Arotrios

On Tuesday, it was reported that North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls could be ousted from her seat for judicial ethics violations. Did she fail to disclose gifts from a billionaire benefactor on whose cases she was ruling? No. Maybe she’d gone on luxury vacations across the globe paid for by some of the richest men in the country and neglected to mention them on disclosure forms? Nope. Perhaps one of these billionaires bought her mom a house? Not that either. Her true crime: Earls, the only Black woman on North Carolina’s high court, spoke out about racial bias in her courtroom. Her alleged misconduct was speaking to the media about how few clerks of color the court employed and how her colleagues treated certain attorneys, including a Black woman, who argued before them. For that, a Republican-stacked judicial “ethics” commission has gone after her. Its targeting of Earls could fulfill the wishes of the gerrymandered Republican Legislature by removing a tireless advocate of racial equality.

Earls, who was elected with 1.8 million votes in 2018 and is a frequent dissenter to the right-wing majority’s decisions, was responding to a study of advocates who argued at the high court. This study found that 90 percent of the lawyers were white and nearly 70 percent were male. Asked for her response, Earls noted the lack of racial diversity among the court’s clerks and her colleagues’ disparate treatment of certain advocates at oral argument. She went out of her way to say she didn’t think that this was the result of conscious bias, but “we all have implicit biases.” Earls also criticized decisions by Chief Justice Paul Newby, a Republican, to end implicit bias training and disband commissions looking into racial justice issues.

The Judicial Standards Commission, which has been reshaped by GOP judges in recent years, is now alleging that Earls’ concerns about bias in the courtroom may violate judicial ethics rules. The commission investigates complaints against judges, and its investigation could result in discipline for Earls or even her removal from office. If the commission finds a violation, the state Supreme Court would ultimately decide whether to accept its recommended sanction.

The ethics rule in question says that judges should conduct themselves “at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.” In a letter to Earls, the commission argued that she can’t suggest that another judge is biased unless she “knows this to be the case.” The commission says that without “some quantum of definitive proof,” it’s a violation of the ethics rules. In other words, unless Earls has proof that the commission considers “definitive,” she can’t speak out about bias at the highest level of North Carolina’s justice system. Never mind that Earls was not singling out one judge or justice, but rather discussing systemic racism as demonstrated through a comprehensive study of diversity at the North Carolina Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, Earls responded by suing the commission in federal court, arguing that the investigation is chilling her First Amendment right to free speech. She described her comments as “core political speech concerning important public policy questions regarding the justice system and administration of the courts.”

The truth is that Earls was speaking out in defense of the principles that the ethics rules seek to protect. The conduct that Earls described in her interview, bias in the court’s arguments and in its hiring process, could have violated the mandate that judges do their jobs “impartially” and treat people respectfully. A lack of diversity could certainly give people good reason to doubt the fairness of the judiciary.

The trumped-up charge against Earls is politically motivated. If this complaint had been filed a few years ago, it would’ve been summarily dismissed. But the commission has become yet another weapon for the North Carolina GOP to wield against judges who won’t do the bidding of the party or its corporate campaign contributors.

After Newby defeated former Chief Justice Cheri Beasley by 401 votes in 2020, his administration fired the head of the Judicial Standards Commission, who had stood in the way of the GOP’s goal of bending the ethics rules to allow judges to be considered permanent candidates, able to raise campaign cash and endorse other candidates throughout their tenures.

Republican leaders in the state’s heavily gerrymandered Legislature have also tried to reshape the commission over the years. Senate President Phil Berger, whose son is a Republican justice serving alongside Earls, introduced a budget bill this year that radically overhauls the commission to give GOP legislators control. Under current law, the state bar chooses four commissioners, the chief justice picks six, and legislative leaders choose two each. So Republicans already have a majority. But Berger’s proposed budget would politicize the commission even further, giving lawmakers the state bar’s four appointments, and it would ban lawyers—who have expertise that’s very relevant to the commission—from serving.

Rumors have long swirled in Raleigh that Earls could become the victim of a politicized judicial ethics complaint. She has been in the GOP’s crosshairs since she announced her campaign in 2018. Lawmakers passed several bills intended to hinder her campaign, and Republicans threatened to impeach her after she took office. (Like recent impeachment threats in Wisconsin, this happened just before Earls ruled on whether to ban partisan gerrymandering.)

Earls isn’t the only judge to face blowback for acknowledging racism or sexism. In Wisconsin, Justice Jill Karofsky also faced bogus ethics charges for calling out one of Trump’s post–2020 election arguments as racist. Karofsky warned that she was the victim of a political witch hunt: “The Wisconsin Judicial Commission, and others like it around the country, simply cannot allow partisan actors to proceed in bad faith and hijack the disciplinary system.”

Judges must be able to speak out about the bias that plagues our justice system. Jurists at every level have an obligation to confront bias that they witness. It’s in the judiciary’s best interest to root out biases that cause people to doubt the fairness of the system.

Republicans disagree. Newby’s “race-blind” agenda forbids any acknowledgment of bias in the system. Though he’s been a prosecutor and judge for four decades in North Carolina, Newby claims that he’s never witnessed any racism.

Since Newby and his Republican colleagues won control of the court in last year’s election, they’ve backtracked on racial justice. The court is once again willfully ignoring racism in jury selection, as all-white juries sentence Black defendants. And it reversed course on whether a 2018 voter ID law violated the state constitution’s ban on discrimination.

Now Republicans want to silence a duly elected justice for speaking out about bias that she’s witnessed. By filing suit in federal court, Earls has stood up for her own free speech rights and the rights of citizens across the state to expect and receive equal justice under the law. She’s also shown she’s not going to let the radical politicization of the state’s courts go any further without a fight.

ATLANTA – Republicans have quietly been coming to grips with the likelihood that Donald Trump will keep winning the Republican nomination until he dies if he doesn’t retake the White House next year — and either outcome could cost the GOP down-ballot.

It’s a grim sort of arrested development for Republicans, with Trump positioned as a modern-day Adlai Stevenson, Democrats’ losing nominee in 1952 and 1956. The worry is that Trump’s baggage and bombast will disincentivize center-right and independent voters from participating in general elections, with repercussions down the ballot — reversing the old coattails rule of politics, which holds that a strong name at the top of the ticket lifts all boats in the party.

But in the inverted world operatives are bracing for, it’s Trump’s name forever sinking their boats in statewide battles by depressing voter turnout. “’24, ’28, ’32. Probably until he dies,” said one veteran Republican strategist, bearing a glum look.

Polls have repeatedly shown that a majority of voters don’t want either Trump or President Joe Biden to run in 2024. Sixty percent of respondents to a July Harris-Messenger poll said they didn’t want Trump to run, as did 70% of respondents (and 44% of Republicans) in an April poll by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago NORC.

Pollsters are still exploring this enthusiasm gap. But Mark McKinnon – a veteran of George W. Bush and John McCain’s White House bids – has identified what he called the new Trump “ghost voters” in Iowa. While Republicans in 2016 were afraid to announce their support for Trump because he was too untoward, they are now afraid to say they don’t support him for fear of being chastised in the new Trump-loyal GOP.

“There’s a lot unknown,” said one veteran conservative activist who is supporting Trump, but also has a keen sense of Trump’s weaknesses. “It’s all going to be a question of turnout.”

The veteran activist cited the ritzy suburb of Atlanta, Johns Creek, as one example where otherwise solid Republicans who soured on Trump after January 6th will probably just stay home this election. “They voted for Biden and (Georgia Gov. Brian) Kemp. They don’t like Biden, but he is less icky (than Trump). But if they don’t have Kemp (on the ballot) maybe they don’t turn out at all.”

Conversely, the veteran conservative strategist said, Biden could suffer from a lack of fervor from his own base of supporters. Where MAGA-diehards will always show up for Trump, Biden doesn’t have a similar “fan base” on the left at his disposal.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA – AUGUST 24: Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to depart at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport after being booked at the Fulton County jail on August 24, 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia. Trump was booked on multiple charges related to an alleged plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. […]Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Looking for cash to fill the gap

Conservatives and veteran Republican strategists are trying to combat this expected dip in Republican turnout by quietly pushing mega-donors who have sat out the presidential race to engage in Senate and governor’s races across the country. Their hope is to create a buttress against what they expect to be another four years of President Joe Biden, according to more than a dozen Republican operatives who spoke with The Messenger over the past month. They include people who support Trump but worry about his effects on down-ballot races.

In a side meeting at a “cattle call” of Republican candidates in Atlanta last month, one conservative leader described gathering with other top activists discussing the 2024 playing field. At the outset, nobody mentioned the name of the former president, but once one person did, the worries poured forth: Trump will depress the suburban vote for Republicans. Women will stick with Democrats. Trump’s fired-up base of diehards and populists will keep carrying him over the line in Republican primaries and “normie” Republicans will keep staying home — they won’t vote for Democrats, but they won’t vote Trump either.

All of which could crush other Republicans running, these conservative operatives say.

“We’re worried about Cruz’s re-election chances,” the conservative leader told The Messenger. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will appear on the ballot the same as Trump (most likely) in Texas. The group that gathered in Georgia is concerned that swaths of moderate and center-right voters in the state’s expansive suburbs will take a powder, leaving Cruz and other Texas Republicans hanging.

It’s the same problem Republican veterans stared down seven years ago when it became clear Trump would be their nominee — movement conservatives and quieter Midwestern evangelicals, unlike their fiery Southern Baptist cousins, wouldn’t vote for Clinton, but they wouldn’t vote for Trump either. The falloff in support would have hurt GOP chances across the board, trying to win control of the House and Senate and governor’s races across the country.

To avert that pending disaster — which many pollsters at the time saw as imminent as a Hillary Clinton win — then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and then-RNC Chairman Reince Priebus pushed Mike Pence onto the ticket. The move helped drive turnout in 2016 and produce better than expected results.

But ever since then Republicans have underperformed expectations three elections in a row now.

A “blue wave” of support in 2018 carried Democrats to power in the House, leading to Trump’s first impeachment. Two years later, just a day before Trump’s supporters sacked the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the 2020 election results, a pair of Republican senators lost in Georgia, handing control of the chamber to Senate Democrats. And in 2022, support for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis built fast after Trump’s handpicked candidates lost heavily in critical swing states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Republicans who held their breath while Trump was in office have become increasingly exasperated, but there doesn’t seem to be any way of stopping him from winning. Trump’s strong plurality of MAGA voters appears unbeatable, and Trump’s tight-knit campaign team has been quietly rewriting the party rules in the states to make it even harder to challenge him.

“It’s a perpetual Ponzi scheme using the GOP,” said one Republican strategist working on an opposing campaign.
Glass half-full?

But not every Republican is sold on the fatalism which seems to have gripped at least half the party.

“Anyone worrying about anything but the coming cycle should get their priorities in order,” said Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary and a veteran campaign operative who helped run the RNC’s 2016 operations before joining the White House.

He pointed to hyperbole and hand-wringing ahead of the 2016 election and how Republicans did far better than expected. He also noted that Democrats have a commensurate problem with depressed support from Black voters, which could just as easily offset the voter depression on the right.

And even as Trump himself continues pushing baseless claims that he didn’t lose in 2020 and attacks on prosecutors, judges and possible witnesses, his well-disciplined juggernaut of a 2024 campaign is pushing a concurrent message claiming the economy was better when the former president was in office (LINK).

Yet the nonstop drama of the Trump era of politics seems to have whittled away at general interest in anything remotely political. Spotify podcast star Joe Rogan rebuffed Trump’s entreaties to appear on his top-rated show, even though they share many of the same views. The author behind the viral populist ballad, “Rich men north of Richmond”, hit back at Republicans after he was featured in the first Republican debate.

Donors and professional operatives have been eyeing a staid and safe alternative to Trump, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, with his aw-gosh delivery which sounds remarkably like Owen Wilson and his Silicon Valley zip-up vests, as a last-minute savior who can win back center-right voters in the suburbs.

But their white knight increasingly looks like someone who couldn’t win the nomination.

A recent poll found Youngkin trailing Trump handily in a hypothetical matchup in his own state. And Youngkin told Fox News recently that he would miss a number of filing deadlines to appear on the ballot in early voting states if he did jump in near the end of the year.
Follow the (small) money

The day after Trump was arrested in Georgia and the first criminal mugshot of a former president was posted online – which Trump’s team said they then used to raise $7.1 million from their supporters – Erick Erickson, a veteran conservative radio host and Trump critic on the right, said Trump detracts from the party’s chances writ large.

“Sure, there’s a political agenda against him with these prosecutions, but also to help him secure the Republican nomination,” Erickson wrote in his newsletter. “The Democrats know for him to win, Republicans must spend money that could otherwise be spent to secure the Senate and save the House. The return on investment to get Trump across the finish line could be so high that we can’t take the Senate or hold the House. That, then, would cost us more.”

The proxy for these concerns has been a drying up of small-dollar donations to candidates not named Trump.

The Republican National Committee has seen a downturn. Other campaigns have been unable to turn on the spigot of digital donations which used to flow like milk and honey but now has turned into a desperate trickle. And infighting in state Republican parties between Trump loyalists and veteran party members across the country has undercut efforts to win back offices in critical battleground states from Arizona to Michigan.

When the GOP suffered sweeping losses in Obama’s 2012 re-election, it commissioned an “autopsy” with recommendations for how the party could get back in the business of winning. Much attention was paid to the longterm need for the GOP to win over conservative Latino voters, but the party also built a voter-turnout juggernaut which overhauled the way Republicans got their supporters to show up at the polls.

A decade later, after Trump’s handpicked candidates lost big to Democrats in critical battleground states, the RNC commissioned another “autopsy” — but this time the report was never released publicly and didn’t mention the name of its most powerful player, Trump.

"As the party becomes Trump-ified, you see it almost like a sun when it goes nova,” Matthew Continetti, a historian of the American right, said on MTP Now Thursday. “It collapses in on itself.”

As Cherokee tribal members in North Carolina prepare to vote on legalizing adult-use cannabis, a congressman from the area is threatening to defund the tribe — whether the measure passes or not.

Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Richard Sneed is calling the Republican congressman’s comments “a major political blunder.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Chuck Edwards on Friday introduced what he calls his Stop Pot Act. The bill calls for withholding 10% of what a government or tribe normally receives in annual federal highway funding. The withholding applies to governments and tribes that permit recreational marijuana use and sales.

The legislation doesn’t apply to jurisdictions that authorize medical use of marijuana when prescribed by a licensed medical professional, Edwards said.

Edwards warned in an Aug. 17 opinion piece in the Cherokee One Feather newspaper that his legislation “will defund governments that ignore federal law” regarding cannabis sales and use.

“Here in our beloved mountains, we are already facing unprecedented crime, drug addiction and mental illness,” Edwards wrote. “I can’t stand by and condone even greater access to drugs to poison more folks in WNC, not to mention having even more impaired drivers on our roads.”

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians is a sovereign self-governed nation and a federally-recognized tribe. The tribe and individuals are eligible for U.S. funding in a variety of ways, including recent COVID-19 American Rescue Plan allocations.

In a letter published Thursday in Cherokee One Feather, Sneed said Edwards “has overstepped his authority.” He points out that Edwards is “a federal representative; a non-Indian, elected official telling a sovereign tribal nation how they ought to handle their business.”

Only place to toke up a joint

Although many states have legalized medical and adult recreational use of cannabis, marijuana remains illegal under federal law.

The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians will vote Sept. 7 on whether to legalize adult use of marijuana on tribal lands in North Carolina.

If the Sept. 7 measure passes, the tribe’s 57,000-acre Qualla Boundary in the western part of the state would become the only place in North Carolina where you could legally toke up a joint.

The tribe already plans to open what tribal officials call the world’s largest medical cannabis dispensary superstore.

Having grown and cultivated medical marijuana for many months, the tribe originally planned to issue regulated medical cards to eligible adults to buy from the dispensary. The retail operation is poised to be the first and only place to legally purchase marijuana in North Carolina.

With broader legalization on tribal lands a possibility, it remains unclear whether dispensary sales would still require a medical card. But discussion in July by tribe leaders suggest some are expecting the referendum could lead to recreational marijuana sales.

The referendum going to voters says adult use would apply to anyone 21 and older. No language in the referendum limits adult use to tribal members.

Edwards warns of “drug tourism”

In his opinion piece, Edwards called the referendum “harmful.”

Congress can’t stop the vote, he said. “But I am appealing to tribal members to vote against it,” Edwards wrote.

“It is important that the tribe understands they will be voting on a measure that, if enacted, could soon be very costly,” in terms of loss of federal funding, he said.

If the Sept. 7 measure passes, Edwards added, “people from all over the state and the surrounding areas will be driving to Cherokee and likely the EBCI’s other non-contiguous tribal lands to buy it, light up and party.”

“It also means many would be leaving the reservation and hitting the road high,” he said.

“There is also the very real possibility of ‘drug tourism,’ where bad actors will capitalize on the influx of partying travelers to western North Carolina and offer other types of illicit, hard drugs for sale, and the criminal activity that would inevitably follow,” Edwards wrote.

“This could strain our resources to a breaking point, as local law enforcement would stop enforcing marijuana laws, which is what we’ve observed in several U.S. cities,” according to Edwards.

He also noted the tribe’s other Western North Carolina landholdings.

“Given the shoot-first-ask-questions-later wording of the tribe’s question in the ballot, what would prevent enacting legislation that would allow marijuana dispensaries to open on tribal lands in Graham, Swain, and other WNC counties?” he asked.

Christian Action League and Smart Approaches to Marijuana have endorsed his bill, Edwards said in a news release Friday.

“Today’s marijuana isn’t Woodstock Weed,” Dr. Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, said in Friday’s news release. “It is a highly engineered drug that’s often wrapped in kid-friendly packaging, with potencies of up to 99 percent.”
“Major political blunder,” chief says

Sneed was responding to a letter in the newspaper Wednesday from the Democratic Party chairs in Swain, Jackson, Cherokee and Transylvania counties.

”Rep. Edwards’ strategy reeks of the same paternalism we have seen throughout the history of federal dealings with tribal governments,” the party leaders wrote. “This is not the action of a friend with a disagreement, it is patronizing and coercive. Rep. Edwards offers false friendship.

“... A real friend would know that the United States of America owes a debt to the Cherokee, and making good on that debt is not dependent on disagreements over marijuana policy,” the party leaders said.

Sneed thanked them for their comments.
“Delusion of grandeur,” opponent says

Chris Suttle, a Chapel Hill-based cannabis consultant, fired back at Edwards in an Aug 28 commentary in Cherokee One Feather. He called Edwards’ comments “problematic and uninformed.”

“Let him and his compatriots march to Washington to create the Stop the Pot Act,” Suttle wrote. “I would rather support those on a state level willing to bring light to those who have been dying in the dark by giving them access to an all-natural proven solution to numerous medical conditions.”

On Thursday, Suttle told the Observer that Edwards “is experiencing a momentary delusion of grandeur.”

Humankind struggled to survive during a 100,000 year period during the early Pleistocene, according to researchers who used a computer model to discover a severe population bottleneck in our species’ ancient past.

The bottleneck occurred between 813,000 years ago and 930,000 years ago, and reduced an ancestral human species to less than 1,300 breeding individuals. The issue persisted for 117,000 years, and aligns with a chronological gap in the African and Eurasian human fossil records in that period. The team’s research on the bottleneck was published today in Science.

Population bottlenecks are events in which a species’ total population is severely reduced, which causes an overall reduction in genetic diversity across the species. The loss of genetic diversity can cause populations to become less healthy. Bioengineers can now synthesize genetic diversity in animal populations through cloning and gene editing.

But it’s not always the case that population bottlenecks threaten populations—look at the flightless, sexually inept kākāpō of New Zealand or the critically endangered vaquita porpoise, whose main threats are human-introduced threats and humankind itself, rather than small genetic pools. Now it appears that an ancestral human species may have been threatened by a similar culling of the population.

The recent team of researchers developed a tool called the fast infinitesimal time coalescent process (FitCoal) to analyze 3,154 present-day genomes from 10 African and 40 non-African populations. The researchers found evidence of a “severe population bottleneck” in each of the 10 African populations that “brought the ancestral human population close to extinction,” as the scientists wrote in their paper. The team posits that the bottleneck may have been due to climatic changes.

Nick Ashton, an archaeologist at the British Museum, and Chris Stringer, a paleoanthropologist at London’s Natural History Museum, commented on the study in a Perspectives article published alongside the new research.

“Whatever caused the proposed bottleneck may have been limited in its effects on human populations outside the H. sapiens lineage, or its effects were short-lived,” Ashton and Stringer wrote. “This also implies that the cause of the bottleneck was unlikely to have been a major environmental event, such as severe global cooling, because this should have had a wide-ranging impact.”

“Nevertheless,” Ashton and Stringer added, “the provocative study of Hu et al. brings the vulnerability of early human populations into focus, with the implication that our evolutionary lineage was nearly eradicated.”

Homo sapiens (our species) doesn’t appear in the fossil record until about 300,000 years ago, meaning that the modeled population bottleneck would have affected our ancestors. “The researchers point out that fossils of Homo heidelbergensis are among the few from Africa that date back to the bottleneck period, which spanned from 950,000 to 650,000 years ago. The team goes as far as to suggest that the bottleneck “possibly marks a speciation event leading to the emergence of the [last common ancestor] shared by Denisovans, Neanderthals, and modern humans.”

Stringer and Ashton note that some studies suggest the last common ancestor was earlier, but in any case, if the bottleneck occurred with the severity modeled by the team, it could have had significant effects on the speciation of hominins.

Genetic modeling is becoming an increasingly useful tool in understanding how ancient human populations dispersed across the globe and mixed with other populations, including other hominin species.

Population bottlenecks in the more recent past have offered hints at how climatic changes impacted local communities, for example. Studying ancient DNA alongside the DNA of modern groups may clarify the proliferation of humankind across the world.

It was big news when Rudy Giuliani, once hailed as America’s Mayor, was indicted last month by a district attorney in Atlanta for allegedly being part of a criminal enterprise led by Donald Trump that sought to overturn the 2020 election results. Giuliani was back in headlines this week when he lost a defamation suit filed against him by two Georgia election workers whom he had falsely accused of ballot stuffing. Giuliani’s apparent impoverishment, caused by his massive legal bills, and even his alleged drinking have been fodder for reporters. But another major Giuliani development has drawn less attention: An FBI whistleblower filed a statement asserting that Giuliani “may have been compromised” by Russian intelligence while working as a lawyer and adviser to Trump during the 2020 campaign.

That contention is among a host of explosive assertions from Johnathan Buma, an FBI agent who also says that an investigation involving Giuliani’s activities was stymied within the bureau.

In July, Buma sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a 22-page statement full of eye-popping allegations, and the document leaked and was first reported last month by Insider (after a conservative blogger had posted it online). According to Buma’s account, Giuliani was used as an asset by a Ukrainian oligarch tied to Russian intelligence and other Russian operatives for a disinformation operation that aimed to discredit Joe Biden and boost Trump in the 2020 presidential race. Moreover, Buma says he was the target of retaliation within the bureau for digging into this.

The FBI declined to comment on Buma’s claims.

Buma’s revelations may only be the start. A source familiar with his work tells Mother Jones that other potential FBI whistleblowers who participated in the investigation involving Giuliani have consulted the same lawyer as Buma and might meet with congressional investigators in coming weeks. That attorney, Scott Horton, declined to comment.

Giuliani faces a heap of legal and financial problems, including those felony charges in Georgia. He is also an uncharged co-conspirator in the federal case in which Trump was indicted for his efforts to retain power after losing the 2020 election. He has been sued by a former assistant for rape. And apparently Trump has not helped the supposedly broke Giuliani cover his legal bills, though the former president did agree to headline a fundraiser for Giuliani.

Still, Buma’s statement suggests that Giuliani has been lucky to avoid deeper trouble over his attempt during the 2020 race to deploy made-in-Ukraine disinformation to sully Joe Biden.

It is widely known that Giuliani tried mightily to unearth and disseminate dirt on Biden in Ukraine—particularly regarding the unfounded allegation that as vice president Biden squashed an investigation of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company for which his son Hunter was a director. This smear campaign led to Trump’s first impeachment and resulted in a federal investigation into whether Giuliani violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Prosecutors ended that probe last year.

But Buma’s allegations that FBI and Justice Department officials blocked his efforts to investigate these Giuliani activities and the work of suspected Russian agents who may have influenced the former New York City mayor could spark a new dust-up on Capitol Hill. As Republicans keep trying to gin up a controversy over the Bidens, Burisma, and other matters, Buma’s statement reinforces the case that this supposed Biden-Ukraine scandal was egged on or orchestrated by Russian intelligence. And it contradicts the narrative pushed by Trump and his defenders that the FBI and Justice Department have been in cahoots with Democrats.

Giuliani’s role in Trump’s coup attempt and his string of public humiliations may overshadow the Ukrainian chapter in Giuliani’s downfall. But, according to Buma and various US intelligence findings, Giuliani apparently was a dupe—a useful idiot—for suspected Russian operatives and propagandists. And the bureau, Buma says, investigated this—until it didn’t.

Buma’s statement highlights Giuliani’s relationship with Pavel Fuks, a wealthy Ukrainian developer, who in 2017 hired Giuliani and paid him $300,000. Fuks once told the New York Times that he had retained Giuliani to lobby in the United States for the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, where Fuks then lived. Giuliani has denied that he was paid to lobby for Kharkiv, insisting he only provided advice regarding security to the city. And Fuks has changed his tune. Through a spokesperson, he told Mother Jones that Giuliani’s work was limited to advising the city.

In his statement, Buma says that the FBI assessed Fuks to be a “co-opted asset” of Russian intelligence services, meaning a person who Russian intelligence used to advance its goals. Buma’s complaint does not name a specific Russian intelligence agency, but a person who spoke to agents involved in this investigation says that the FBI believes Fuks worked for the FSB, the successor to KGB. All this raises the possibility that Giuliani, a former Republican presidential candidate who became a close adviser to Trump, received a large payment directly from a Russian asset.

Buma alleges that Fuks has carried out various tasks for Russian spies, including laundering money for them. Fuks also reportedly paid locals to spray-paint swastikas around Kharkiv in the weeks before Russia’s invasion. Buma says Fuks did so to bolster Vladmir Putin’s claim that the invasion aimed to achieve the “de-Nazification of Ukraine.”

Fuks denies these claims. “Mr. Fuks has never cooperated with Russian intelligence,” his spokesperson says.

Buma maintains that his investigative work led to Customs and Border Patrol in 2017 revoking Fuks visa for travel to the United States and that the FBI assessed that Fuks constituted “a national security threat,” a finding that caused Fuks to be placed on an organized crime watch list. Buma also says that he sent the Treasury Department a recommendation that the United States sanction Fuks. To date, the US government has not done so.

Ukraine has sanctioned Fuks, and it is reportedly investigating him for fraud and tax evasion. Fuks now lives in London, according to recent media reports.

In his statement, Buma says that he developed suspicions that Giuliani, through his relationship with Fuks, was “compromised by the RIS,” meaning the Russian Intelligence Services. That is a striking claim—an allegation that Russian spies may have obtained influence over a top adviser to the US president.

It’s a new piece of information to add to a pile of public indications that Giuliani left himself wide open to manipulation by Russian agents, while he was dredging Ukraine in search of derogatory information about Hunter and Joe Biden.

Giuliani has previously asserted that his work for Fuks ended before he joined Trump’s legal team in April 2018. And Fuks’ spokesperson also says that Fuks’ dealings with Giuliani finished in 2018. But Buma suggests that Fuks may have maintained an indirect connection to Giuliani by hiring in 2019 Andriy Telizhenko, a former low-level Ukrainian diplomatic official, to mount a public relations effort for him in the United States. Buma says that a source told him that Fuks retained Telizhenko to help him “establish contacts with US politicians.” Telizhenko went on to work with Giuliani, feeding him information on the Bidens.

Telizhenko, in a recent interview with Mother Jones, maintained that his work for Fuks and his contacts with Giuliani were unrelated.

But Telizhenko’s interactions with Giuliani raise serious questions about whether this Trump adviser, wittingly or not, played. a part in a covert Russian operation to discredit Biden. In 2021, the Treasury Department sanctioned Telizhenko for promoting Russian “disinformation narratives that U.S. government officials have engaged in corrupt dealings in Ukraine.” Telizhenko denies advancing disinformation or aiding Russia. He says the sanctions resulted from an FBI informant making false claims about him.

Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine placed him in contact with several Ukrainians since sanctioned for allegedly assisting Russian disinformation efforts. The most prominent was Andriy Derkach, the son of a former KGB officer and then a Ukrainian legislator, who supplied Giuliani with unsubstantiated information about the Bidens’ supposed activities in Ukraine. After making a trip to Ukraine in the summer of 2020, Giuliani told the Washington Post that he kept in touch with Derkach and called him “very helpful.”

Trump’s Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach in 2020, calling him an “active Russian agent for over a decade.” In March 2021, a declassified report issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said that Putin in 2020 signed off on a Russian intelligence effort to use proxies to feed prominent US individuals “influence narratives” aimed at hurting Biden’s campaign and helping Trump. The report cited Derkach, asserting that Putin “had purview” over his activities. Though the report did not name him, Giuliani was obviously one of the Americans the ODNI believed had been manipulated by the Russians. Last year, federal prosecutors hit Derkach with criminal charges for his alleged attempts to evade sanctions.

In his statement, Buma says he investigated Giuliani’s use of “funds he collected from political influencers to travel and conduct a series of interviews with former Ukrainian officials”—a reference to Giuliani’s campaign to gather opposition research on the Bidens. But he adds that “Giuliani was himself never considered a subject” of that part of his probe, which focused on “foreign organized crime figures and intelligence service assets or agents who chose to deal with him.”

Giuliani has admitted to meeting Ukrainians subsequently cited by the US government as Russian operatives. But he has defended his actions by arguing he had to deal with questionable people to seek information on what he has referred to as alleged Biden crimes. (No evidence has surfaced to prove Biden acted improperly in Ukraine to help his son.)

Buma reveals in his statement that he also probed whether Russian operatives or assets were involved in a 2020 Giuliani effort to make a film about Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine and elsewhere. As Mother Jones reported, the GOP activists behind this venture noted in legal documents that they were considering seeking foreign financing for the film. The anti-Biden film was to include commentary from Konstantin Kulyk, a former Ukrainian prosecutor who Treasury sanctioned in 2021 for working with Derkach to spread “fraudulent and unsubstantiated allegations” about Biden. That is, this project was to feature information from sources who the US government later deemed were connected to a disinformation campaign linked to Russian intelligence.

Giuliani played a key role in trying to line up investors for the movie. His lawyer, Robert Costello, denied that Giuliani solicited money from foreign investors. The investors Giuliani did help find were two brothers, David and Kable Munger, who own a large blueberry producing company in California and have donated generously to GOP candidates. The movie never came close to being made, and people involved in the endeavor told Mother Jones the project was disorganized and incompetently managed.

The Mungers recently sued two GOP activists involved in producing the film, Tim Yale and George Dickson, along with a company they formed. Giuliani was not named as a defendant in the suit. The Mungers say that Giuliani helped persuade them to invest $1 million by saying that they would receive a share of the film’s profits. The brothers also claim that Yale and Dickson told them the movie would be “more profitable than Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.” Giuliani, Dickson, and Yale also said, according to the Mungers’ lawsuit, that they possessed “smoking guns” revealing Joe Biden was corrupt.

Giuliani and his colleagues possessed no such material. The Mungers allege that Dickson and Yale stole their investment. In a text message to Mother Jones, Yale insisted that the lawsuit is “total hogwash.” He declined to comment further. Dickson did not respond to requests for comment.

Giuliani, according to the lawsuit, was paid $300,000 for his participation in the film project. A lawyer and a spokesperson for Giuliani did not respond to requests for comment.

Buma’s disclosures spell new trouble for Giuliani. They further implicate him in a covert Russian operation to tilt the 2020 election toward Trump. They also raise the possibility that Giuliani was protected by FBI officials. (After the 2016 election, the Justice Department investigated whether Giuliani had improper contacts with FBI agents during that race regarding the bureau’s investigation of Hillary Clinton, and it found no evidence Giuliani had been leaked information.) Buma’s statement offers an investigative roadmap for inquiries that could soil Giuliani’s already tarnished reputation. But the down-and-out Giuliani may get lucky: With all the controversy and scandal swirling about him, there just may not be much room in the Giuliani coverage for the allegation that he was a puppet for Putin.

Two missing generals who had commanded China’s missile forces have been replaced, fanning suspicions of the largest purge at the top echelons of the country’s military in a decade.

General Lǐ Yùchāo 李玉超, who headed the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF), and his deputy General Liú Guāngbīn 刘光斌 had disappeared from public view several months ago. State media reported yesterday that Wáng Hòubīn 王厚斌, deputy commander of the PLA Navy since 2020, will take Li’s position, while air force officer and party central committee member Xú Xīshèng 徐西盛 will become the Rocket Force’s new political commissar.

What’s going on behind the scenes?

We asked Neil Thomas, Fellow for Chinese Politics at Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, a few questions about the apparent purge:

Who lost their jobs (or disappeared) and who was promoted? What do we know about them?

We know that Wang Houbin and Xu Xisheng are respectively the new commander and political commissar of the PLARF. What’s unusual is that both PLARF leaders — the commander, who oversees military operations, and the political commissar, who oversees political discipline and ideological instruction — were replaced at the same time. And that neither Wang nor Xu appears to have any background in the PLARF. Wang spent his career in the PLA Navy, and is the first outsider to serve as PLARF commander since at least 1982, according to the political scientist Taylor Fravel. Xu comes to the PLARF from the PLA Air Force.

We also know that Wang’s predecessor Li Yuchao has not made a public appearance in several weeks and has been absent from recent promotion ceremonies that he would normally be expected to attend. It also appears that Li’s former deputies Liu Guangbin and Zhāng Zhènzhōng 张振中 are missing from their regular duties. Former PLARF deputy commander Wú Guóhuá 吴国华 died in Beijing on July 4, but news of his demise mysteriously did not appear in the mainland media until July 27.

Can you explain why you see this as evidence of a purge?

We will only know for sure what is happening when the Communist Party decides to announce something, but this personnel reshuffle seems consistent with widespread rumors in Beijing that Xi has approved a corruption investigation against senior PLARF leaders.

The story has been going around Taiwanese media and overseas Chinese media for several weeks, and last Friday the South China Morning Post quoted two anonymous sources saying the same. If true, Xi’s approval of the investigation means that Li, Liu, and Zhang will almost certainly be purged. That the PLARF’s new leaders are both outsiders also suggests that Xi wants to clean house and does not trust the force’s leadership.

Does this reshuffling tell us anything about the PLA under Xi Jinping and his progress at ensuring loyalty to the Party and to him?

The reshuffle shows that Xi is still firmly in control of the PLA but that it is very difficult to eliminate corruption, even for a leader as powerful as Xi.

That there is still corruption in China after Xi began his anti-corruption campaign is no surprise. Corruption can happen in any military, including that of the United States. And Xi himself is constantly reminding fellow cadres the Communist Party will “forever be on the journey” of anti-corruption. The seniority of the people implicated in this case is unusual, but I don’t think it suggests growing resistance in the PLA to Xi as leader of the Communist Party. It seems more venal than political.

Does this reshuffle have any implications for his much-advertised campaign to modernize the PLA?

It’s hard to say right now what impact this reshuffle will have on PLA modernization, especially without knowing more about what the alleged corruption involved. It certainly raises questions about the extent to which corruption may have compromised the quality and readiness of China’s missile forces and its nuclear deterrent.

But Beijing has been pumping a lot of money into the PLARF during Xi’s leadership, so China’s reported progress in these areas is probably still real, even if there has been some loss around the edges due to corruption.

The US state of Mississippi has elected an openly gay person to its legislature for the first time ever.

Fabian Nelson’s victory this week left Louisiana as the only American state never to have elected an LGBTQ+ person to its legislature. And it served up a salve of sorts to a wave of laws passed in Republican-controlled state legislatures that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people, including a ban in Mississippi on gender-affirming hormones or surgery for anyone aged 17 or younger.

In an interview with the Associated Press on Wednesday, Nelson, a Democrat, called his election to the Mississippi house “a dream” and “shocking”. But Nelson, a foster father, also said: “Ultimately what won this campaign is the fact that I’m in touch with my community and the issues my community is facing.

“At the end of the day, I put my suit on the same way every other person who walks in that statehouse does. I’m going to walk in there, and I’m going to be a sound voice … in the state of Mississippi.”

Nelson, a 38-year-old realtor, won his seat by triumphing in a Democratic primary election runoff on Tuesday over Roshunda Harris-Allen, a local alderwoman and a professor of education at Tougaloo College, a historically Black institution. Tuesday’s race was necessary after neither Nelson nor Harris-Allen had secured a majority of the vote in a three-way primary on 8 August.

Republicans did not run a candidate for the general election scheduled for the fall. So, by virtue of his win on Tuesday, Nelson has clinched the statehouse seat that had been up for grabs. He is scheduled to be sworn in ahead of Mississippi’s next legislative session in January.

His district encompasses an area south of the state capital of Jackson. As he has told media outlets such as the Los Angeles Blade and LGBTQ Nation, Nelson’s priorities include pushing for an expansion of Mississippi’s Medicaid program as well as developing the economy and infrastructure for his district’s underserved areas.

He is also hoping to impede Republicans’ anti-LGBTQ legislative measures and efforts to disenfranchise voters in and around Jackson, which is mostly Democratic.

Nelson said his election accomplishes a goal he set for himself the day that he visited the state capitol building on an elementary school field trip and told his teacher he would eventually earn an office in the house.

“I’m still trying to process it and take it in,” Nelson said.

The state director of the Human Rights Campaign’s Mississippi chapter, which endorsed Nelson, said the election “sends a real message in a time when we are seeing attacks … against the LGBTQ+ community”.

“The majority of people reject that kind of animus,” the director, Rob Hill, told the AP. “I think a lot of youth around the state who have felt like their leaders are rejecting them or targeting them won’t feel as lonely today.”

The president of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, Annise Parker, added: “Voters in Mississippi should be proud of the history they’ve made but also proud to know they’ll be well represented by Fabian.”

Though Louisiana now stands as the only state to have never chosen an LGBTQ+ person for a seat in its legislature, it did elect its first openly gay Black man to public office late last year.

Davante Lewis won a New Orleans-based seat on Louisiana’s Public Service Commission in December after defeating a three-term incumbent

A leader of the far-right Proud Boys has been sentenced to 17 years in prison, one of the longest sentences yet handed out over the US Capitol riot.

Prosecutors said US Army veteran Joe Biggs, 38, was an "instigator" of the storming of Congress on 6 January 2021.

The former Infowars correspondent was convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges in May.

In court, Biggs pleaded for leniency and expressed remorse for his actions.

The sentence, handed down by US District Judge Timothy Kelly, is below both federal sentencing guidelines and the 33 years sought by prosecutors.

Another Proud Boys member, Zachary Rehl, was sentenced on Thursday to 15 years, also on a charge of seditious conspiracy.

Rehl, a former US Marine and leader of the Philadelphia branch of the Proud Boys, was seen on video spraying a chemical irritant at officers outside the Capitol during the riot.

Biggs was convicted of a slew of charges in May, including seditious conspiracy, conspiracy to use, intimidation or threats to prevent officials from discharging their duties and interference with law enforcement during civil disorder.

In a sentencing memo, prosecutors said that Biggs - a veteran of the war in Iraq and former correspondent for conspiracy website Infowars - "employed his military experience to direct and control large groups of men under his command" to lead a "revolt against the government".

"Biggs viewed himself and his movement as a second American revolution where he and the other 'patriots' would retake the government by force," the memo said.

In court, a tearful Biggs apologised for his actions and said he was "seduced" by the crowd on the day of the riot.

"I just moved forward. My curiosity got the better of me," he added. "I'm not a terrorist. I don't have hate in my heart."

"I know that I have to be punished, and I understand," Biggs said.

As he sentenced Biggs, Judge Kelly said he was "not trying to minimise the violence" but that the 6 January riot paled in comparison to other mass casualty events. He also said that a stricter sentence may have created sentencing disparities with other convicted rioters.

Biggs went to trial alongside four other Proud Boys members including former chair Enrique Tarrio, whose sentencing was abruptly postponed on Wednesday. His sentencing is now scheduled to take place next week. Prosecutors are seeking a 33-year sentence.

The Proud Boys involved in the case have said they plan to appeal against the conviction.

In court, federal prosecutor Jason McCullough said the crimes are "very serious" and that a stiff sentence would send a message ahead of next year's presidential election.

"There is a reason why we will hold our collective breaths as we approach future elections. … They pushed this to the edge of a constitutional crisis," he said.

Prosecutors used text messages, social media posts and videos to show that the Proud Boys were involved in a coordinated effort to stop the certification of the 2020 election at the Capitol.

As of 6 August, over 1,100 people had been arrested on charges related to the riot, resulting in over 630 guilty pleas and 110 convictions.

Another prominent participant in the riot, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May.

Sarsina is a sleepy, rural town of barely 3,000 residents straddling the pristine Apennine mountains in Italy’s Emilia Romagna region, surrounded by stunning views and grazing sheep.

While it has a glorious past, as a strategic defensive outpost for the Roman Empire and the birthplace of the famed playwright Plautus, today there’s not much to do beyond hiking and birdwatching.

And though both locals and holidaymakers would agree that a rustic, slow-paced lifestyle is part of Sarsina’s charm, its residents were nonetheless excitedly awaiting the construction of a development including a new supermarket, fitness center and playground. But it was not meant to be — at least, not as originally planned.

That’s because workers at the site on the outskirts of town in December 2022 unearthed the ruins of an ancient Roman temple — or ‘capitolium’ — dating back to the first century BC.

In early July, a first look at the underground treasure came to light: a single imposing structure of horizontal sandstone blocks and marble slabs, 577 square meters wide, which researchers have identified as the podium above which the columns and walls of an ancient temple were built.

And what has come out of the ground so far could be just the tip of the iceberg.

“We have unearthed three separate rooms, likely dedicated to the triad of gods Jupiter, Juno and Minerva,” lead archaeologist at the excavation site Romina Pirraglia told CNN. “The excavations are still underway… and we have already identified an older, deeper layer of ruins dating back to the 4th century BC, when the Umbrian people (an ancient Italic tribe who predated the Romans) lived in the area. The entire temple could be even larger than what we now see.”

According to Pirraglia, the discovery of a capitolium — the main temple in an important Roman city, and a hub for trade as well as religious and social interactions — further confirms the strategic role Sarsina played during the Roman Empire. The town was built in a key mountainous area close to the Tuscan border and overlooking the Savio river, an important waterway connecting central and northern Roman cities.

The discovery of the temple has pushed local authorities to revise their building plans. Federica Gonzato, superintendent of archaeology, fine arts and landscape for the provinces of Ravenna, Rimini and Forlì-Cesena, which includes Sarsina, is adamant in wanting to preserve the ruins and further research its great past.

“We will not tear it down to make room for modern structures, this must be very clear. Previous urban plans will be changed, we will find new construction sites for recreation and sports,” Gonzato said. “The temple is an incredible finding that sheds light on how ancient Roman towns rose and fell across time.”

What makes the discovery exceptional is the temple’s unique state of preservation. “The marvelous quality of the stones have been spared from sacks, enemy invasions and plunders across millennia thanks to the remote location of Sarsina, a quiet spot distant from larger cities,” Gonzato added. “Temples such as this one (were) regularly plundered, exploited as quarries with stones and marble slabs taken away to be re-used to build new homes. But Sarsina’s capitolium podium structure is practically untouched, with its entrance staircase well-preserved, and this is extremely rare.”

Gonzato believes the discovery will further research on demography and urban transformations in ancient times. And there’s more to the site than just the temple’s podium. Pirraglia said there are signs that the building was reused in medieval times. An ancient water drainage system was found alongside medieval tombs and hearths indicating that locals likely inhabited it, or used the site for other social purposes.

“This is the beauty of Italy: wherever you dig, some hidden treasure comes out of the ground. Wonders never cease to amaze us,” said Gonzato.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a bill into law in June that prohibited cities from passing certain local ordinances. It was widely seen as an effort to curb the power of Democrat-led cities.

Now, a judge has ruled it unconstitutional.

State District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble announced the decision on Wednesday in response to a lawsuit from the city of Houston.

"I am thrilled that Houston, our legal department, and sister cities were able to obtain this victory for Texas cities," Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner wrote in a statement. "HB 2127 was a power grab by the Legislature and an unwarranted and unconstitutional intrusion into local power granted to Houston and other home-rule cities by the Texas Constitution."

The Office of the Attorney General has appealed Gamble's decision, according to Paige Willey, director of communications for the Office of the Attorney General.

"While the judge declared HB 2127 unconstitutional, she did not enjoin enforcement of the law by Texans who are harmed by local ordinances, which HB 2127 preempts," Willey wrote to Insider. "The Office of the Attorney General has also immediately appealed because the ruling is incorrect. This will stay the effect of the court's declaration pending appeal. As a result, HB 2127 will go into effect on September 1."

The law even prevented ordinances that mandated things like water breaks for construction workers, earning it the nickname "the law that kills." Texas saw protests from construction workers and their allies who said that an end to local water break mandates would result in more incidents of heat-related illness and death.

"This is a HUGE win for the working people of Texas, local govs, and communities across our state," the Texas AFL-CIO posted in response to the decision. "While we expect an appeal, it remains clear this law is an unacceptable infringement on the rights of Texans and cities."

WASHINGTON — The Department of Health and Human Services is formally recommending that the Drug Enforcement Administration ease government restrictions on marijuana, which remains illegal at the federal level despite more than 40 states allowing its use in some form.

The move comes 11 months after President Joe Biden ordered the top health agency to conduct a review of the drug. The recommendation is to move marijuana from what’s known as a Schedule I drug to Schedule III, under the Controlled Substances Act.

In the eyes of the DEA, cannabis is in the same category as other Schedule I drugs like heroin and LSD, meaning it’s considered to have a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.

A spokesperson for HHS said it has “expeditiously” responded to the directive in providing its recommendation to the DEA on Tuesday.

If the DEA were to reschedule cannabis to Schedule III, it would most notably eliminate an IRS code intended to prevent drug dealers from claiming tax deductions for business expenses.

That alone could save the marijuana industry at least $100 million, and small business owners who spoke to NBC News said the inability to deduct what would otherwise be ordinary business expenses is their single biggest financial burden.

Now that HHS has made its recommendation, all eyes are on the DEA, which has the ultimate authority on scheduling substances.

The Biden administration had hoped to announce the rescheduling of the drug sometime in the fall, around the one-year mark of the president's request for the review, according to five sources familiar with planning. It's not yet clear how long the DEA’s public review process will take.

The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Asked about the recommendation during a news briefing Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the review “is an independent process” that is led by HHS and the Department of Justice, adding that she would not comment on where Biden currently stands on the issue of decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level.

Reaction to the HHS recommendation has been largely positive on Capitol Hill. In a statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer praised HHS as having done “the right thing” and urged the DEA to “quickly follow through on this important step to greatly reduce the harm caused by draconian marijuana laws.” Schumer, D-N.Y., said “there is much more that needs to be done legislatively to end the federal prohibition on cannabis and roll back the War on Drugs.”

Marijuana legalization advocates see this initial step as significant in and of itself: For the first time, the federal government is formally recognizing cannabis’ medical contributions.

The Cannabis Industry Association on Wednesday said that while the recommended reclassification would be historic, more should be done to align federal law with states where marijuana is legal. “The only way to fully resolve the myriad of issues stemming from the federal conflict with state law is to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act and regulate the product in a manner similar to alcohol,” said CEO Aaron Smith in a statement.

Easing federal marijuana restrictions is also a political issue that both parties hope to capitalize on ahead of next year's presidential election, as polls have indicated a majority of Americans support legalization.

Some Republicans, including Florida Reps. Matt Gaetz, Greg Steube and Brian Mast have publicly called on the drug to be rescheduled and urged the Biden administration to prioritize the effort. But on the presidential campaign trail, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis doubled down this week on his opposition to marijuana decriminalization and legalization, despite voters in his state legalizing medical use of the drug last year. The Florida Supreme Court is now considering whether a cannabis legalization initiative will appear on the ballot in 2024.

Separately, there is an ongoing bipartisan effort in Congress that would make it easier for financial institutions to offer banking services to legal cannabis companies.

Schumer has said that getting the legislation, known as the SAFE Banking Act, across the finish line will be a “top priority” when the Senate returns in September. But a looming government shutdown could complicate that effort, even as lawmakers behind the bill have worked to break an impasse over the August recess.

A federal judge has determined Rudy Giuliani forfeits the defamation lawsuit from two Georgia election workers against him, a decision that could lead to significant penalties for the former Donald Trump attorney.

In court in recent weeks, Giuliani said he could no longer contest that he made false and defamatory statements about Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss – who are only one group of plaintiffs suing him for defamation related to his work for Trump after the 2020 election.

Giuliani said he struggled to maintain his own access to his electronic records – partly because of the cost – and didn’t adequately respond to subpoenas for information from Moss and Freeman as the case moved forward.

“Perhaps he has made the calculation that his overall litigation risks are minimized by not complying with his discovery obligations in this case,” Judge Beryl Howell of the US District Court in Washington, DC, wrote Wednesday. “Whatever the reason, obligations are case specific and withholding required discovery in this case has consequences.”

The judge, in ruling Wednesday against Giuliani, noted that the election workers could try to show his false claims about the 2020 election were intended, in some part, to enrich himself, an argument that may come up at the damages trial. Moss and Freeman are asking for unspecified damages after they say they suffered emotional and reputational harm, as well as having their safety put in danger, after Giuliani singled them out when he made false claims of ballot tampering in Georgia after the 2020 election.

A trial to determine the amount of damages for which Giuliani will be held liable will be set for later this year or early 2024, Howell said on Wednesday.

The damages could amount to thousands if not millions of dollars.

Giuliani has already been sanctioned almost $90,000 for Freeman and Moss’ attorneys’ fees in the case, and Howell says the former New York mayor may be saddled with additional similar sanctions.

Giuliani has been struggling financially, buried under 2020 election legal proceedings, a new criminal case against him in Georgia related to efforts to overturn the election and other matters. He has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges in Georgia and has been released from jail on bond.

In a statement, Moss and Freeman expressed gratitude for Howell’s ruling.

“What we went through after the 2020 election was a living nightmare,” the pair said. “Rudy Giuliani helped unleash a wave of hatred and threats we never could have imagined. It cost us our sense of security and our freedom to go about our lives. Nothing can restore all we lost, but today’s ruling is yet another neutral finding that has confirmed what we have known all along: that there was never any truth to any of the accusations about us and that we did nothing wrong.”

The pair concluded, “The fight to rebuild our reputations and to repair the damage to our lives is not over.”

Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said in a statement that Howell’s decision was “a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment.” Goodman added that Giuliani was “wrongly accused” of failing to preserve his own records and that he wanted Howell’s decision to be reversed.

Giuliani had only turned over fewer than 200 relevant documents, a single page of communications, a few legal responses, a “sliver” of needed financial documents and “blobs of indecipherable data,” Howell wrote.

Giuliani had claimed that the FBI seizure of his electronic devices years ago had complicated his ability to access his records and that he had struggled under pricey legal fees. But Howell said he could have taken steps at an earlier point to keep his records in case litigation arose in the future.

The judge also noted that while Giuliani complained to the court that he was buried in litigation costs, he was able to get Trump’s reimbursement for his electronic legal debts, listed his Manhattan co-op apartment for $6.5 million and traveled on a private plane to report to jail for processing in Fulton County, Georgia, last week.

Howell noted that Giuliani’s decades of experience as a lawyer, including as the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, underscored his “lackluster preservation efforts.”

“Giuliani has submitted declarations with concessions turned slippery on scrutiny and excuses designed to shroud the insufficiency of his discovery compliance. The bottom line is that Giuliani has refused to comply with his discovery obligations and thwarted plaintiffs Ruby Freeman and Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss’s procedural rights to obtain any meaningful discovery in this case,” Howell wrote in a 57-page opinion ruling.

“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law, this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention.”

Late last month, Giuliani conceded that he made defamatory statements about Freeman and Moss – who are but one of several groups suing Giuliani for defamation related to his work for Trump after the 2020 election – and that he didn’t contest their accusations that he had smeared them after the 2020 election.

Giuliani’s statements about them, which Freeman and Moss say are false, included calling them ballot-stuffing criminal conspirators. Giuliani also drew attention to a video of them after the election, which was first posted by the Trump campaign and showed part of a security tape of ballot counting in Atlanta. On social media, his podcast and other broadcasts, Giuliani said the video showed suitcases filled with ballots, when it did not capture anything but normal ballot processing, according to the defamation lawsuit and a state investigation.

Georgia election officials have debunked Giuliani’s accusations of fraud during the ballot counting.

The mother-daughter duo has been candid about how their lives were impacted by Trump and Giuliani’s claims that they were guilty of election fraud.

“There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?” Freeman said last year in video testimony to the House select committee that investigated the events surrounding the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.

Moss said her privacy was destroyed when she learned that Giuliani had accused her mother, Freeman, of passing some kind of USB drive to her like “vials of cocaine or heroin” as part of an elaborate vote-stealing scheme, she said. In reality, the object in question was a ginger mint. In his controversial call when he asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find votes to help him overturn his 2020 loss, Trump attacked Moss 18 times, and the former president called Freeman a “professional vote scammer” and a “hustler.”

“I felt horrible. I felt like it was all my fault,” Moss said during her testimony last year. “I just felt like it was, it was my fault for putting my family in this situation.”

She added that she and her mother were afraid to go outside or to the supermarket after getting threats “wishing death upon me, telling me that, you know, I’ll be in jail with my mother and saying things like – ‘Be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.’”

During Giuliani’s disinformation campaign about the vote in Georgia, the FBI recommended Freeman leave her home for her own safety, according to the lawsuit.