Sen. Murphy says Trump using presidential power to punish political opponents
ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Sunday that the United States is in “one of the most dangerous moments America has ever faced” with President Donald Trump using the federal government to try to punish his political opponents.
“The United States is now employing the full power of the federal government, the FCC, the Department of Justice, in order to punish, lock up, take down off the air all of his political enemies,” Murphy told ABC News’ “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “As you know, this is what happens in Iran. This is what happens in Cuba. This is what happens in China, in deeply repressive states in which if you have the courage to stand up and speak truth to power, you are silenced. I mean, there is no more fundamental right in America than the right to protest your government.”
Murphy said Trump’s threats to have the Federal Communications Commission reexamine licenses for television broadcasters that repeatedly criticize him is an effort to use the government to silence critics.
“Listen, every single president, every single politician has drawn issue with something that a media figure has said and may use the power of persuasion to try to get them to change what they say. That’s very different than using the power of government in a coercive way that’s actually illegal. The Supreme Court has said, no, you cannot use the regulatory power of the government to say to a broadcaster, if you don’t say what I want you to say, as the president, United States, there will be a official legal consequence that’s illegal”
(WASHINGTON) — When public school teachers return to classrooms this fall, they will confront a new legal landscape that has given parents expanded veto power over certain aspects of a child’s education.
A sweeping constitutional interpretation issued last month from the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes a fundamental right under the First Amendment to opt-out from classroom lessons that may pose what it called a “very real threat of undermining” sincerely held religious beliefs.
It has school districts and their attorneys nationwide scrambling to review curriculum for possible conflicts and fine tune protocols for when and how students can be excused from certain material.
“It marks a significant challenge for public education nationwide,” the Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education, which lost the case, said in a statement on the decision.
The board had been sued by a group of Muslim, Jewish and Christian parents after it refused to permit families to opt-out their children from exposure to storybooks with LGBTQ themes.
“The right of parents to direct the religious upbringing of their children would be an empty promise if it did not follow those children into the public school classroom,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion.
The ruling effectively requires schools to notify parents in advance of any classroom concepts that might be contrary to a particular religion and to accommodate requests to provide alternative instruction.
Sarah Parshall Perry, a former U.S. Department of Education attorney and current vice president of the conservative advocacy group Defending Education, called it a clear “directive” to districts.
“In making the decision, the high court expanded an earlier religious liberty in schools case, Wisconsin v. Yoder,” Perry wrote in a blog post. “In that 1972 decision, the court held that Amish families could opt their children out of compulsory education past eighth grade because continuing in school longer would be a violation of their religious beliefs.”
While religious rights advocates hailed the ruling as common sense, some civil rights groups, educators, and parents fear it now undermines the very foundation of public education.
“This decision could have a chilling effect,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest union of public school teachers, “and could lead to more educators self-censoring, shelving books and lessons, and preventing some already marginalized students from being seen and acknowledged.”
Some school officials have privately worried about a “Pandora’s box” of administrative burdens that sweeping opt-out rights now present, and said they may consider preemptively removing content from the curriculum entirely in order to avoid confrontations with parents.
“I’m sure there will be more parents that are going to exercise this right,” said Jim Walsh, a Texas lawyer who represents school boards and is a member of the National School Attorneys Association.
Federal courts have already fielded numerous disputes in recent years over religious objections to classroom lessons, including faith-based opposition to teaching women’s empowerment, the theory of evolution, coed physical education, and celebration of Halloween.
“There are religions that oppose medical science, surgery, psychiatry, interracial marriage, monogamy, woman’s suffrage, the right of gay people to marry, and so on,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., an attorney and law professor. “All of them will now be able to flood the courts with claims that particular curricular teachings and books offend their sincere values and their children should not be exposed to the offensive doctrines.”
To evaluate the claims, frontline educators could be put in a tough spot.
“School administrators will have to become experts in a wide range of religious doctrines in order to predict, in advance, whether a parent may object to a particular text, lesson plan, or school activity as contrary to their religious beliefs,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent in the case. “The result will be chaos.”
Walsh offered a more sanguine appraisal based on the experience of Texas, which has had an expansive statewide opt-out available to parents for 30 years.
“Parents can opt out of anything they have a religious or moral objection to and the school has to accommodate that. It has not caused significant problems,” Walsh said. One reason the impact has been muted, he said, is that “kids are frequently embarrassed when their parents do this.” As for concerns that schools might self-censor material so as to avoid conflicts with parents, Walsh said it’s a likely possibility.
“Sotomayor predicts a lot of litigation. I think she’s probably right about that, but I think if districts adopt a policy and transparency — and allow opt-out with some limitations on that — I think that’s going to go a long way for reducing that.”
(WASHINGTON) — With a week until a July Fourth deadline for Congress to get President Donald Trump’s megabill passed, Senate Republicans are going over the final sticking points — with the end in sight and a potential vote this weekend.
On Friday afternoon, Senate Republicans met with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who called the passage of the bill the “single most important economic thing we’re going to do this year.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson chewed over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act with Senate Republicans at the closed-door lunch on Friday, telling reporters afterward that the Senate’s version of the legislation is almost done.
“We had a great discussion about a lot of important issues, and I feel like we’re getting very close to a final product,” Johnson said as he left the meeting.
While the Senate grapples with the state and local tax provision, Johnson said he believes senators are “very, very close to closing that issue out.”
The Senate version of the bill is expected to hit the Senate floor on Saturday afternoon. It begins with a procedural vote on the motion to proceed to the bill, which requires a simple majority of votes to pass.
Assuming the bill gets the necessary votes to proceed, there are up to 20 hours of debate, evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans will likely yield back most of their ten hours. Democrats will likely use close to all of it.
After an unlimited series of amendment votes, the Senate could vote on the final passage of the bill at some point on Sunday.
Still, some roadblocks remain. The Senate parliamentarian on Thursday rejected a Medicaid provision in the bill, which is a major blow to Senate Republicans’ efforts. Also, Senate Majority Leader John Thune can afford to lose only three Republican votes when the bill goes to the Senate floor, given unified Democratic opposition in the Senate.
“All of it depends on…we’ve got a few things we’re waiting on, outcomes from the parliamentarian on, but if we could get some of those questions issues landed, and my expectation is at some point tomorrow, we’ll be ready to go,” Thune said Friday.
Johnson and Thune met with Trump Thursday night in the Oval Office about the tax and immigration bill as Congress barrels toward its self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.
“We had a long discussion about … where the bill stands and its status. And they are — we are very, very close, and Leader Thune has confidence that they could get the job done by this weekend, and we certainly are hopeful for that,” Johnson said about the Thursday meeting.
Earlier Friday, Johnson suggested the Fourth of July deadline could slide, saying “it’s possible” that the deadline could change — although he said he wanted to remain committed to the July Fourth goal. However, later in the day, Johnson stuck to Independence Day.
“That’s been our goal all along, and it hasn’t changed,” the speaker said, adding that “the House is ready to act as soon as the Senate does.”
After fudging his long-standing, self-imposed July Fourth deadline for Congress to pass his massive immigration and tax bill, Trump later doubled down on the date in a social media post.
“The House of Representatives must be ready to send it to my desk before July 4th — We can get it done,” the president wrote.
Earlier, when asked about the deadline during a news conference in the White House briefing room, the president said “it’s not the end all” and that “it can go longer.”
On Thursday, congressional leaders and the administration touted the benefits of the package during a celebration in the East Room of the White House.
As the Senate aims to move forward this weekend with the megabill, House leaders told members in a formal notice “pending Senate action on H.R. 1, votes on the One Big Beautiful Bill are expected in the House next week” — interrupting a planned weeklong Independence Day recess.
“Further information regarding the timing of votes will be provided as soon as possible, and Members will be given a minimum of 48 hours’ notice prior to any votes in the House,” the notice states.
Earlier this week, Trump told members of Congress that they would have to forgo vacations to get the bill to his desk.
“To my friends in the Senate, lock yourself in a room if you must, don’t go home, and GET THE DEAL DONE THIS WEEK,” Trump posted on his social media platform. “Work with the House so they can pick it up, and pass it, IMMEDIATELY. NO ONE GOES ON VACATION UNTIL IT’S DONE.”
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court should hear Ghislaine Maxwell’s appeal of her 2021 sex trafficking conviction because the government has an “obligation to honor” a non-prosecution agreement with Jeffrey Epstein that inoculated Maxwell from any criminal charges, her lawyers argued in a brief to the Supreme Court Monday.
“Plea and non-prosecution agreements resolve nearly every federal case. They routinely include promises that extend to others—co-conspirators, family members, potential witnesses. If those promises mean different things in different parts of the country, then trust in our system collapses,” the brief said.
Federal prosecutors have argued that the non-prosecution agreement applied only in Florida and did not bind New York, where charges against him, and subsequently Maxwell, were brought.
Maxwell’s attorneys argued the terms of the NPA Epstein signed were unqualified.
“It is not geographically limited to the Southern District of Florida, it is not conditioned on the co-conspirators being known by the government at the time, it does not depend on what any particular government attorney may have had in his or her head about who might be a co-conspirator, and it contains no other caveat or exception. This should be the end of the discussion,” the defense brief said.
The Justice Department has urged the Supreme Court to reject Maxwell’s petition even as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche agreed to meet with Maxwell last week.
Prosecutors have argued Maxwell cannot enforce the NPA because she was not a party to it. The defense disagreed.
“Petitioner’s alleged status as Epstein’s co-conspirator was the entire basis of her prosecution,” the defense brief said.
“No one is above the law—not even the Southern District of New York. Our government made a deal, and it must honor it. The United States cannot promise immunity with one hand in Florida and prosecute with the other in New York. President Trump built his legacy in part on the power of a deal—and surely he would agree that when the United States gives its word, it must stand by it. We are appealing not only to the Supreme Court but to the President himself to recognize how profoundly unjust it is to scapegoat Ghislaine Maxwell for Epstein’s crimes, especially when the government promised she would not be prosecuted,” Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus said in a statement.
