Plus Pages

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

3/5 WAKE-UP CALL: SCOTUS Rules Trump Can Remain On Ballots

The Colorado Supreme Court in December ruled that Trump is disqualified from running for president under an anti-insurrectionist provision of the Constitution. Monday's unanimous Supreme Court ruling reversed that decision, saying Congress, not the states, is responsible for enforcing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The ruling did not evaluate whether the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol was an insurrection and whether Trump engaged in it.

But some justices have concerns: The three liberal justices criticized the conservative majority's opinion and said the court went further than necessary. And in a rare note of disagreement, one conservative justice − Amy Coney Barrett − also raised some concerns, saying ''the court should turn the national temperature down, not up."

HALEY SUPPORTS SCOTUS RULING: Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said she supports the Supreme Court's decision allowing former President Donald Trump to stay on the Colorado ballot in the face of a challenge against his candidacy. "I think that was important," the Republican presidential candidate told a cheering crowd during her campaign stop in the Houston area Monday. "We don't ever want some elected official in a state or anybody else saying who can and can't be on a ballot. This is America," Haley said.

➤HOW SUPER WILL TUESDAY BE FOR HALEY? The biggest day of 2024 balloting so far plays out Tuesday, with Donald Trump likely to deliver another demoralizing blow to Nikki Haley on a day that is expected to move him within reach of the Republican presidential nomination. Close to a third of the U.S. will participate in Super Tuesday: Republicans will vote in 15 states, while Democrats are also holding primaries and caucuses in 15 states, plus American Samoa. The former president can’t quite win enough delegates to become the presumptive nominee, even with more than a third of the total at stake in the single day. He could hit the threshold by March 12 or March 19.

As Tuesday’s results come in, Haley will need to decide whether to continue on with her increasingly quixotic bid to stop Trump from winning the nomination. The former South Carolina governor has tapped into anti-Trump sentiment within the GOP and elsewhere, so her fundraising remains strong enough to keep her going if she were to decide to do so. Her campaign said Monday that it had already raised $1 million in the first few days of March, after raising $12 million in February. That was down from $16.5 million in January, but still plenty to keep her travel and campaign apparatus afloat.


➤MSNBC IS BUGGED...LITERALLY:
Bed bugs found at MSNBC’s Manhattan headquarters caused staffers to scatter ahead of the left-leaning network’s Super Tuesday coverage, The Post has learned. According to a memo obtained by The Post, an “unidentified insect” was spotted Sunday in the recently revamped studio 3A — home to special election coverage and “The Rachel Maddow Show” — at 30 Rock in Midtown. Additional studios on the third floor were also shuttered “out of an abundance of caution.”


➤SUPREME COURT STAYS TEXAS LAW: The Supreme Court on Monday weighed in on the latest dispute between the Biden administration and Texas over the southern border, keeping a controversial state law from going into effect − for now −while the law is being challenged.  Swiftly responding to an emergency appeal from the Justice Department filed Monday afternoon, the court said it would keep on hold until at least March 13 a Texas law that empowers state law enforcement to detain and deport migrants entering or living in the U.S. illegally. A panel of judges on the New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit had said the law would go into effect Saturday unless the Supreme Court intervened.

➤HAITI MAYHEM AS PRISONERS ESCAPE: Scores of inmates escape as gangs overtake prisons in Haiti. In an effort to regain control of the streets, Haiti’s government declared a state of emergency and nighttime curfew late Sunday after an explosion of violence over the weekend saw armed gang members storm the country’s two biggest prisons. What happened? Almost all of the estimated 4,000 inmates fled in the jailbreak at the National Penitentiary as gangs stepped up coordinated attacks on state institutions in Port-au-Prince. 

The government said it would "use all legal means at their disposal" to find the killers, kidnappers and other violent criminals who had escaped from the prison. 

➤PASSENGER DIES DURING COMMERCIAL FLIGHT: A commercial passenger flight bound for North Carolina was diverted to an island southeast of the Bahamas Wednesday after a woman on board suffered a medical emergency and died, police said. The Royal Turks and Caicos Islands Police Force reported the commercial flight was heading to Charlotte when a 41-year-old woman fell ill. An American Airlines flight bound for Charlotte, North Carolina on Feb. 28, 2024, was diverted to an island after a passenger suffered a medical emergency and died, police said.

American Airlines flight 2790 departed from Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic before it was diverted to Providenciales International Airport "for the medical needs of a passenger," a spokesperson for the airline said. Just before 6:15 p.m., police said, officers received a call from Air Traffic Control Tower requesting medical assistance for the woman who, at the time, was receiving CPR.

➤RIFT WIDENS BETWEEN TWH, BIBI:  VP Harris meets Netanyahu rival, signaling growing Israel frustration In a sign of growing White House frustration with the Israeli government, Vice President Kamala Harris met Monday with Benny Gantz, a member of Israel’s wartime Cabinet and a political rival of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

The White House meeting marked a major test for President Joe Biden's relationship with Netanyahu as the U.S. becomes increasingly at odds over Israel's refusal to scale back the war in Gaza. 

➤AIRMAN PLEADS GUILTY: The Massachusetts Air National Guard member charged with sharing hundreds of classified documents on social media, which led to punishment for 15 service members, pleaded guilty Monday to all six charges against him. Airman 1st Class Jack Teixeira had been charged with six counts of willful retention of defense records for allegedly sharing classified documents through the social media platform Discord. 

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani set sentencing for Sept. 27. Acting U.S. Attorney Joshua Levy said prosecutors would recommend nearly 17 years in prison at sentencing and defense lawyers are allowed to suggest no less than 11 years in prison.

➤U-N REPORT SUPPORTS OCT 7 RAPE CLAIMS: A U.N. report said there are grounds to believe rape occurred during the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas. The report found the attack included multiple incidents of sexual violence on women. It also said that there are reasonable grounds to believe that female hostages held in Gaza were raped. Hamas didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. It has previously denied allegations that its members have committed rape. Meanwhile, the U.S. and its Middle East allies are turning to airdrops of food aid into Gaza, a stopgap measure reflecting the impasse foreign powers face in addressing a humanitarian crisis and ending the Israel-Hamas war. Officials from the U.S. Egypt, Qatar, and Hamas continued negotiations for a cease-fire and exchange of hostages in Cairo on Monday, according to people familiar with the talks.


🏈EAGLES' JASON KELCE RETIRES: Jason Kelce has retired after 13 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles. The 36-year-old Kelce officially called it quits Monday at the Eagles’ NovaCare Complex, ending a career in which he became not only one of the great centers of his era who played a key role in the franchise’s lone Super Bowl championship but a beloved Philly personality and popular podcast host. 

“Let’s see how long this lasts,” said Kelce, wearing a sleeveless Eagles T-shirt, before he burst into tears and needed several moments to compose himself at a news conference attended by his parents, Ed and Donna, and brother Travis, who was wearing sunglasses inside the auditorium. Eagles coach Nick Sirianni sat behind reporters.

➤SPRING COMING: The start of longer daylight hours is well underway. And with daylight saving time starting in March, most Americans will soon have even more hours in the sun. Even ahead of of the time change, there are already cities in every continental U.S. time zone that are reporting sunset times after 6 p.m. as the Earth and the Northern Hemisphere begins its tilt toward the sun. The time adjustment affects the daily lives of hundreds of millions of Americans, prompting clock changes, contributing to less sleep in the days following and, of course, later sunsets.

TUESDAY'S WEATHER MAP: 



No comments:

Post a Comment