NTD News Today

Former President Donald Trump arrived at a Manhattan courthouse Friday for likely the last day of jury selection before his trial begins with opening statements on Monday, April 22. A fresh panel of nearly 100 prospective jurors are being questioned as the court seeks to seat five backup jurors after swearing in a full jury of 12 on Thursday.

Israel appears to have launched a retaliatory attack on Iran early Friday morning—nearly a week after the Iranian regime launched a combination of more than 300 missiles and drones against it. However, Iranian officials downplayed the attack, and did not directly acknowledge reports that Israel had retaliated. Israel has also not confirmed whether it launched the attack.

Police arrested more than 100 people on Columbia University’s campus on Thursday after protesters set up an encampment there to protest against Israel’s military actions against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said that 108 people were arrested for trespassing on the university’s property.

A juror who was seated on the jury for former President Donald Trump's Manhattan “´hush money” trial earlier this week was excused on April 18, after saying she had concerns about her ability to be fair and impartial—and fears that her identity might be made public. New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan called attorneys up to confer shortly after taking the bench, saying that the woman—also known as “Juror 2”—had slept on the decision overnight before informing the court that she wished to be dismissed.

The House Rules Committee has met to discuss a series of bills to provide foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. House Republicans on Wednesday released the text for the measures, which have already sparked criticism among conservatives over their alleged failure to address national security concerns and increasing illegal immigration at the Southern border.

President Joe Biden will return to Philadelphia in the final stop of his three-day tour of the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, where he will announce the endorsement of the Kennedy family. More than 15 members of the Kennedy family, who have previously criticized Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent bid for the White House, will endorse President Biden at a campaign event in Philadelphia. Many believe Mr. Kennedy’s third-party challenge poses a bigger problem for President Biden than for President Trump.

100 members of the U.S. Senate were sworn in as jurors for the impeachment trial of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on April 17. The articles of impeachment were approved by the House of Representatives on Feb. 13, and officially read in the Senate chamber on Tuesday. Majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he’ll allow floor debate on the articles, but called for a dismissal of the charges.

President Joe Biden will propose a boost in tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from China, a move viewed by some as a strategic one designed to increase support among blue-collar voters for the 2024 election. The president will ask the United States Trade Representative to consider tripling the existing Section 301 tariff rate on Chinese steel and aluminum as part of a four-year review. He was expected to announce this request during his Wednesday visit to the United Steelworkers headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

A Boeing whistleblower has raised concerns about the company’s 787 Dreamliner aircraft, warning that the plane’s quality issues could make it “fall apart” in midair. Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at Boeing who has worked with the company for fifteen years, is scheduled to testify Wednesday on the aircraft manufacturer’s quality issues during a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations hearing.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on April 15 unveiled a plan for separate aid packages for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. A fourth bill would reportedly wrap in a TikTok ban and the REPO (Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity) for Ukrainians Act, which would allow the United States to seize some assets of Russian oligarchs to help finance the costs of fighting the war there.

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized the judge overseeing the “hush-money” case in Manhattan, before he attended his second day in court, and said that a gag order that was imposed on him should be removed. The former president added that he should be campaigning for the White House instead of being in court.

Two counts of impeachment against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, approved on Feb. 13 by the House of Representatives, will be formally presented to the Senate. Eleven House members previously named as impeachment managers will walk from the lower chamber through Statuary Hall in the Capitol and then to the Senate in a brief ceremony that has been repeated only 17 times since the first Congress in 1789.

Former President Donald Trump made history on April 15 when he became the first former U.S. president to stand trial in a criminal case when he appeared in a New York City courtroom for allegedly falsifying business payments during the 2016 campaign. The former president took a seat at the defense table inside a Manhattan court as the jury selection process began. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee will now have to be present in court four days a week for the next six or more weeks.

Israel’s President Isaac Herzog says his nation isn’t “seeking war” with Iran following the Islamic Republic’s recent attack, but that the barrage of missiles fired at the state of Israel does require some kind of response. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies claim to have launched over 300 rockets and drones toward Israel on Saturday in retaliation for an April 1 attack on its consular building in the Syrian capital of Damascus that adjoined Iran’s Embassy. Israel said it and its allies intercepted 99 percent of the projectiles.

At least four people, including a bishop, were wounded in a knife attack during a service at a church in a suburb of Sydney on Monday, police and witnesses said, triggering clashes between angry residents and police. It was the second reported stabbing in just three days in Sydney after six people were killed in a knife attack at a mall in the Bondi area of the city.

The House advanced a modified version of a bill on April 12 to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). With the passage of the rule governing the bill—an intermediate procedural step before final passage—the bill itself will now be teed up for a vote on the House floor later on Friday.

The Biden administration announced another expansion of the federal student debt relief program on Friday, declaring the cancellation of $7.4 billion in student loans for some 277,000 Americans. This initiative, unveiled on April 12, marks another move in the administration’s efforts to cancel student debt, totaling $153 billion in canceled debt for 4.3 million beneficiaries since President Joe Biden took office.

A top adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci secretly messaged a zoologist who funneled money from Dr. Fauci’s agency to a laboratory in the Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases appeared, according to newly disclosed emails.

NFL star and actor O.J. Simpson has died at the age of 76. Mr. Simpson was acquitted in a sensational 1995 trial of murdering his former wife, Nicole, and her friend, Ron Goldman, but was subsequently found responsible for their deaths in a civil lawsuit. Mr. Simpson was later imprisoned for armed robbery and kidnapping. His family announced on social media on April 11 that he had passed away after a battle with cancer.

European Union lawmakers have approved a major revamp of the bloc’s migration laws, hoping to end years of division over how to manage the entry of thousands of people without authorization. This comes as immigration reform becomes a top campaign issue ahead of June elections.

A New York appeals court has rejected a third bid by former President Donald Trump’s lawyers to delay his so-called hush money trial. His legal team had asked the state’s mid-level appeals court to halt the case indefinitely while they fight to remove the trial judge and challenge several of his pretrial rulings, which they argue have seriously hindered the presumptive Republican nominee’s defense.

President Joe Biden formally welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to the White House on April 10. The bilateral summit will be the most ambitious meeting yet between the two leaders, with the announcement of the biggest upgrade to the U.S.–Japan alliance in more than 60 years, according to senior administration officials. Mr. Kishida will remain in Washington to partake in a trilateral summit with Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on April 11.

Former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg has been sentenced to five months in jail for lying under oath during testimony in a civil fraud case against former President Donald Trump. Mr. Weisselberg pleaded guilty to perjury in the civil case on March 4 as part of a plea bargain in a separate criminal case. As part of the deal, he will not need to testify in President Trump’s criminal trial in New York, which begins April 15.

U.S. lawmakers say the Chinese Communist Party has outsized influence at the United Nations, which continues to play a significant role on the world stage amid wars, natural disasters, and health emergencies. The House Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations held a hearing to examine the CCP’s "malign influence" on the UN.

Norfolk Southern Corp. announced on April 9 that it had reached a $600-million agreement to resolve a class action lawsuit related to a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The settlement comes in the wake of the Feb. 3, 2023 incident in which a Norfolk Southern Railway freight train carrying 151 cars derailed, spilling hazardous chemicals—including vinyl chloride—onto the ground and into the air, with the chemicals catching fire and burning for days. Upon combustion, vinyl chloride produces a small amount of phosgene gas, which was used as a chemical weapon on World War I battlefields.

The judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s hush money case released a questionnaire on April 8 for jury selection, and stated that prospective jurors will not be asked about their voting preferences. Justice Juan Merchan also rejected President Trump’s attorneys’ argument that asking about political affiliation is relevant to the jury selection process. He said that “the purpose of jury selection is not to determine whether a prospective juror does or does not like one of the parties.” Jury selection will begin on April 15.

The FBI announced that it has arrested an 18-year-old Idaho man for concocting a “violent plot” on local churches on behalf of the ISIS terrorist group. Alexander Mercurio is facing a federal charge of attempting to provide material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization, the Department of Justice wrote in a press release. The DOJ added that the suspect was plotting to incapacitate his father, restrain him, steal his guns and other weapons, and carry out attacks on churches in Coeur d'Alene, a city in northwestern Idaho, last Sunday.

Former President Donald Trump said on April 8 that decisions on abortion restrictions should be left to the individual states, as he declined to back a national-level limit. The former president also said he supports fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization. President Trump had promised to disclose his stance on abortion as a law banning such procedures after six weeks of pregnancy is set to take effect in his home state of Florida.

A Brazilian Supreme Court judge has opened a probe into Elon Musk, owner of the X social media platform, for obstruction of justice after the billionaire entrepreneur challenged a court order requiring the removal of certain X accounts. The investigation comes after Mr. Musk announced on X on Saturday that his company would lift all restrictions on Brazilian accounts that had been targeted by the Supreme Court’s order.

A total solar eclipse can be observed today along a path that stretches from Mexico through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The eclipse will start at around 1:20 p.m. ET and will have passed by about 4:40 p.m. ET. The actual eclipse will last just over 4 minutes. Millions of spectators are expected to turn out to experience the rare phenomenon.