America's Talking

A judge on Monday fined former President Donald Trump for violating a gag order in his New York hush money case for a tenth time. Prosecutors had alleged Trump violated the gag order an additional four times, but Judge Juan Merchan found only one instance violated the order. In his ruling, the judge fined Trump $1,000 for comments he made during an April 22, 2024, interview with "Just the News No Noise." During the interview, Trump said the jury was packed with Democrats. 

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Tennessee and West Virginia led a five-state lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education challenging the federal overhaul of Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act. The lawsuit is one of several filed nationally on the topic after Biden’s administration rewrote the Title IX statute to expand the definition of “sex” to include “gender identity.” “The U.S. Department of Education has no authority to let boys into girls’ locker rooms,” Tennessee Attorney General Skrmetti said in a statement. “In the decades since its adoption, Title IX has been universally understood to protect the privacy and safety of women in private spaces like locker rooms and bathrooms.

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Former President Donald Trump weighed in online on the ongoing chaos on college campuses as pro-Hamas protesters occupy and vandalize colleges around the country. “THIS IS A RADICAL LEFT REVOLUTION TAKING PLACE IN OUR COUNTRY,” Trump wrote Thursday on TruthSocial, his social media site. Trump’s comments capture a repeated conservative argument, that conservative protesters like those on Jan. 6 were met with severe consequences while liberal protesters, like the Black Lives Matter rioters and the college campus pro-Hamas protesters, have been given a pass. Biden has remained silent as local leaders navigate the protests, which have featured arrests, vandalism, some viral moments of fights, and calls for violence against Jews. Many of the protests have also expressed outright support for Hamas, the group that killed hundreds of Israelis, many of them civilians and children, in the Oct. 7 attack last fall. The State Department has officially named Hamas a terrorist organization.

Full Story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_b3eeff10-0886-11ef-a8b5-3bc6a77b3376.html

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A Jewish Yale student was reportedly stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag during a pro-Hamas protest on campus over the weekend, the latest incident highlighting the ongoing tensions on college campuses since the Hamas terror group attacked Israel Oct. 7 and ignited an ongoing war. Amidst ongoing calls for violence, lawmakers have ramped up calls for accountability for the taxpayer-funded universities as well as groups supporting Hamas, which the State Department has officially labeled a terrorist organization.

Full story:

https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_01f1743e-005a-11ef-bcdc-9b5bcee28d7f.html

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U.S. Supreme Court Justices on Thursday grappled with multiple questions about what a president can and can't do as they heard oral arguments in a case that could have wide-reaching political ramifications not only for the 2024 election, but well beyond. Supreme Court justices are considering a case involving former President Donald Trump and if presidents have immunity from criminal prosecutions. Trump's attorney D. John Sauer said the president must have immunity for a functioning democracy to flourish. 

Full story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_3e8012f8-02a2-11ef-856b-37be46049bb5.html

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The White House Office of Management and Budget openly criticized a report from a Congressional watchdog that estimated the federal government loses up to $521 billion a year to fraud.  Jason Miller, the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, detailed OMB concerns in a 3-page letter to officials with the Government Accountability Office. He said the fraud estimate was "not plausible."

Full Story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_36e9fdba-fccb-11ee-ad77-57171fd78925.html

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U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has set up a week of controversy, political posturing and even risked his own job over federal funding for Israel, Taiwan, and Ukraine. The Senate passed a $95 billion aid package earlier this year that combined Israel and Ukraine funding that included $60 billion for Ukraine and $14.1 billion for Israel. That bill made no progress in the House so far, but the escalating tensions between Iran and Israel have pushed the issue to the forefront.

Full Story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_c40105ae-fc12-11ee-b11a-339751511969.html

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A coalition of states has filed a legal challenge to President Joe Biden’s latest executive effort to forgive a portion of Americans' student loan debt.

The lawsuit comes after Biden on Monday announced the plan, which the states in question say is an overreach of executive authority. The White House claims that Biden has so far canceled at least some of the debt for 4 million Americans, totaling $146 billion so far.

The White House said the newest effort would partially forgive debt for 30 million Americans, though independent analyses have not confirmed that figure.

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President Joe Biden this week touted what he called a major drop in inflation, saying prices had fallen more than 60%. Those comments come on the heels of more federal data showing prices are on the rise, raising the question: Has inflation really fallen or is something else going on? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Consumer Price Index, a key marker of inflation that has spiked recently. BLS found the CPI rose another 0.4% last month, part of a 3.5% increase over the previous twelve months. Soon after that data was released, Biden released a statement boasting of a drop in inflation.

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