to put it on and how to use it. I wasn’t going to leave the House floor until every member was gone, so I waited until we were able to get everybody out,” Crow told The Denver Post at the time. He followed up with The Guardian: “Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t exist in the same reality as the rest of us. For those of us who were there on January 6 and actually defended the chamber from violent insurrectionists, her view is patently false. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

Other lawmakers have similar accounts of Democrats leaping into action to protect fellow lawmakers, in particular two who served in the Marines: “You also saw members doing their part to facilitate our evacuation – Seth Moulton, Ruben Gallego, and four or five others … who assumed a role of helping us to get out of there and working with the Capitol police to make sure that we were all safe,” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) told Business Insider.

This comes after Republicans sought to push a number of other disputed narratives about the attack, including that then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) refused assistance from the National Guard — a claim which has been repeatedly debunked.>

<The village of Fenton, outside the oil and gas town of Lake Charles, covers only about 20 blocks. There’s City Hall. The library. One gas station. A small public housing complex. A Dollar General. A grain elevator. A Baptist church. Drivers headed to east Texas from central Louisiana go right through town, passing it all in under a minute.

In many ways, Fenton is like other small towns in Louisiana. But it is remarkable in one way: This village of 226 people collected more money in a single year through fines and forfeitures, primarily traffic tickets, than almost any other municipality in Louisiana, according to audits.

In the year ending in June 2022, Fenton brought in $1.3 million that way.

The fines were collected through what’s known as a “mayor’s court”: a little-known type of small town court found only in Louisiana and Ohio. In Fenton, its primary function is processing the thousands of traffic tickets written annually by a few police officers. Here, the mayor is also the judge, appointing the prosecutor and, if drivers ask for a trial, deciding their guilt or innocence.

The mayor runs the village with revenue primarily made up of those fines. The bulk of the salaries of the people in the courtroom — everyone from the mayor to the clerk — comes from fines and fees collected by the court.

This arrangement is so ripe for conflict of interest that the fairness of mayor’s courts has been challenged several times. One case resulted in a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that curtailed the power of mayors who take in a lot of money through their court.

Fenton village attorney Mike Holmes, in an email to WVUE-TV and ProPublica, said the mayor presides over court in a “neutral, impartial manner” consistent with Louisiana law.

But the village’s court records suggest something else about how it handles some tickets: Case summaries include curious notes from village employees and police officers. Some say not to “fix” tickets or reduce charges for drivers who had a “bad attitude.” Others suggest that the police chief and others have had a hand in dismissing charges, although Holmes said tickets are dismissed only at his direction.

Getting clear answers to how Fenton operates its court, and how fairly, has been difficult. Over four visits, journalists from WVUE and ProPublica reviewed court files, town meeting minutes, municipal ordinances and body camera video. We asked for three and a half years of electronic case summaries. We tried, several times, to see the court in action and to meet with the mayor, eventually observing court once and speaking with the mayor for five minutes.

Village officials offered conflicting and confusing explanations for the mayor’s role, how and why tickets are reduced or dismissed, why the town asks the state to suspend so many drivers’ licenses and how often trials are held. Their description of how the town runs its court didn’t align with state Judicial College guidance or that U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Such irregularities demonstrate the problems inherent in this unique court system in place across Louisiana, said Joel Friedman, an emeritus professor at Tulane University in New Orleans who has taught procedural law for 46 years.

“The mayor who’s trying to raise money for the city is in charge of prosecuting these minor criminal offenses and getting fines brought back to the city,” he said. “There’s no accountability,” he added. “They can do whatever they want.”

A few people well-versed in mayor’s courts, including an attorney who was intrigued enough to write a book about them, said Fenton shouldn’t allow the mayor to preside over court.

Fenton has just 226 residents, but it collected about as much money through fines and forfeitures in a single year as Louisiana’s third-largest city, Shreveport, which has a population of 187,000.

Fenton is not unusual among small towns in Louisiana in administering justice through its mayor’s court.

Courts like this, which likely have been around since before Louisiana was a state, were carried over into the state’s modern judicial system when its constitution was updated in the 1970s, according to attorney Floyd Buras, who wrote that book on mayor’s courts. Now, they function as an informal way to handle minor offenses in about 250 municipalities, mostly small towns and villages.

Mayor’s courts operate in a gray area of Louisiana law. Like municipal courts, they handle violations of local ordinances. Municipal judges must hold a law degree and pass the bar; a mayor can preside over court without meeting any qualifications. Yet, like a municipal judge, a mayor can impose fines or sentence people to jail.....>

<....Mayor’s courts must ensure defendants have fair trials. But unlike other courts in the state, they aren’t subject to rules like the Code of Criminal Procedure that are supposed to ensure courts are run fairly and properly.

“They sort of operate in the shadow of the law,” said Eric Foley, an attorney with the MacArthur Justice Center, a law firm that litigates for civil rights in criminal justice.

Fenton’s court is the main reason the town’s revenue for the year ending in June 2022 was about five times as high as the average Louisiana municipality its size. This tiny village collected about as much through fines and forfeitures as Shreveport, the state’s third-largest city, with a population of 187,000. (The state provides no official definition of “fines and forfeitures,” but it generally refers to penalties for breaking the law and associated fees.)

The average municipality in the U.S. gets 1.7% of its revenue from fines and forfeitures, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that promotes equity. In Fenton, it’s 92.5%.

That’s the highest percentage of any municipality in Louisiana, according to a survey by WVUE and ProPublica of audits on file with the state.

It’s also one of the highest percentages in the whole country. In a frequently cited review of local government data by the news outlet Governing in 2019, Fenton ranked second-highest for its share of revenue that came from fines and forfeitures.

Governing said nearly 600 jurisdictions in the U.S., including 70 in Louisiana, collected at least 10% of general fund revenue through fines and forfeitures.

Advocates for the poor say a reliance on fines, which they call “taxation by citation,” distorts the role of police departments. “It’s almost impossible to generate that much of your revenue without doing pretty abusive things,” said Joanna Weiss, co-executive director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, which promotes what it calls equitable fees in the justice system.

Holmes, the attorney for Fenton, said fines make up an outsized share of its revenue because, like many other small towns, it doesn’t bring in much money from sales or property taxes. “While revenues fluctuate from year to year, Village of Fenton Police Department has long had an active traffic enforcement policy,” he wrote.

That enforcement is particularly active on the north side of town, where U.S. Route 165 shifts from a divided highway to a five-lane road. Just before drivers reach a welcome sign, the speed limit drops from 65 mph to 50. Police cruisers often wait nearby, in a stand of trees across from a small roadside cemetery.

That’s where Nikki Cross got her ticket last year. She was returning to Bridge City, Texas, about 70 miles away, to pick up her son after meeting a client north of Lake Charles for her sales job.

Cross said she braked when she saw the speed limit drop. She was ticketed for driving 61 mph in a 50 mph zone. “I told them I was slowing down at the time; I just didn’t slam on my brakes to get to the speed I needed to be at,” Cross said in a text message to WVUE and ProPublica.

Her fine: $210.00.

Mayor, Judge and Jury

The Supreme Court has ruled that a mayor can’t be impartial as a judge if he oversees the town’s finances and if its court brings in a substantial share of the town’s revenue, like Fenton’s does. Mayor Eddie Alfred Jr. initially told WVUE and ProPublica he doesn’t preside over court, but village attorney Mike Holmes later confirmed Alfred does after we saw the mayor sitting at the bench in September.

Legally, there’s nothing improper about a town like Fenton collecting so much of its revenue through its mayor’s court. But when it does, court rulings say, the mayor shouldn’t both hold the town’s gavel and sign its paychecks.

In a 1972 case, a driver contesting two $50 traffic tickets in Monroeville, Ohio, argued that he had been denied a fair trial because the mayor who ruled against him was responsible for law enforcement and for producing revenue for the town. At the time, Monroeville generated 37% to 51% of its annual revenue from its mayor’s court, much less than Fenton.....>

<.....The case, Ward v. Monroeville, went to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 7-2 decision, Justice William Brennan Jr. wrote that the issue turned on “whether the Mayor can be regarded as an impartial judge.” He can’t, Brennan wrote, if he presides over court and also manages the town’s finances, and if the court generates a substantial part of the town’s revenue.

A week later, the Louisiana attorney general’s office followed up with an opinion instructing Louisiana towns with mayor's courts to assess whether they were in a similar situation as Monroeville.

Subsequent rulings have cited that Supreme Court opinion. In 1995, a federal judge in Ohio ruled that a mayor could be considered biased on the bench if just 10% of the town’s revenue came from its mayor’s court. In 2019, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a judge in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court had a conflict of interest when setting bail bonds because the court collected a fee based on the amount of each bond.

A training video on mayor’s courts released this year by the Louisiana Judicial College, the educational arm of the state Supreme Court, addresses this conflict of interest. It advises mayors to appoint an attorney to preside over their court if it brings in more than 10% of the town’s revenue. Some towns, including many in the New Orleans area, have done that.

But we found at least nine other municipalities in the state where staff confirmed that the mayor presides over court even though collections make up anywhere from 18% to 79% of the town’s annual revenue.

Bobby King, the prosecutor for the mayor’s court in Walker, near Baton Rouge, led that Louisiana Judicial College video training. In an interview, he said he would advise Fenton, or any municipality in its position, to appoint a magistrate. “You can’t be fair and impartial,” he said, “if you’re wanting to spend money on a park and a big part of that money comes from fines and fees.”

Yet it was not easy to determine who presides over court in Fenton. In a phone call in June, Eddie Alfred Jr., who has been the village’s mayor since 2009, was eager to talk about its traffic ticketing system. But he said he doesn’t preside over court.

Instead, Alfred said, defendants talk to Holmes, the prosecutor. If someone pleads not guilty, Holmes shows the driver a video of their violation. After that, Alfred claimed, “not one person” has maintained their innocence since he has been mayor. If they did, he said, they would go to the district court in Jennings, the seat of Jefferson Davis Parish.

When we visited Fenton in September to observe court, “Judge Alfred,” as he is referred to in court records, donned a black judge’s robe, walked down the hall from the mayor’s office and sat at the bench. No one was waiting to have their cases heard. After Holmes noted for the record that several people had missed their court date, Alfred said, “Court is now adjourned.” Afterward, he refused to speak with us and went back to his office.

Holmes later confirmed that Alfred does preside over court; when asked about the mayor’s statement to the contrary, Holmes said it “must have resulted from misunderstanding or miscommunication.” Asked why the mayor serves as judge when the village collects so much money from the court, Holmes said, “He is authorized to do so by law.”

Four lawyers who spoke with us — the law professor, the author of the book on mayor’s courts, the civil rights attorney and the prosecutor who led the Judicial College training — said they believe Fenton is violating the Supreme Court ruling.

“Even if you can’t point to the mayor actually being on the record saying, ‘I have to keep up these prosecutions to maintain this funding,’ the fact that the average person put in that mayor’s shoes might feel that temptation — that’s kind of enough,” Foley said.

“Our main income is traffic tickets”

Actually, Fenton’s mayor has said something quite similar.

In a recording made in September and obtained by WVUE and ProPublica, Alfred can be heard telling village employees that there could be layoffs due to financial problems.

“Our main income is traffic tickets, and they ain’t getting written,” he said, according to one person who was in the meeting and another village employee who identified the voice on the recording as the mayor’s. They asked not to be named for fear of retribution. “We need to write more traffic tickets.”

Holmes, who handled our inquiries, did not respond to our request for comment on that statement.....>

<.....On the north side of Fenton, just before a welcome sign, the speed limit drops from 65 mph to 50. Police cruisers often wait here to catch speeders. Officers write, on average, about 16 tickets per day.

Fenton’s court records paint a picture of a justice system in which some people are punished for how they act while others are rewarded for who they know.

We found a dozen court records that include notations from officers and village employees saying not to “help” people or “fix” their tickets because drivers were rude. On a ticket for driving 71 mph in a 50: “Refused phone number, driver was very disrespectful no help.” Fine: $305.

A ticket for 81 in a 50: “Very bad attitude. Do not fix.” Fine: $490.

Video from an officer’s body camera during one traffic stop shows a woman, stopped for driving 62 mph, asking the officer to show her the radar reading and to let her go with a warning.

“What else do you guys do around this town?” she asked the officer after he handed her a ticket.

“Protect and serve,” he responded.

Her file reads, “Bad attitude.” She was fined $215.

Some tickets bear officers’ handwritten notes saying drivers had a “bad attitude.” We found a dozen court records with notations saying not to “help” people or “fix” their tickets because of their behavior. Holmes said such notes do not affect how cases are decided. (Obtained by WVUE and ProPublica. Redacted and highlighted by ProPublica.)

Holmes said notes about drivers’ behavior have nothing to do with how cases are decided. “A defendant is not punished for rude behavior during a traffic stop, but rather for objective, provable violations of law,” he told WVUE and ProPublica. Besides, he said, the vast majority of drivers decide to pay their tickets. (We spoke to several drivers with such notations in their files. Of those three, two said they didn’t contest their charges; the third said he couldn’t remember.)

Fourteen court files include notations saying a charge was dismissed after someone, often in law enforcement, had intervened. “Dismissed per Chief Alfred,” said the record for a ticket issued to someone who, according to the notation, knew a village employee.

Luther Alfred, the chief, said he sometimes gets requests to dismiss tickets and passes them on to the judge or prosecutor. Though he acknowledged that he has written “Dismiss” on paperwork and signed his name, he said he doesn’t dismiss charges himself and doesn’t have that authority.

Phillip Hattaway’s file for a speeding ticket he received in 2022 says, “Ivy Woods asked to dismiss per O’Quinn.” Woods is the sheriff of Jefferson Davis Parish, and Sgt. Vernon O’Quinn is Fenton’s police sergeant. In an interview, Hattaway said he contacted people he knew in law enforcement, asking for help. His ticket was dismissed. “It was short and sweet,” Hattaway said. “They just got it taken care of.”

O’Quinn said the department was “asked if we could provide any assistance,” and he “advised he didn’t have a problem with it and recommended to the prosecutor for dismissal.”

Asked why his name appears on court records, Woods said many people ask if he can get tickets reduced to nonmoving violations. “You’d be surprised how many tickets Fenton writes,” he said. “They’re pretty tough — they like their money.”.....>

<....But he didn’t acknowledge calling in any favors, saying that the village “might be covering their butts, saying the sheriff asked.” Although he offered to elaborate later, he didn’t respond to subsequent phone calls.

In response to questions for this article, Holmes said, “Requests for consideration to amend or dismiss charges are received from myriad sources.” He didn’t answer a question about how the village decides which requests to act on.

We reached out to more than 100 drivers, including about 40 whose files said something about their behavior or why a ticket had been dismissed, and interviewed about 35. Several said they felt like they had been caught in a speed trap or said they had heard from others about Fenton’s reputation for traffic enforcement.

Fenton “most certainly does NOT operate a ‘speed trap,’” Holmes wrote to WVUE and ProPublica. Speed limits are well marked, police officers are stationed in the open, and tickets are rarely issued unless drivers are going more than 11 mph over the limit, he said.

Several drivers said they had been threatened with license suspensions or even arrest, both of which are allowed under state law.

When April Dugas called to ask for leniency on a ticket for driving 65 in a 50 mph zone, she said she was told Fenton issues warrants for unpaid tickets. “I was living in Texas in my car with no money for gas to go back,” said Dugas, who now lives in the central Louisiana city of Alexandria. “My grandma had to pay the ticket, so I wouldn’t have warrants out for my arrest.”

Holmes didn’t respond to a question about whether village employees threaten drivers with arrest if they don’t pay. He did say the village sometimes issues an arrest warrant to compel someone’s appearance in court, typically when they don’t show up for trial, but it’s “fairly rare.”

For those who miss court and don’t pay, the consequences can be severe. Fenton sent the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles about 750 requests to suspend driver’s licenses between 2018 and June, a number on par with much larger municipalities in the state.

Asked why Fenton does this, Holmes at first said state law requires municipalities to notify the state when someone doesn’t show up for court. He later acknowledged that’s not true and cited a two-year deadline under state law to request a suspension.

The village has asked the state to suspend some drivers’ licenses over a single unpaid speeding ticket, records show.

That’s what happened to Santina Griffin, a hairdresser in New Orleans who was stopped for driving 74 mph in a 50 mph zone on her way back from a funeral. She said she meant to ask the judge for leniency because she was lost at the time. But as a student and a single mom, she couldn’t make it back to Fenton for her court appearance.

She was surprised to hear the judge was also the mayor: “Sounds like a monopoly to me.”

Court Is In Session

Drivers who want to contest their speeding tickets must show up at Fenton’s City Hall, where mayor’s court meets once a month.

In a town the size of Fenton, visitors are conspicuous. We were especially so — four journalists toting notebooks and a video camera, driving around town, flying a drone overhead, watching police officers wait for speeders.

After checking out the town, we went to its small City Hall, where we encountered Luther Alfred, the police chief and uncle of the mayor, and O’Quinn, who came up to us to chat. We had been driving around recording video for a couple of hours by then, and they mentioned some places we had been. O’Quinn chuckled about a man who had warned us to keep our drone away from his house about 15 minutes earlier.

The people of Fenton care about three things, O’Quinn said: “Christ, family and the Fenton Police Department.”

We wanted to see how the court handled tickets written by that police department, but we saw the mayor handle cases just once in the four times we went to court.

Over the summer, Alfred had promised to talk to us when we came for the August court session. That was the first time we made the three-hour trek from New Orleans. But the mayor skipped our interview and canceled court without notice, surprising us and a few defendants waiting at City Hall....>

<.....When we went back in September, no defendants showed up. A court staffer later told us that few people come to court. Before the October hearing, we called ahead to arrange a time to review some files. A few days beforehand, court was canceled without explanation.

Last week, we gave it one last shot. This time, as our reporter pulled up to City Hall, she was surprised to see cars parked along the road. She took the only open spot, a patch of grass outside a utility building.

As a dozen defendants filtered in, Holmes, the prosecutor, fetched some chairs from the kitchen to accommodate them. He described what would happen. Tonight, he said, they were in what’s called a mayor’s court. This was an arraignment, where they would each enter a plea. He spent about 20 minutes describing their rights: You have the right to appeal to district court. You have the right not to incriminate yourself.

Holmes had told us that he offers plea deals to many drivers, and he did just that, telling them to meet him in the kitchen if they were interested.

Then he called the judge in. Alfred, wearing his judge’s robe, sat at a large wooden desk emblazoned with the village seal. Holmes called up each driver to answer to their charges before the judge. Most pleaded no contest, which means they didn’t admit guilt but accepted punishment.

When a driver wants to contest a ticket, Holmes had told us, the driver or a lawyer shows up in court, pleads not guilty and is told to return later. “A trial is conducted with all care to ensure each defendant receives due process and is treated fairly before the court,” he said.

That’s not what happened with one case that night. One man, facing a charge of failing to use his turn signal, insisted he was innocent. The mayor told him to wait so O’Quinn could find video of the stop and play it in court. The video was inconclusive, however, and the driver maintained his innocence. Holmes said if the officer were called to testify, he likely would say the driver had broken the law. But he suggested the charge be dropped, and the mayor agreed.

Under state law, mayor’s courts are required to keep a record of all trials, but we had been told there was none and that there hadn’t been a trial since at least 2018. Holmes had told us the mayor “is rarely called upon to pass judgment at trial.”

Afterward, our reporter went up to ask Holmes more questions. The mayor called her into the kitchen. He wanted to make sure she had noticed how lenient the court had been with defendants.

“We’re not without compassion,” Holmes said.

Alfred said he believes he’s a fair judge, despite all the money he collects through court. But, he said, we’d been asking a lot of questions. “Now,” he said, “we have to hire someone.”

That was the topic of discussion a week later, when the three members of the board of aldermen held their monthly meeting in the same kitchen where Holmes had arranged plea deals. “The mayor can’t be the judge,” Alfred said, “which to me does not make sense.“ A man named Hugh Cunningham, who presides over mayor’s court in a nearby town, stood up and described how he would run the court if hired.

Board members objected. “We have to pay somebody to be the judge when he was judging for nothing,” said one board member about Alfred.

For about 15 minutes, Holmes laid out why the town should appoint a magistrate: the Supreme Court ruling, attorney general’s opinions, the possible appearance of bias.

Under the law, Holmes said, it’s up to the mayor to appoint a magistrate; the board votes on that decision. It didn't take long for Alfred to make up his mind: “I think we should put it off because I think this court is fair.”

How We Reported This Story

Louisiana law requires municipalities to turn in yearly financial reports to the state auditor. Over several months, we reviewed the most recent available annual audits for all 301 municipalities and two combined city-parish governments required to file audits with the state. We compared revenue from fines and forfeitures to overall governmental revenue.....

We compared all municipalities, regardless of whether they had a mayor’s court. (There is no official list of municipalities in Louisiana with mayor’s courts, but the state Supreme Court said there are about 250.) Of all the municipalities we reviewed, Fenton’s share of total revenue from fines and forfeitures was the highest.>

<Judge Aileen Cannon again ruled against the Justice Department on setting the court schedule for in the Trump classified documents trial — and her latest decision has onlookers alarmed.

The judge ruled Thursday against the Department of Justice's attempt to set some key deadlines ahead of Donald Trump's trial. Special counsel Jack Smith's office had asked for a December deadline for Trump's legal team to disclose what classified materials they intended to use at trial.

But Cannon denied their motion and instead set the deadline for March — which legal experts agreed would almost certainly delay the trial that had been scheduled to start in May — and probably take it past the 2024 election.

Among expert's [sic] concerns is that, if Trump is elected, he will have the Justice Department drop the case against him or simply pardon himself.

The matter prompted legal analysts and national security experts to question whether it's time to go over Judge Cannon's head to the 11th Circut Court of Appeals. Thus far, the special counsel hasn't gone that far, despite being shut down at every turn by the judge.

"I have long been opposed to Smith’s team getting the 11th Circuit involved with respect to Cannon’s scheduling rulings. I just didn’t see it as worthwhile and expected any such step would cause the very delay Smith was trying to avoid anyway. At this point, it might be needed," said national security lawyer Bradley Moss.

MSNBC host and legal contributor Katie Phant [sic] agreed: "I'm questioning Judge Cannon’s ability to preside over a case involving CIPA."

CIPA stands for the Classified Information Procedures Act, which determines how court cases work when classified information is involved. Trump is accused of taking classified information from the White House, keeping it in his Florida home, showing it to others, and then obstructing justice when law enforcement asked for the documents to be returned.

But legal analyst Lisa Rubin did an extensive thread on social media about the issue.

"When Judge Aileen Cannon decided against moving her May 2024 trial date last week, some cheered while those familiar with classified information cases noted her new motion schedule is virtually incompatible with a May trial (and that she knows it)," wrote Rubin. "Trust them. Here's why: The Classified Information Procedures Act has seven sections, and Cannon's initial schedule for the case allowed for briefing across them all. But her newest order stopped with Section 4, and folks like [The Guardian's reporter] Hugo Lowell noticed."

Today, Rubin explained, Judge Cannon determined the pretrial deadlines weren't going to be set until after March 1, 2024.

"By that point, however, Trump will be three days away from the opening of the DC federal election interference trial, which itself could bleed into May," she continued. "I'll predict now that the date for the classified docs trial will slip away like, well, a Trump-held classified doc."

Georgia constitutional law professor Anthony Michael Kreis wondered, "Maybe this will cause Fani Willis to reconsider what to push before Judge McAfee and avoid a trial bleeding into 2025.">

<Reacting to a newly released recording of Donald Trump's interactions with his Secret Service detail as supporters of the former president stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, a former federal prosecutor said it could be entered into evidence in Judge Tanya Chutkan's courtroom.

In the recording, released by ABC News' Jonathan Karl and recorded on March 18, 2021, Trump boasts that he would have been "well-received" by the crowd that showed up on the day the 2020 presidential election results were to be certified.

Speaking with CNN's John Berman, former federal prosecutor Jennifer Rogers predicted the new recording would bolster special counsel Jack Smith's case Jan. 6 case that's been filed in Washington, D.C.

"I want to go back to the Jonathan Karl tape of Donald Trump talking about January 6th just a short time after," Berman prompted. "[CNN's] Kate [Bolduan] suggested that this could play in the March federal trial involving Donald Trump. How so? What was important there?"

"They have charged him, of course, with this vast conspiracy to effectively steal the election," Rogers replied before continuing, "They didn't charge him with the insurrection itself per se, but this is all evidence of that conspiracy, right, because the insurrection of course was the last ditch effort to stop Congress from certifying the vote.

"So the fact that he's recorded saying, basically, I knew that these were my supporters — they were there to do what I wanted them to do to stop the certification, is good evidence of his participation," she continued.

"He really seemed to know what was going on up at the Capitol on January 6th and even suggested that he could have gone up there and calmed them down," Berman agreed. "Now, I don't know that that has any legal importance here, but maybe some political impact."

"Yeah, I mean, the notion that he sat on his hands while watching TV and did absolutely nothing, knowing that they were there to do what he wanted them to do, and didn't do anything to stop the violence going on at the time is a pretty persuasive point about his bad actions," Rodgers replied.>

<The White House is hitting back against House Republicans and their impeachment inquiry into the president by demanding that GOP lawmakers withdraw their subpoenas targeting Biden family members and administration officials.

In a letter obtained by NBC News, White House counsel Richard Sauber called the requests for information and interviews “unjustified,” and characterized the overall impeachment inquiry as “illegitimate.” The letter, dated Friday, was addressed to House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Ky., and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

“Your latest steps follow an irresponsible set of subpoenas and requests for interviews that you launched last week, directed to multiple members of the President’s family, all of whom are private citizens, including for example the President’s deceased son’s widow and her sister,” Sauber wrote. “These unjustified requests were sent despite the fact that, after a year of investigating, voluminous records and testimony from dozens of witnesses have refuted your baseless allegations about the President.”

Comer has released a long list of subpoenas and requests for interviews and documents focused on several Biden family members and their associates. Included in the group are the president’s son Hunter Biden, brother James Biden, his daughter-in-law Melissa Cohen and the widow of his deceased son Beau, Hallie Biden. Sauber described the requests of information from the private citizens as an example of weaponizing the power of Congress to attack a political opponent.

The subpoenas of Biden family members came after House Republicans obtained thousands of pages of bank records connected to James and Hunter Biden. They released details on two interest-free loans from the president to his brother that were repaid in full during the period when Biden was not in office. Comer suggested that the loan arrangement was part of a suspicious business deal involving James Biden, but did not provide definitive documentation to back up that claim.

The status of the impeachment inquiry and whether it leads to articles of impeachment remains an open question. Speaker Mike Johnson, who as a rank-and-file member of Congress was very critical of the Biden family's business practices, has taken a more muted approach to the probe since taking the gavel. He has described impeachment as one of the “heaviest powers” that members of Congress have at their disposal and promised that he would not predetermine the outcome, preferring instead to see where the evidence leads....>

Maybe the Bidens should respond--if at all--once Jordan answers his J6 subpoena.

<.....Johnson's approach has led some conservative members of the House GOP caucus to raise concerns about where he stands while publicly pushing for Republicans to be more aggressive in their inquiry. Johnson huddled with the Comer, Jordan and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., this week to get an update on the status of the inquiry and subsequently released a statement signaling the investigation was moving toward conclusion.

“At this stage, our impeachment inquiry has already shown the corrupt conduct of the President’s family, and that he and White House officials have repeatedly lied about his knowledge and involvement in his family’s business activities,” Johnson said in a statement.

He went on to say, “I commend the good work of Chairmen Comer, Jordan, and Smith. As we move forward toward an inflection point in this critical investigation, they have my full and unwavering support.”

In his letter Friday, Sauber argued that the impeachment inquiry was without merit.

“Rather than acknowledge the insufficiency of the evidence, you have consistently misrepresented the documents and testimony you have received and then moved the goalposts when your claims have been debunked, as you appear to be doing here,” he wrote. “This pattern of distortions and falsehoods lays bare that no amount of truthful testimony or document productions will satisfy you and exposes the improper nature of your Committees’ efforts.”

Sauber also criticized the fact that the impeachment inquiry was launched without a vote on the House floor.

“You also claim the mantle of an 'impeachment inquiry' knowing full well that the Constitution requires that the full House authorize an impeachment inquiry before a committee may utilize compulsory process pursuant to the impeachment power—a step the Republican House Majority has so far refused to take,” he wrote.

It is unlikely that Sauber’s call to withdraw the subpoenas will lead to a different course of action by the GOP-led committees.

In a statement to NBC News, Comer accused the president of lying and demanded more information.

“If President Biden has nothing to hide, then he should make his current and former staff available to testify before Congress about his mishandling of classified documents," Comer said.

"President Biden and this White House are seeking to obstruct our investigation at every turn," he added. "We are not deterred by this obstruction and will continue to follow the facts and hold President Biden accountable to the American people.”

As it stands, Hunter Biden is scheduled to participate in a closed-door transcribed interview on Dec. 13, a week after James Biden has been asked to appear.>

<A judge appointed by President Donald Trump ruled that North Dakota's legislative maps violated the Votings [sic] Rights Act (VRA) and must be revised before the end of the year.

The ruling filed Friday follows similar legal action centered around redistricting and discriminatory lawsuits that have succeeded in states since 2022, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina. Lawsuits are still being deliberated in Texas.

An Alabama map was forced to be redrawn by the state's GOP-led Legislature due to a lack of Black representation, with a judge ruling that the map drawn by conservatives showed one majority-Black district among the seven, even though one-quarter of the state's population is Black.

On Thursday, a Georgia judge similarly ruled that a Republican-drawn map is a gerrymander that dilutes the power of Black voters. The order could impact the makeup of the U.S. House of Representatives, which is controlled by the GOP, after the 2024 elections.

U.S. District Chief Judge Peter Welte, who was nominated by Trump in 2017 to fill a vacancy, said in the ruling that legislative districts drawn in North Dakota with 2020 Census data that went into effect in 2021 violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits any "standard, practice, or procedure" that "results in a denial or abridgment of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color[.]"

Mike Nowatzki, spokesperson for North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, told Newsweek via email that the governor is still reviewing the opinion and that his office will be in touch with Secretary of State Mark Howe and legislative leaders about their next steps. Howe was the defendant in the lawsuit.

Welte wrote that the legislative redistricting diluted the voting power of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and Spirit Lake Tribe, who along with individual Native American voters, filed the lawsuit based in northeastern North Dakota due to voters currently being able to elect the candidate of their choice in only one district rather than two under the previous map.

The two districts are about 60 miles apart, according to the Associated Press.

Newsweek reached out to both tribes via phone and email for comment.

"I am moderately surprised [at the ruling]," Mark Jendrysik, a professor of political science and public administration the University of North Dakota, told Newsweek. "There has been long-term agitation by Native Americans around voting rights and representation in the Legislature. I'm surprised it came down because historically the general view is that Native Americans are sufficiently represented in how districts are drawn."

The recent number of cases and legal challenges are due to the U.S. Supreme Court rulings on gerrymandering, which he said opened the floodgates and "obviously people are going to test the limits of that."

But the ruling will likely make no political difference in North Dakota, he added, due to massive Republican super majorities. Native Americans, due to the redrawn maps, could gain at most one to two seats but the legislative effect will be minute.

The complaint alleged that the Republican-led Legislature packed Native American voters from the two tribal groups into one legislative district and spread them out among nearby districts, according to Democracy Docket.

A four-day bench trial was held in June. Howe argued that the state's 2021 redistricting plan is lawful.

While Welte said in his ruling that Howe and the Legislature sought input from the tribes and other Native American representatives, he added that their efforts did not go far enough to comply with Section 2 of the VRA.

Newsweek reached out to Howe and his office via email for comment.

Howe and the Assembly have until December 22 to adopt a new legislative map, with the tribes able to file any objections January 5. The district's new map will take effect in the November 2024 election.>

<Judge Tanya Chutkan took a jab at Donald Trump on Friday as she denied a key motion his team filed to strike some language from his federal indictment in Washington about his alleged efforts to subvert the 2020 election result that culminated in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Trump’s team took issue with portions of the indictment that they argued could pollute a jury pool, specifically portions that asserted that insurrectionists traveled to D.C. to physically stop the certification of the 2020 election at the former president’s behest.

One of the sentences that Trump’s team flagged as prejudicial stated that a “large and angry crowd—including many individuals whom [Trump] had deceived into believing the Vice President could and might change the election results—violently attacked the Capitol and halted the proceeding.”

But Chuktan [sic] ruled that Trump won’t be permitted to expel what he deems to be inflammatory language from the indictment after he’d repeatedly gone on the record and made scores of “inflammatory and unsupported accusations” of his own.

She then flamed Trump’s lawyers for filing the motion—which claimed potential jurors were being exposed to “prejudicial allegations” from the indictment through media coverage—without providing any proof this was actually true.

“Defendant fails to cite even one example of that evidence,” Chutkan wrote in the filing.

Trump’s D.C. trial is scheduled to begin with jury selection in February, and is being prosecuted by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Smith has accused Trump of sneakily trying “at any cost” to have the trial pushed back beyond the 2024 election, in which Trump remains the frontrunner for the GOP.

Among these tactics, prosecutors wrote, were claims by Trump’s team that they needed a months-long extension of deadlines for various motions. Trump’s lawyers insisted they didn’t have enough time to review the millions of pages of documents that Smith’s team had produced, partly because Trump faces three other concurrent indictments in different states.

Chutkan agreed to a small extension for Trump’s team earlier this month, granting them an extra few weeks to file motions related to evidence and subpoenas, with the new deadline for the latter being Dec. 13.>

<Special counsel Robert Hur is not expected to charge anyone in his investigation into the mishandling of classified documents at two locations connected to President Joe Biden, two sources close to the investigation told CNN. Hur and his team are crafting a detailed report about the year-long probe that is expected to be critical of Biden and his staff for their handling of sensitive materials and go into extensive detail about the special counsel's findings. Investigators on Hur's team have informed other Department of Justice officials that they aim to complete the report by the end of the year, but that timeline could change.

Former President Donald Trump raged on social media after learning of the CNN report, bemoaning a supposed double standard. "WOW! FAKE NEWS CNN, THROUGH A LEAK FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF INJUSTICE, HAS JUST REPORTED THAT NO CHARGES WILL BE FILED IN THE (MUCH BIGGER THAN MINE!!!) CROOKED JOE BIDEN DOCUMENTS CASE. WE ARE LIVING IN A VERY CORRUPT COUNTRY!" he wrote on Truth Social Friday morning.

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance notes, however, that Biden's case — and that of former Vice President Mike Pence, who was also investigated for mishandling classified documents but left unscathed — are very different from Trump's. "Trump was given every chance to return the documents after the National Archives realized they were missing. Biden & Pence both self-reported," Vance wrote on X/Twitter. "The biggest problem for Trump is his lengthy history of trying to hold onto documents when asked, even subpoenaed, for them.">

<Federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan pointed the finger at former President Donald Trump in a blistering order denying a motion to strike mentions of January 6 from his election cromes trial.

Judge Chutkan is presiding in the election crimes case against Trump brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith, and issued an order Friday in which she denied Trump’s motion “to Strike Inflammatory Allegations From the Indictment.”

In concluding her order, Judge Chutkan threw in an aside about Trump’s own “inflammatory and unsupported accusations” against President Joe Biden, and referenced the potential for prejudice “generated by the defendant”:

Defendant’s sixteen-page Reply In Support of the Motion, despite making numerous inflammatory and unsupported accusations of its own, see, e.g., ECF No. 156 at 7 (“President Biden directed the Department of Justice to prosecute his leading opponent for the presidency through a calculated leak to the New York Times.”), devotes only a single paragraph to the prejudice requirement.

His sole argument is that even if the jury does not receive a copy of the indictment, “[v]oluminous evidence exists here that the jury pool has been, and continues to be, exposed to the Indictment and its inflammatory and prejudicial allegations, through media coverage relating to the case.” Id. at 16. But Defendant fails to cite even one example of that evidence. In any event, the voir dire process will allow the court to examine and address the effects that pretrial publicity, including any generated by Defendant, has had on the impartiality of potential jurors.

When trial begins, the court will also take steps to screen from the jury any irrelevant and prejudicial material that either party seeks to introduce. Moreover, before the jurors deliberate, the court will instruct them on the actual charges and the evidence they may consider in their deliberations. See United States v. Empire Bulkers Ltd., 583 F. Supp. 3d 746, 760 (E.D. La. 2022) (providing that jury instructions would “make clear to [jurors] what defendants are actually charged with” and “the verdict form will not ask the jury to consider issues for which defendants have not been charged”). This too will prevent “potential prejudice from the alleged surplusage.”

For these reasons, Defendant’s Motion to Strike Inflammatory Allegations from the Indictment, ECF No. 115, is hereby DENIED.

Trump faces four felony charges under Smith’s indictment against Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election: conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.>

<What influences the choices we make, and what role does the behavior of others have on these choices? These questions underlie many aspects of human behavior, including the products we buy, fashion trends, and even the breed of pet we choose as our companion.

Now, a new Stanford study that used population and statistical models to analyze the frequency of specific moves in 3.45 million chess games helps reveal the factors that influence chess players' decisions. The researchers' analysis of chess games revealed three types of biases described by the field of cultural evolution, which uses ideas from biology to explain how behaviors are passed from person to person. Specifically, they found evidence of players copying winning moves (success bias), choosing atypical moves (anti-conformity bias), and copying moves by celebrity players (prestige bias).

The study summarizing their results was published Nov. 15 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

"We are all subject to biases," said Marcus Feldman, the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor in the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and senior author. "Most biases are acquired from our parents or learned from our teachers, peers, or relatives."

Feldman, a professor of biology, co-founded the field of cultural evolution 50 years ago with the late Luca Cavalli-Sforza, professor of genetics at Stanford School of Medicine, as a framework for studying changes in human behavior that can be learned and transmitted between people. In the past, many studies of cultural evolution were theoretical because large datasets of cultural behavior didn't exist. But now they do.

The way chess is played has evolved over time too.

"Over the last several hundred years, paintings of chess playing show a change from crowded disorganized scenes to the quiet concentration we associate with the game today," said Noah Rosenberg, the Stanford Professor in Population Genetics and Society in H&S.

"In the 18th century, players subscribed to a knightly sort of behavior," said Egor Lappo, lead author and a graduate student in Rosenberg's lab. "Even if a move obviously led to a win, if it could be interpreted as cowardly, the player would reject it. Today, this is no longer the case."

"The thesis of the paper is that when an expert player makes a move, many factors could influence move choice," Rosenberg said. "The baseline is to choose a move randomly among the moves played recently by other expert players. Any deviations from this random choice are known in the field of cultural evolution as cultural biases."

"In the mid-century players eschewed the Queen's Gambit," Feldman said. "There didn't seem to be anything rational about this choice. In a large database of chess games by master-level players, the players' biases can change over time, and that makes chess an ideal subject to use to explore cultural evolution."

Playing the game

Chess is often called a game of perfect information because all pieces and their positions are clearly visible to both players. Yet simply knowing the present location of all pieces won't win a chess game. Games are won by visualizing the future positions of pieces, and players develop this skill by studying the moves made by top chess players in different situations.

Fortunately for chess players (and researchers), the moves and game outcomes of top-level chess matches are recorded in books and, more recently, online chess databases.

In chess, two players take turns moving white (player 1) and black (player 2) pieces on a board checkered with 64 positions. The player with the white pieces makes the first move, each piece type (e.g., knight, pawn) moves a specific way, and (except for a special move called castling) each player moves one piece each turn.

There are few move options in the opening (beginning) of a chess game, and players often stick to tried-and-true sequences of moves, called lines, which are frequently given names like Ruy Lopez and the Frankenstein-Dracula Variation. The opening lines of master and grandmaster (top-level) players are often memorized by other players for use in their own games....>

<.....The researchers considered chess matches of master-level players between 1971 and 2019, millions of which have been digitized and are publicly available for analysis by enthusiasts.

"We used a population genetics model that treats all chess games played in a year as a population," Lappo said. "The population of games in the following year is produced by players picking moves from the previous year to play in their own games."

To search for possible cultural biases in the dataset of chess moves and games, the researchers used mathematical models to describe patterns that correspond to each kind of bias. Then they used statistical methods to see if the data matched ("fit") the patterns corresponding to those cultural biases.

A value consistent with players choosing randomly from the moves played the year before indicated there was no cultural bias. This was the average "baseline" strategy. Success bias (copying winning moves) corresponded to values that were played by winning players in the previous year. Prestige bias (copying celebrity moves) corresponded to values that matched the frequencies of lines and moves played by the top 50 players in the previous year. Anti-conformity bias (unpopular moves) corresponded to choosing moves played infrequently in the previous year.

In the paper, the researchers focused on three frequently played moves at different depths of the opening to explore possible biases in early game play—the Queen's Pawn opening, the Caro-Kann opening, and the Najdorf Sicilian opening.

Before the Queen's Gambit was cool

For a game that is synonymous with strategy, relatively little is known about the factors that could affect a player's choice of strategy. This study revealed evidence of cultural biases in the openings of master-level games played between 1971 and 2019.

In the Queen's Pawn opening, players sometimes choose outlandish moves to rattle their opponents (anti-conformity bias). In the Caro-Kann opening, the study found that players mimic moves associated with winning chess games more often than expected by chance (success bias). And in the Najdorf Sicilian, players copy moves played by top players in famous games (prestige bias).

"The way people get their information about chess games changed between 1971 and 2019," Rosenberg said. "It is easier now for players to see recent games of master- and grandmaster-level players."

"The data also show that over time it is increasingly hard for the player with white pieces to make use of their first-move advantage," Lappo said.

Many of the results align with ideas that are common knowledge among chess players, such as the concept that playing well-known lines is generally preferable to in-the-moment strategies in the opening. The researchers suggest that their statistical approach could be applied to other games and cultural trends in areas where long-term data on choices exist.

"This dataset makes questions related to the theory of cultural evolution useful and applicable in a way that wasn't possible before," Feldman said. "The big questions are what behavior is transmitted, how is it transmitted, and to whom is it transmitted. With respect to the moves we analyzed, Egor has the answers, and that is very satisfying.">

<Southern staples like magnolia trees and camellias may now be able to grow without frost damage in once-frigid Boston.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s ”plant hardiness zone map" was updated Wednesday for the first time in a decade, and it shows the effect that climate change will have on gardens and yards across the country.

Climate shifts aren’t even — the Midwest warmed more than the Southeast, for example. But the map will give new guidance to growers about which flowers, vegetables and shrubs are most likely to thrive in a particular region.

One key figure on the map is the lowest likely winter temperature in a given region, which is important for determining which plants may survive the season. It's calculated by averaging the lowest winter temperatures of the last 30 years.

Across the lower 48 states, the lowest likely winter temperature overall is 2.5 degrees warmer than when the last map was published in 2012, according to Chris Daly, a researcher at Oregon State University’s PRISM Climate Group, which collaborates with the USDA's Agricultural Research Service to produce the map.

Boston University plant ecologist Richard Primack, who was not involved in the map project, said: “Half the U.S. has shifted to a slightly warmer climatic zone than it was 10 years ago." He called that “a very striking finding.”

Primack said he has noticed changes in his own garden: The fig trees are now surviving without extensive steps to protect them from winter cold. He has also spotted camellias in a Boston botanical garden and southern magnolia trees surviving the past few winters without frost damage. These species are all generally associated with warmer, more southern climates.

Winter temperatures and nighttime temperatures are rising faster than daytime and summer temperatures, Primack said, which is why the lowest winter temperature is changing faster than the U.S. temperature overall.

As the climate shifts, it can be tricky for plants — and growers — to keep up.

“There are a lot of downsides to the warmer winter temperatures, too,” said Theresa Crimmins, who studies climate change and growing seasons at the University of Arizona and was not involved in creating the map. “When we don't have as cold winter temperatures, we don't have as severe die-backs of insects that carry diseases, like ticks and mosquitoes.”

She added that hotter, drier summers in some regions may kill plants that once thrived there.

“You wouldn’t want to plant plants that aren’t adapted right now for where you’re living," she said.>

<Donald Trump took to his struggling Truth Social platform on Saturday morning to once again snarl at Judge Arthur Engoron and New York Attorney General Letitia James, claiming that are conspiring to make him "look bad" by claiming his properties aren't as valuable as he claims.

In what has become an almost daily tirade, the former president cast aspersions on Engoron's legal acumen while also calling James a racist.

With Engoron's gag order in the $250 million financial fraud trial on pause, Trump took advantage by writing, "Judge Arthur Engoron, the most overturned and stayed Judge in the State, and the Racist New York State Attorney General, the most corrupt & incompetent A.G. in the Country (Violent Crime Is Raging!), have FRAUDULENTLY Undervalued my properties, by many times, in order to make me look bad, and make the Judge’s original ridiculous finding of Fraud pass the 'smell test,' which it does not."

He then added, "This Judicial and Prosecutorial corruption and misconduct took place BEFORE THE TRIAL EVEN STARTED, & WITHOUT ANY KNOWLEDGE OF THE CASE. Judge Engoron just did what the highly partisan A.G. told him to do. He is her complete and total puppet!">

<One of Capitol Hill’s longest doubters about the spark that fired the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots joined Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) today in calling for an investigation into the bias of the anti-Trump House Jan. 6 committee.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said on X, “I’m calling on @SpeakerJohnson to create a January 6th Select Committee.”

Calls from her and Lee to probe the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack report followed Johnson’s release of unseen video from the day that added to the debate over allegations that those who entered the Capitol were involved in an insurrection.

Greene and Lee were focused on video that showed many peacefully walking through the building, sometimes encouraged by U.S. Capitol Police.

Two scenes have been played repeatedly on social media. They include one of an officer fist-bumping a suspect and the other of a man strolling through the halls of Congress who later committed suicide after being charged in the riots.

Lee, Greene and others have suggested that the select committee released videos that were biased in favor of showing a violent insurrection and blaming former President Donald Trump for sparking the crisis.

Now they want that bias investigated and people charged if they withheld key evidence in the probe.

“Every member of the Jan 6th committee, Nancy Pelosi, FBI, DOJ, DC Police, Cap Police, Jan 6 witnesses who lied, all need to be subpoenaed,” said Greene.

“Criminal referrals must be written and prosecutions MUST happen under a Trump DOJ. I’ve said it all along, MAGA did not do this,” said Greene.

On his personal X, Lee singled out select committee leadership, writing, “Why didn’t Liz Cheney and Adam Kizinger ever refer to any of these tapes? Maybe they never looked for them. Maybe they never even questioned their own narrative. Maybe they were just too busy selectively leaking the text messages of Republicans they wanted to defeat.”

In her upcoming book, MTG, Greene said that it wasn’t Trump but anti-Trump forces that encouraged the riot at the Capitol. “It has since come out from videos that not only Antifa and provocateurs but many federal agents and undercover agents were in the crowd. At the time, we had no idea that Trump supporters got wrapped up in the Capitol breach, only that they were there peacefully protesting,” she wrote in a section provided to Secrets.

“The events of January 6 have been mischaracterized by the Democrats and their mouthpieces in the media, a circus made of the proceedings, and these people cruelly treated. It must stop! It will stop -- for we won’t rest until these people get equal justice under the law. They will not be forgotten. I will never forget,” she pledged.>

Go to it, Marjorie Traitor Greene! We know you can 'prove' bias with the right non-evidence!

How 'bout yew, <fredtheignoramus>? Yew still my most faithful stalker?

<Earlier this week, ex-President Donald Trump was recently added to the top of The Economist's list of the world's greatest dangers heading into 2024.

During a Sunday morning panel, MSNBC's Ayman Mohyeldin referenced a recent Axios report by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, in which they exclusively report ex-President Donald Trump "allies are pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024."

The MSNBC host asked historian and authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat to "put this reporting into perspective," by explaining whether "this effort from the ex-president and his allies" is "something that is unprecedented as it seems on the surface — given the fact that our country has not had presidents who have lost and then come back to win reelection."

Ben-Ghiat replied, "Yeah, well, you know, Trump is an autocrat, not a Democrat. What he is doing here is straight out of the history of authoritarianism. it is not just the content of what he wants to do, mask importation's mass detentions, and also if you get into it, he says he wants to expand psychiatric institutions, to put people in there. That is what authoritarianism always does. He mentioned [U.S. Department of Justice special counsel] Jack Smith — locking up and declaring insane an investigator is exactly what authoritarians do. The communists in the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) routinely put dissidents in psychiatric institutions."

The New York University professor continued, "So it's not even just all that, it is the method. Because autocrats need a compliant bureaucracy to implement their repression quickly, and so they need a lawless and corrupt people who are not gonna have pangs of conscience. That's what happened the first time, he's learned from that. There were too many civil servants who actually had ethics. Too many lawyers. So this time, he's not making that mistake. And it's like, it's like seeing the corruption chapter of my book come to life, because I wrote about this, that you must have lawless and corrupt people in government in order to have an autocracy.">

<Donald Trump has some big plans for his second term should he be reelected, and they would be disastrous for American democracy.

Trump’s plan is called Project 2025, and it would involve replacing more than 50,000 career civil servants in the federal government with Trump loyalists. It’s a project being headed by the Heritage Foundation, and it’s so far backed by more than $20 million in funding. With those loyalists installed, Trump would be able to increase his power and abuse that power as he pleases.

Instead of just hoping Trump loses so that this plan doesn’t come to fruition, Democrats in Congress need to safeguard democracy by passing a law that would prevent Trump from carrying out this plan.

This won’t be easy while Republicans control the House. But the fractured GOP holds only a thin majority, and there may be enough disaffected Republicans who’d be willing to help. Even if Democrats fail to pass such a law, they must at least force Republicans to defend Trump’s plans and educate the public on Trump’s dangerous ploy.

During Trump’s first term, he often wasn’t able to abuse his power in the way he wanted because career civil servants within his administration got in the way. Many even spoke out about what they were seeing. Trump derided them as part of an anti-Trump “Deep State.” But as non-political appointees who served the public’s interest, not that of Trump, they resisted his most MAGA orders and dictates out of obligation to their duties.

If Trump is able to fire these employees — he wants to implement a policy via executive order called Schedule F that would make it possible for him to fire these civil servants — he could replace them with political patrons and loyalists who would help him accomplish anything he sets out to do.

“It represents the learning process that has occurred since Trump was president first and where he is today,” Don Moynihan, a professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University, tells Raw Story. “Trump certainly has much stronger opinions and preferences about the administrative state than he did in 2016. Partly Trump became more activated because of the impeachment process and his sense that he was surrounded by disloyal people, but what Project 2025 does is give him a blueprint for the tools to put those preferences into action.”....>