Kentucky Church Brings Pandemic-Era Legal Dispute to Supreme Court
The church is arguing that its constitutional rights were violated when it was denied attorney's fees in its lawsuit, after the same court awarded those fees to litigants in another lawsuit based on the same facts.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
31 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
After a reference to Trump's impeachments is removed from a Smithsonian, questions of history arise
NEW YORK — It would seem the most straightforward of notions: A thing takes place, and it goes into the history books or is added to museum exhibits. But whether something even gets remembered and how — particularly when it comes to the history of a country and its leader — can become complex, especially when the leader is Donald Trump. The latest example of that came Friday, when the Smithsonian Institution said it had removed a reference to Trump's 2019 and 2021 impeachments from a panel in an exhibition about the American presidency. Trump has pressed institutions and agencies under federal oversight, often through the pressure of funding, to focus on the country's achievements and progress and away from things he terms 'divisive.' The Smithsonian on Saturday denied getting pressure from the Trump administration to remove the reference, which had been installed as part of a temporary addition in 2021. The exhibit 'will be updated in the coming weeks to reflect all impeachment proceedings in our nation's history,' the museum said in a statement. In a statement that did not directly address the impeachment references, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said: 'We are fully supportive of updating displays to highlight American greatness.' But is history intended to highlight or to document — to report what happened, or to serve a desired narrative? The answer, as with most things about the past, can be complicated. The Smithsonian's move comes as the Trump administration has asserted its dominion over many American institutions, such as removing the name of a gay rights activist from a Navy ship, pushing for Republican supporters in Congress to defund the Corp. for Public Broadcasting — prompting its elimination — and getting rid of the leadership at the Kennedy Center. 'Based on what we have been seeing, this is part of a broader effort by the president to influence and shape how history is depicted at museums, national parks and schools,' said Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. 'Not only is he pushing a specific narrative of the United States but, in this case, trying to influence how Americans learn about his own role in history.' It's not a new struggle, in the world generally and the political world particularly. There is power in being able to shape how things are remembered, if they are remembered at all — who was there, who took part, who was responsible, what happened to lead up to that point in history. And the human beings who run things have often extended their authority to the stories told about them. In China, for example, references to the June 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing's Tiananmen Square are forbidden and meticulously regulated by the ruling Communist Party government. In Soviet-era Russia, officials who ran afoul of leaders such as Josef Stalin disappeared not only from the government itself but from photographs and history books where they once appeared. Jason Stanley, an expert on authoritarianism, said controlling what and how people learn of their past has long been used as a vital tool to maintain power. Stanley has made his views about the Trump administration clear; he recently left Yale University to join the University of Toronto, citing concerns over the U.S. political situation. 'If they don't control the historical narrative,' he said, 'then they can't create the kind of fake history that props up their politics.' In the United States, presidents and their families have used their power to shape history and calibrate their own images. Jackie Kennedy insisted on cuts in William Manchester's book on her husband's 1963 assassination, 'The Death of a President.' Ronald Reagan and his wife got a cable TV channel to release a carefully calibrated documentary about him. Those around Franklin D. Roosevelt, including journalists of the era, took pains to mask the effects of paralysis on his body and his mobility. Trump, though, has asserted far greater control — a sitting president encouraging an atmosphere where institutions can feel compelled to choose between him and the facts, whether he calls for it directly or not. 'We are constantly trying to position ourselves in history as citizens — as citizens of the country, citizens of the world,' said Robin Wagner-Pacifici, professor emerita of sociology at the New School for Social Research. 'So part of these exhibits and monuments are also about situating us in time. And without it, it's very hard for us to situate ourselves in history because it seems like we just kind of burst forth from the Earth.' Timothy Naftali, director of the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda from 2007 to 2011, presided over its overhaul to offer a more objective presentation of Watergate — one not beholden to the president's loyalists. In an interview Friday, he said he was 'concerned and disappointed' about the Smithsonian decision. Naftali, now a senior researcher at Columbia University, said that museum directors 'should have red lines' and that he considered one of them to be the removal of the Trump impeachment panel. While it might seem inconsequential for someone in power to care about a museum's offerings, Wagner-Pacifici says Trump's outlook on history and his role in it — earlier this year, he said the Smithsonian had 'come under the influence of a divisive, race-centered ideology' — shows how important those matters are to people in authority. 'You might say about that person, whoever that person is, their power is so immense and their legitimacy is so stable and so sort of monumental that why would they bother with things like this ... why would they bother to waste their energy and effort on that?' Wagner-Pacifici said. Her conclusion: 'The legitimacy of those in power has to be reconstituted constantly. They can never rest on their laurels.' Hajela and Italie write for the Associated Press.
Los Angeles Times
31 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Will Trump weaken the federal judiciary with specious accusations against judges?
Last week, Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi, who shows more fealty to President Trump than to the U.S. Constitution she swore to uphold, filed a complaint against the only federal judge who has initiated contempt proceedings against the government for defying his orders. U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, she alleged, had undermined the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary by making 'improper public comments' about Trump to a group of federal judges that included Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. What is Boasberg alleged to have said? No transcript has emerged, but according to Bondi's complaint, at a March session of the Judicial Conference of the United States, Boasberg is alleged to have expressed 'a belief that the Trump Administration would 'disregard rulings of the federal courts' and trigger 'a constitutional crisis.' ' The Judicial Conference is the perfect place to air such concerns. It is the policy-making body for the federal judiciary, and twice a year about two dozen federal judges, including the Supreme Court chief justice, meet to discuss issues relevant to their work. Recently, for example, they created a task force to deal with threats of physical violence, which have heightened considerably in the Trump era. But nothing that happens in their private sessions could reasonably be construed as 'public comments.' 'The Judicial Conference is not a public setting. It's an internal governing body of the judiciary, and there is no expectation that what gets said is going to be broadcast to the world,' explained former U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who spent seven years as director of the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, a kind of think tank for the judiciary. I reached out to Fogel because he is part of a coalition of retired federal judges — the Article III Coalition of the nonpartisan civic education group Keep Our Republic — whose goal is to defend the independence of the judiciary and promote understanding of the rule of law. Bondi's complaint accuses Boasberg of attempting to 'transform a routine housekeeping agenda into a forum to persuade the Chief Justice and other federal judges of his preconceived belief that the Trump Administration would violate court orders.' You know how they say that every accusation is a confession in Trump World? A mere four days after Boasberg raised his concerns to fellow federal judges, the Trump administration defied his order against the deportation of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. You probably remember that one. A plane carrying the deportees was already in the air, and despite the judge's ruling, Trump officials refused to order its return. 'Oopsie,' tweeted El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele after it landed. 'Too late!' Thus began the administration's ongoing pattern of ignoring or flouting the courts in cases brought against it. It's not as if the signs were not there. 'He who saves his Country does not violate any law,' Trump wrote on social media in February, paraphrasing Napoleon Bonaparte, the dictatorial 19th century emperor of France. In June, Erez Reuveni, a career Department of Justice attorney who was fired when he told a Maryland judge the government had deported someone in error, provided documents to Congress that implicated Emil Bove, Trump's one-time criminal defense attorney, in efforts to violate Boasberg's order to halt the deportation of the Venezuelans. According to Reuveni's whistleblower complaint, Bove, who was acting deputy attorney general at the time, said the administration should consider telling judges who order deportations halted, 'F— you.' Bove denied it. And last week, even though other Justice Department whistleblowers corroborated Reuveni's complaint, Bove was narrowly confirmed by the Senate to a lifetime appointment as a federal appeals court judge. 'The Trump Administration has always complied with all court orders,' wrote Bondi in her complaint against Boasberg. This is laughable. A July 21 Washington Post analysis found that Trump and his appointees have been credibly accused of flouting court rulings in a third of more than 160 lawsuits against the administration in which a judge has issued a substantive ruling. The cases have involved immigration, and cuts to the federal funding and the federal work force. That record suggests, according to the Post, 'widespread noncompliance with America's legal system.' Legal experts told the Post that this pattern is unprecedented and is a threat to our system of checks and balances at a moment when the executive branch is asserting 'vast powers that test the boundaries of the law and Constitution.' It's no secret that Trump harbors autocratic ambitions. He adores Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán, who has transformed the Hungarian justice system into an instrument of his own will and killed off the country's independent media. 'It's like we're twins,' Trump said in 2019, after hosting Orbán at the White House. Trump has teased that he might try to seek an unconstitutional third term. He de-legitimizes the press. His acolytes in Congress will not restrain him. And now he has trained his sights on the independent judiciary urging punishment of judges who thwart his agenda. On social media, he has implied that Boasberg is 'a radical left lunatic,' and wrote, 'This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges' I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!' Some of Trump's lapdogs in the House immediately introduced articles of impeachment (which are likely to go nowhere). Roberts was moved to rebuke Trump: 'For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,' he said in a statement. 'The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.' Some described his words as 'stern.' I found them to be rather mild, considering the damage Trump's rhetoric inflicts on the well-being of judges. 'It's part of a longer term pattern of trying to … weaken the ability of the judiciary to put checks on executive power, ' Fogel told me. He is not among those who think we are in a constitutional crisis. Yet. 'Our Constitution has safeguards in it,' Fogel said. 'Federal judges have lifetime tenure. We are in a period of Supreme Court jurisprudence that has given the executive a lot of leeway, but I don't think it's unlimited.' I wish I shared his confidence. Bluesky: @rabcarianThreads: @rabcarian
Washington Post
33 minutes ago
- Washington Post
White House has no plan to mandate IVF care, despite campaign pledge
The White House does not plan to require health insurers to provide coverage for in vitro fertilization services, two people with knowledge of internal discussions said, even though the idea was one of President Donald Trump's key campaign pledges. Last year, Trump said that if he returned to office, the government would either pay for IVF services or issue rules requiring insurance companies to cover treatment for it. The pledge came as Trump faced political blowback over abortion rights after his appointees to the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade.
