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Fox News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Judge Judy recreates controversial American verdicts and challenges viewers in 'Justice on Trial'
EXCLUSIVE - Judge Judith Sheindlin helps recreate some of the most controversial court cases in American history in her new show, "Justice on Trial." The show, which was over 10 years in the making and finally premiered on Prime Video last Monday, revisits eight of the most monumental court cases in American memory — allowing the viewer to decide if justice was truly served with each verdict. The main lawyers featured on the show are Larry Bakman and Daniel Mentzer. Episode seven features a re-telling of "Snyder v. Phelps," in which a grieving father, Albert Snyder, sued Fred Phelps and his followers at the Westboro Baptist Church for emotional distress after church members protested his son Matthew's military funeral. The churchgoers, as depicted in the episode, carried signs reading, "God Hates Your Son," "Thank God for Dead Soldiers," and "Thank God for 9/11," to protest the military's tolerance of homosexuality. As Snyder noted during the trial, his son was not gay. The protesters were protesting the military at-large. The court showdown highlighted the legal boundaries of protected speech when it conflicts with potential harm to others. A jury in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland agreed with Snyder and awarded him a total of $10.9 million, which the judge lowered to $5 million. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the judgment, holding that Phelps' speech was protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court upheld the Fourth Circuit's ruling. The fiery Sheindlin had an opinion on the matter. While she and others may find the protesters' signs "abhorrent," she intoned that the Constitution does protect free speech. "Totally uncaring for people who are religious people, totally uncaring about the emotional trauma that that kind of demonstration might have on the family," Sheindlin said of the Westboro protests in an interview with Fox News Digital. "And yet the Supreme Court said in its decision that they had a right to express their views, even though their views were maybe abhorrent to the vast majority of Americans. I suppose you have to be able to... I wouldn't want to tolerate seeing the American flag burned in protest in America. Just wouldn't. It would offend me. But you have the right to do it. Is there a law that proscribes it? And I'd say probably not." So how do Americans reconcile their anger at a verdict with the Court's constitutional responsibilities? Sheindlin began her answer by referencing the movie "American President." "I mean, we all would like our presidents to be like Michael Douglas, correct?" she said. "And he said something at the end, but he's making the big speech at the end. He said, 'As an American, America is not easy, and you have to be able to defend somebody burning a flag, the American flag, as a protest, if you're going to insist that freedom of speech and expression exists.' And while we are all offended, it just didn't seem right that for no apparent reason, with no knowledge of who this young man was who was killed, just because they had a cause, they didn't care what the collateral damage was emotionally to the family of this young man." Judge Judy said there was one case, in particular, that spurred her to want to create "Justice on Trial" and that may also leave some Americans feeling like justice may have taken a walk. "It was a case that happened in New York many, many years ago," she shared. "Two young thugs decided to rob an old man on the subway. Believe it or not, I remember the man's name. His name was Jerome Sandusky, and he was a man well in his 70s. And one of them was acting as a lookout. The other one went down the stairs with the pretty deserted platform and was beating up this old man in an attempt to take his watch and cash. And a transit police officer heard the screams of the old man coming from the subway, and he ran down into the subway. Pulled out his revolver and said, 'Stop, police!' And the young thug ran off and was running up the stairs. Police said, 'Stop, police!' He didn't stop, and the police officer shot him. And he shot him in the back as he was fleeing." Then things got tricky in court and the situation seemed to turn on the victim. "The young man pled guilty to the robbery, was sentenced, but hired a lawyer who sued the transit authority in the city of New York and received a judgment, a jury verdict for $4.3 million," Sheindlin continued. "And then Mr. Sandusky, who took a very long time to recover from his physical wounds, but who would, you know — if you're a crime victim emotionally, you really never get over being a victim of violent crime. And Mr. Sandusky, he said, 'Well, that's sort of outrageous. I was the victim.' And so he hired a lawyer because now this thug had $4.3 million and his lawsuit was barred by the statute of limitations. So there are many facets to that case. Whether or not, ultimately, justice was served is an issue. And if you ask 10 people, given those set of facts, you will get at least eight different opinions." All eight episodes of "Justice on Trial" are streaming now on Prime Video. Other cases covered by the series include the famous Scopes Monkey trial, Gideon v. Wainwright and People v. Turriago. In the latter case, troopers stopped Leonardo Turriago for a speeding violation on the New York State Thruway, which led police to discover a decomposing body locked in a steamer trunk. The episode explores the question of whether or not the search of the truck was legal. The series is created and executive produced by Sheindlin. Casey Barber, David Carr and Randy Douthit are also executive producers. Amy Freisleben is a co-executive producer.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Who Counts as Christian?
During his campaign, Donald Trump told Christian supporters that if he became president, they would never have to vote again, because 'we'll have it fixed so good.' Now he's trying to follow through on his promise by establishing a task force charged with 'eradicating anti-Christian bias.' But Christians shouldn't conclude that this new commission will necessarily defend their interests, let alone fix it 'so good.' Eliminating anti-Christian bias will require the task force (and thereby the government) to rule on what exactly constitutes authentic Christian belief and practice—not a straightforward determination to make, nor one that should be entrusted to the Trump administration. The executive order creating the task force cites a multitude of examples of what the Trump administration considers to be unacceptable discrimination against Christians, including Biden-era prosecutions of Christian anti-abortion protesters under the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act, the promulgation of a (later retracted) FBI memo referring to radical traditionalist Christians as a potential domestic-terrorism threat, and the designation of Easter Sunday of 2024 as the year's Transgender Day of Visibility. Conservative Christians may generally agree with Trump's characterization of those episodes. But determining the authentically Christian perspective on an issue is not always a simple task. Was the Westboro Baptist Church, a Christian group that spent decades picketing the funerals of LGBTQ people and members of the armed forces, justified in stomping on American flags and heckling crowds of mourners in the name of Christ? The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the group at one point and declined to even entertain its argument at another. Or consider the case of an Episcopalian church in Sacramento whose rainbow Pride flag was stolen and burned: Would this task force agree that the attack was an act of aggression against the congregation qua Christians? The church's priest certainly thought so. To what authority would this task force appeal in order to prove otherwise? Tradition, scripture, the majority opinion of the faithful? Even the most learned Christians disagree on how to derive religious authority, and I doubt this task force will finally settle the debate. [From the February 2025 issue: The army of God comes out of the shadows] This is not a strictly academic point. As part of carrying out the task force's mandate, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas Collins sent a memo to staff asking them to report instances of anti-Christian discrimination—which included, among other things, 'adverse responses to requests for religious exemption under the previous vaccine mandates.' In this case, the state seems to have decided that Christians have legitimate reason to request exemptions from vaccine mandates. But I would contend that vaccines aren't excluded by genuine Christian ethics, and that these Christian objectors are mistaken in their understanding of the faith. By permitting Christians to obtain vaccine-mandate exemptions, the state is not only misconstruing Christianity, but also causing a great deal of harm—a multistate measles outbreak, for instance, has caused three deaths this year and is still spreading. Vaccine mandates are crucial in preventing such occurrences, and Christians should be particularly willing to offer some small sacrifice for the good of others. That principle is at the heart of the faith. Nor has this administration been friendly to legitimate Christian belief and practice that runs afoul of its politics. Earlier this year, Vice President J. D. Vance bickered with American bishops over major funding cuts to organizations that aid migrants and refugees, contending that their interest was in making money, not in practicing Christianity faithfully. Pope Francis indirectly chastised Vance in a letter written a few weeks before the pope's death, but it doesn't seem that Vance was moved to change his mind. One wonders what the vice president has to say about the recent arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, who allegedly helped an undocumented man evade arrest by government agents and who also served as the executive director of a branch of Catholic Charities. Was this possibly an example of anti-Christian bias directed at a person practicing the kind of mercy counseled by the late pope? [Luis Parrales: What the border-hawk Catholics get wrong] But the task force is just one element of a broader project to recapture political and cultural ground that Christianity has lost over the past several decades. The litany of examples supplied as justification for the task force's creation generally fit under the rubric of frustrating compromises with liberalism—in the classical sense, as related to the country's founding: liberty, equality, and freedom of conscience—something Trump alluded to during a celebration of National Prayer Day in the Rose Garden. 'They say separation between Church and state,' he remarked. 'I said, 'All right, let's forget about that for one time,'' adding, 'We're bringing religion back to our country, and it's a big deal.' Liberalism engenders religious tolerance in part by domesticating religion, and some number of Christians long for wilder and fiercer expressions of the faith than are generally on offer within a liberal framework. There was a time when American Christianity and the liberal state were less frequently in conflict because Christianity was so overwhelmingly dominant in society. But the recent decline of Christianity has changed that. In 1980, more than 90 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christian; today, only 62 percent say they're followers of Christ. And though recent research suggests that the long-term decrease in Christian affiliation may have halted, the story of the past half century of American Christianity must be read through the lens of these gradual losses and their consequences. The faith no longer has the near-total sociocultural hegemony over American life that it once enjoyed; largely gone are the days of routine prayers and Bible readings in public schools, the suspension of commerce on Sundays, and the broad assumption that whoever you happen to meet will almost certainly be Christian. There are pains associated with Christianity's gradual transformation from a monopolizing cultural force into just one offering on an extended religious menu—though still a preeminent offering, at least for now. It's not surprising, therefore, that the Christians coalescing around Trump want to make American Christianity great again. If the task force's mandate of mere fairness is essentially a pretext for persecuting perceived enemies of the faith, then its real purpose is to restore this past vision of American Christian dominance. That's not to say that the task force won't also address instances of genuine bias toward Christians. Anti-Christian incidents are real: Attacks and vandalism on Catholic churches, for example, appear to be at an all-time high; hundreds of incidents were reported across the country in 2023, though authorities have at times been reluctant to concede that prejudice was a factor. These episodes are understandably aggravating to Christians, and many may therefore see this task force as a welcome intervention, and a matter of fairness in principle: If other groups are entitled to systematic efforts to root out prejudice toward them, the thinking goes, then why not Christians as well? Perhaps that's the irony of this new task force: Nobody appears to view Christianity as just another interest group as much as Donald Trump, who was overtly indifferent to religion until it became clear to him that Christians represented a bloc to pick up with typical political pandering—and pandering works. But Christians should as a rule be skeptical of versions of the faith that are informed overly much by partisan politics, which always have something other than Jesus at their core. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
12-05-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Who Counts as Christian?
During his campaign, Donald Trump told Christian supporters that if he became president, they would never have to vote again, because 'we'll have it fixed so good.' Now he's trying to follow through on his promise by establishing a task force charged with 'eradicating anti-Christian bias.' But Christians shouldn't conclude that this new commission will necessarily defend their interests, let alone fix it 'so good.' Eliminating anti-Christian bias will require the task force (and thereby the government) to rule on what exactly constitutes authentic Christian belief and practice—not a straightforward determination to make, nor one that should be entrusted to the Trump administration. The executive order creating the task force cites a multitude of examples of what the Trump administration considers to be unacceptable discrimination against Christians, including Biden-era prosecutions of Christian anti-abortion protesters under the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act, the promulgation of a (later retracted) FBI memo referring to radical traditionalist Christians as a potential domestic-terrorism threat, and the designation of Easter Sunday of 2024 as the year's Transgender Day of Visibility. Conservative Christians may generally agree with Trump's characterization of those episodes. But determining the authentically Christian perspective on an issue is not always a simple task. Was the Westboro Baptist Church, a Christian group that spent decades picketing the funerals of LGBTQ people and members of the armed forces, justified in stomping on American flags and heckling crowds of mourners in the name of Christ? The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the group at one point and declined to even entertain its argument at another. Or consider the case of an Episcopalian church in Sacramento whose rainbow Pride flag was stolen and burned: Would this task force agree that the attack was an act of aggression against the congregation qua Christians? The church's priest certainly thought so. To what authority would this task force appeal in order to prove otherwise? Tradition, scripture, the majority opinion of the faithful? Even the most learned Christians disagree on how to derive religious authority, and I doubt this task force will finally settle the debate. From the February 2025 issue: The army of God comes out of the shadows This is not a strictly academic point. As part of carrying out the task force's mandate, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Douglas Collins sent a memo to staff asking them to report instances of anti-Christian discrimination—which included, among other things, 'adverse responses to requests for religious exemption under the previous vaccine mandates.' In this case, the state seems to have decided that Christians have legitimate reason to request exemptions from vaccine mandates. But I would contend that vaccines aren't excluded by genuine Christian ethics, and that these Christian objectors are mistaken in their understanding of the faith. By permitting Christians to obtain vaccine-mandate exemptions, the state is not only misconstruing Christianity, but also causing a great deal of harm—a multistate measles outbreak, for instance, has caused three deaths this year and is still spreading. Vaccine mandates are crucial in preventing such occurrences, and Christians should be particularly willing to offer some small sacrifice for the good of others. That principle is at the heart of the faith. Nor has this administration been friendly to legitimate Christian belief and practice that runs afoul of its politics. Earlier this year, Vice President J. D. Vance bickered with American bishops over major funding cuts to organizations that aid migrants and refugees, contending that their interest was in making money, not in practicing Christianity faithfully. Pope Francis indirectly chastised Vance in a letter written a few weeks before the pope's death, but it doesn't seem that Vance was moved to change his mind. One wonders what the vice president has to say about the recent arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan, who allegedly helped an undocumented man evade arrest by government agents and who also served as the executive director of a branch of Catholic Charities. Was this possibly an example of anti-Christian bias directed at a person practicing the kind of mercy counseled by the late pope? Luis Parrales: What the border-hawk Catholics get wrong But the task force is just one element of a broader project to recapture political and cultural ground that Christianity has lost over the past several decades. The litany of examples supplied as justification for the task force's creation generally fit under the rubric of frustrating compromises with liberalism—in the classical sense, as related to the country's founding: liberty, equality, and freedom of conscience—something Trump alluded to during a celebration of National Prayer Day in the Rose Garden. 'They say separation between Church and state,' he remarked. 'I said, 'All right, let's forget about that for one time,'' adding, 'We're bringing religion back to our country, and it's a big deal.' Liberalism engenders religious tolerance in part by domesticating religion, and some number of Christians long for wilder and fiercer expressions of the faith than are generally on offer within a liberal framework. There was a time when American Christianity and the liberal state were less frequently in conflict because Christianity was so overwhelmingly dominant in society. But the recent decline of Christianity has changed that. In 1980, more than 90 percent of Americans identified themselves as Christian; today, only 62 percent say they're followers of Christ. And though recent research suggests that the long-term decrease in Christian affiliation may have halted, the story of the past half century of American Christianity must be read through the lens of these gradual losses and their consequences. The faith no longer has the near-total sociocultural hegemony over American life that it once enjoyed; largely gone are the days of routine prayers and Bible readings in public schools, the suspension of commerce on Sundays, and the broad assumption that whoever you happen to meet will almost certainly be Christian. There are pains associated with Christianity's gradual transformation from a monopolizing cultural force into just one offering on an extended religious menu—though still a preeminent offering, at least for now. It's not surprising, therefore, that the Christians coalescing around Trump want to make American Christianity great again. If the task force's mandate of mere fairness is essentially a pretext for persecuting perceived enemies of the faith, then its real purpose is to restore this past vision of American Christian dominance. That's not to say that the task force won't also address instances of genuine bias toward Christians. Anti-Christian incidents are real: Attacks and vandalism on Catholic churches, for example, appear to be at an all-time high; hundreds of incidents were reported across the country in 2023, though authorities have at times been reluctant to concede that prejudice was a factor. These episodes are understandably aggravating to Christians, and many may therefore see this task force as a welcome intervention, and a matter of fairness in principle: If other groups are entitled to systematic efforts to root out prejudice toward them, the thinking goes, then why not Christians as well? Perhaps that's the irony of this new task force: Nobody appears to view Christianity as just another interest group as much as Donald Trump, who was overtly indifferent to religion until it became clear to him that Christians represented a bloc to pick up with typical political pandering—and pandering works. But Christians should as a rule be skeptical of versions of the faith that are informed overly much by partisan politics, which always have something other than Jesus at their core.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Settlers review – this vital film forces Louis Theroux to do something he's never done before
If you've even casually been tracking Louis Theroux's career, you will have detected a noticeable deceleration of late. For a while, after he shed the culty sheen of his Weird Weekends persona, Theroux emerged as a sober, probing documentarian who made films about drug addiction, sexual assault and postpartum depression. These films were, without exception, vital. Then lockdown happened, and the wheels fell off. After going viral for a self-consciously ironic rap he did 20 years earlier, Theroux settled into the low-stakes quicksand of a generic celebrity interview podcast. You were left with the feeling of an extraordinary talent being wasted. The Settlers lays all those worries to rest in an instant. By travelling to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Theroux is revisiting the subject matter of a documentary he made in 2011. That film, The Ultra Zionists, concerned a clutch of Jewish people who – propelled by religious nationalism – were infringing on international law by building their homes in Palestinian territory. But, 14 years on, he has returned to find that the settlements have accelerated. The settler ideology has found itself gaining political traction. What was fringe has now become mainstream. As such, The Settlers requires Theroux to alter his approach. Ever since Weird Weekends, his stock in trade has been the faux-naïf, lulling his subjects into a false sense of security with his bumbling charm. With everyone from Jimmy Savile to the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, he was able to lay traps they simply didn't see coming. But the situation in the West Bank is so dire that the kid gloves have to come off. This is partly because he and his crew repeatedly find themselves subject to many of the confrontations and intimidations that blight the lives of Palestinians on a daily basis. During a visit to a Palestinian home, settlers drive up and point guns with laser sights through the windows at him. More than once, he has to politely ask people to lower their guns while talking to him. In one especially tense encounter, he has to bark 'Don't touch me' at a pair of balaclava-wearing Israeli soldiers. In the early years, Theroux would gently attempt to convince his subjects that their worldview might not be the only one around. In the later, more serious films, he would leave long silences on which the viewer could project scorn on his behalf, saving his true feelings for the voiceover afterwards. In truth, there is some of this in The Settlers. When he meets Ari Abramowitz, a Texas settler in the West Bank who refuses to even use the word 'Palestinian', he holds his tongue. When he meets a rabbi who calls Palestinians 'savages' and 'camel riders', he manages to do the same. Then comes Daniella Weiss. A key member of the Israeli settler movement for 50 years, Weiss is Theroux's prime target. She is able to hide her extreme views behind a friendly smile, no matter how aggressively he plays cat and mouse with her. But, at the end of the episode, they both get to each other like never before. Theroux corners Weiss and presses her on settler violence against Palestinians. She says none exists. He says he has witnessed it, notably in a video of a Palestinian being shot. She claims the Israeli shooter was acting in retaliation, then physically shoves Theroux in the hope that he'll push her back. Instead, he does something he's never done before. He calls her a sociopath. I've been watching Theroux's films for more than three decades, since his days on Michael Moore's TV Nation, and watching him be this forthright feels like a true watershed moment in his career. This level of stridently editorialising just hasn't been in his toolbox until now. Whether it works or not is debatable – by the end of the encounter Weiss has recovered herself enough to taunt 'I wish you'd pushed me back' at him – but this new version of Louis Theroux feels like a deliberate adaptation to the ages. It suits him. As with everything, you wish certain aspects of the situation could be explored more. Most notably, the peripheral glimpses of Israeli activists who protest against the settlements probably need more airtime, if only to demonstrate that this is a problem of individuals rather than an entire nation. But that's by the by. It looks very much like we've got Louis Theroux back, and not a moment too soon. • The Settlers aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now
The Guardian
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Settlers review – this vital film forces Louis Theroux to do something he's never done before
If you've even casually been tracking Louis Theroux's career, you will have detected a noticeable deceleration of late. For a while, after he shed the culty sheen of his Weird Weekends persona, Theroux emerged as a sober, probing documentarian who made films about drug addiction, sexual assault and postpartum depression. These films were, without exception, vital. Then lockdown happened, and the wheels fell off. After going viral for a self-consciously ironic rap he did 20 years earlier, Theroux settled into the low-stakes quicksand of a generic celebrity interview podcast. You were left with the feeling of an extraordinary talent being wasted. The Settlers lays all those worries to rest in an instant. By travelling to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Theroux is revisiting the subject matter of a documentary he made in 2011. That film, The Ultra Zionists, concerned a clutch of Jewish people who – propelled by religious nationalism – were infringing on international law by building their homes in Palestinian territory. But, 14 years on, he has returned to find that the settlements have accelerated. The settler ideology has found itself gaining political traction. What was fringe has now become mainstream. As such, The Settlers requires Theroux to alter his approach. Ever since Weird Weekends, his stock in trade has been the faux-naïf, lulling his subjects into a false sense of security with his bumbling charm. With everyone from Jimmy Savile to the members of the Westboro Baptist Church, he was able to lay traps they simply didn't see coming. But the situation in the West Bank is so dire that the kid gloves have to come off. This is partly because he and his crew repeatedly find themselves subject to many of the confrontations and intimidations that blight the lives of Palestinians on a daily basis. During a visit to a Palestinian home, settlers drive up and point guns with laser sights through the windows at him. More than once, he has to politely ask people to lower their guns while talking to him. In one especially tense encounter, he has to bark 'Don't touch me' at a pair of balaclava-wearing Israeli soldiers. In the early years, Theroux would gently attempt to convince his subjects that their worldview might not be the only one around. In the later, more serious films, he would leave long silences on which the viewer could project scorn on his behalf, saving his true feelings for the voiceover afterwards. In truth, there is some of this in The Settlers. When he meets Ari Abramowitz, a Texas settler in the West Bank who refuses to even use the word 'Palestinian', he holds his tongue. When he meets a rabbi who calls Palestinians 'savages' and 'camel riders', he manages to do the same. Then comes Daniella Weiss. A key member of the Israeli settler movement for 50 years, Weiss is Theroux's prime target. She is able to hide her extreme views behind a friendly smile, no matter how aggressively he plays cat and mouse with her. But, at the end of the episode, they both get to each other like never before. Theroux corners Weiss and presses her on settler violence against Palestinians. She says none exists. He says he has witnessed it, notably in a video of a Palestinian being shot. She claims the Israeli shooter was acting in retaliation, then physically shoves Theroux in the hope that he'll push her back. Instead, he does something he's never done before. He calls her a sociopath. I've been watching Theroux's films for more than three decades, since his days on Michael Moore's TV Nation, and watching him be this forthright feels like a true watershed moment in his career. This level of stridently editorialising just hasn't been in his toolbox until now. Whether it works or not is debatable – by the end of the encounter Weiss has recovered herself enough to taunt 'I wish you'd pushed me back' at him – but this new version of Louis Theroux feels like a deliberate adaptation to the ages. It suits him. As with everything, you wish certain aspects of the situation could be explored more. Most notably, the peripheral glimpses of Israeli activists who protest against the settlements probably need more airtime, if only to demonstrate that this is a problem of individuals rather than an entire nation. But that's by the by. It looks very much like we've got Louis Theroux back, and not a moment too soon. The Settlers aired on BBC Two and is on iPlayer now
