Jose Garcia
Jose Garcia's JournalBiden to allow eviction moratorium to expire Saturday
Source: Associated Press
BOSTON – The Biden administration on Thursday announced it will allow a nationwide ban on evictions to expire Saturday, arguing that its hands are tied after the Supreme Court signaled it could only be extended until the end of the month.
The White House said President Joe Biden would have liked to have extended the federal eviction moratorium due to spread of the delta variant. Instead, Biden called on "Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay."
The moratorium was put in place put in place last September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Given the recent spread of the Delta variant, including among those Americans both most likely to face evictions and lacking vaccinations, President Biden would have strongly supported a decision by the CDC to further extend this eviction moratorium to protect renters at this moment of heightened vulnerability,” the White House said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has made clear that this option is no longer available.”
Read more: https://www.local10.com/news/politics/2021/07/29/biden-to-allow-eviction-moratorium-to-expire-saturday/
'We didn't have Surfside then.' Charlie Crist reflects on 2010 repeal of inspection law
Source: USA TODAY NETWORK-FLORIDA
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist is defending his 2010 decision to repeal a condominium inspection law that has come under renewed scrutiny in the wake of the tragic building collapse in Surfside.
Operatives have attacked Crist, who from 2007 to 2011 served as Florida's Republican governor. Crist, speaking at an appearance in Sarasota on Wednesday, suggested no one had the value of hindsight 11 years ago when lawmakers did away with mandatory condo inspections for structural safety every five years.
"We didn't have Surfside then," he said.
Read more: https://amp.tcpalm.com/amp/7962325002?__twitter_impression=true
West Virginia politician drops out of Democratic party
Source: WOWK TV
CHARLESTON, WV (WOWK) – Former U.S. Senate Candidate Paula Jean Swearengin has announced she is leaving the Democratic Party.
Swearengin said the reason behind her decision is she believes both the state and national levels of the party allegedly ignored issues such as racism and children suffering across Appalachia.
“Our system is broken. We can’t rebuild a two-party system with division & hate,” Swearengin said in a tweet.
According to her website, Swearengin is a native of Mullens, West Virginia, who grew up in a coal-mining family.
Read more: https://www.wowktv.com/news/west-virginia/west-virginia-politician-drops-out-of-democratic-party/
She ran against Manchin in 2018, but he cleaned her clock by over a 2-1 margin. She was the Democratic nominee for the US Senate in 2020. She only got 27% of the vote in the general election.
Cubans take to the streets for the biggest anti-government protests in decades
Source: Washington Post
MIAMI — Communist Cuba erupted in its largest-scale demonstrations in decades on Sunday as thousands of people chanting “freedom” and “yes, we can” took to the streets from Havana to Santiago de Cuba in a major new challenge to an authoritarian government struggling to cope with increasingly severe blackouts, food shortages and a spiking coronavirus outbreak.
The protests, from Havana’s famous Malecon to the island nation’s eastern cities, spoke to the power of social media. They apparently started in the city of San Antonio de los Baños and spread rapidly as demonstrators shared their protests on Facebook Live. The demonstrations were so large that President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who succeeded Raúl Castro this year as first secretary of the Communist Party, called on Cuba’s “revolutionary” citizens to take to the streets.
“We are prepared to do anything,” he said in a national address. "We will be battling in the streets.” He blamed the United States for agitating the population.
José Miguel Vivanco, director of Human Rights Watch’s Americas division, said his group had received reports that at least 20 people had been arrested. He added that the organization had received reports of violence being used by Cuban forces, a claim echoed by social media users sharing videos of wounded protesters.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/11/cuba-protests/?outputType=amp
Religious freedom vs. LGBTQ rights: Supreme Court sides with Catholic foster care agency
Source: USA Today
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled that a Catholic foster care agency in Philadelphia may turn away gay and lesbian couples as clients, a major victory for conservatives with the potential to shift the balance between LGBTQ rights and the First Amendment's protection of religious exercise.
In one of the most significant cases before a Supreme Court that has shifted to the right in recent years, the justices handed down the most high profile defeat to LGBTQ rights advocates since a 2018 decision absolved a Colorado baker of discrimination for refusing to create a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
The catholic agency "seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a unanimous court. "The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny, and violates the First Amendment."
Catholic Social Services said its religious views keep it from screening same-sex couples as foster parents. The agency, with a long history of placing foster children, said it shouldn’t be blocked from its work because of those views. Philadelphia countered that all foster care agencies are required to not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
Read more: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/4155263001
U.S. Supreme Court rules for Nestle, Cargill over slavery lawsuit
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, June 17 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a lawsuit accusing Cargill Inc and a Nestle SA (NESN.S) subsidiary of knowingly helping perpetuate slavery at Ivory Coast cocoa farms, but sidestepped a broader ruling on the permissibility of suits accusing American companies of human rights violations abroad.
The 8-1 ruling authored by Justice Clarence Thomas reversed a lower court decision that had allowed the lawsuit, brought on behalf of former child slaves from Mali who worked at the farms, filed against the companies in 2005 to proceed.
The court ruled the claim could not be brought under the Alien Tort Statute, which lets non-U.S. citizens seek damages in American courts in certain instances. The business community has long sought to limit corporate liability under this law.
The lawsuits targeted the U.S. subsidiary of Swiss-based Nestle, the world's biggest food producer, and commodities trader Cargill, one of the largest privately held U.S. companies.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/us-supreme-court-rules-nestle-cargill-over-slavery-lawsuit-2021-06-17/
Supreme Court won't extend reduced charges to low-level drug offenders
Source: NBC News
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a revised federal law does not allow prison inmates to seek a reduction in their sentences for possessing small amounts of crack cocaine.
The court said the wording of one of the rare bipartisan achievements of the Trump administration, the First Step Act, which made sweeping changes to the criminal justice system, means that the law does not apply to low-level offenders, even though supporters said they intended it to do so.
Its decision was unanimous.
During the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, Congress passed a law providing that someone arrested for possessing a small amount of crack cocaine would receive the same sentence as someone who possessed 100 times that amount of powder cocaine.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-won-t-extend-reduced-charges-low-level-drug-n1270675
U.S. Supreme Court limits reach of federal computer fraud law
Source: Reuters
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday limited the type of conduct that can be prosecuted under a federal computer fraud law, overturning a former Georgia police officer's conviction for misusing a government database to investigate whether a purported local stripper was an undercover cop.
The justices, in a 6-3 decision authored by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, sided with former Cumming, Georgia police sergeant Nathan Van Buren in an appeal of his conviction under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, reversing a lower court ruling that had upheld a jury verdict against him.
The justices agreed that Van Buren could not be convicted for misusing the database to perform the investigation because the information had been available to him as part of his job. Van Buren was charged after a 2015 FBI sting operation.
"This provision covers those who obtain information from particular areas in the computer - such as files, folders or databases - to which their computer access does not extend. It does not cover those who, like Van Buren, have improper motives for obtaining information that is otherwise available to them," Barrett wrote in the ruling.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-supreme-court-limits-reach-federal-computer-fraud-law-2021-06-03/
Judge Awards Daily Mail More than $100,000 in Attorneys' Fees in Katie Hill Case
Source: NBC News Los Angeles
A judge who previously cited First Amendment grounds in dismissing the Daily Mail as a defendant in former Rep. Katie Hill's revenge porn suit Wednesday awarded the publication its entire demand for more than $100,000 in attorneys' fees and costs.
The Daily Mail's website in October 2019 published nude photos of Hill taken by her former spouse, Kenneth Heslep, according to the former congresswoman's Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit, which was filed Dec. 22 and alleges state Civil Code violations and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Yolanda Orozco eliminated the Daily Mail as a defendant on April 7, prompting the publication to file a motion to recover its costs in reaching that result. Finalizing a tentative ruling she issued Tuesday, the judge granted the Daily Mail $103,625 in attorneys' fees and $1,120 in costs.
While judges often award attorneys' fees amounts in amounts smaller than those requested, Orozco's ruling gives the Daily Mail the full total sought.
Read more: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/judge-awards-daily-mail-more-than-100000-in-attorneys-fees-in-katie-hill-case/2608612/?_osource=SocialFlowTwt_LABrand&&__twitter_impression=true
GOP leader Kevin McCarthy condemns Marjorie Taylor Greenes tweet comparing vaccinations to Holocaust
Source: CNBC
House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday condemned a member of his own party, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for comparing a company’s Covid vaccination rules with the treatment of Jewish people in Nazi Germany.
“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling,” McCarthy said in a statement.
“The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling,” he said.
CNBC has reached out to Taylor Greene’s spokesman for a response.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/25/gop-leader-kevin-mccarthy-condemns-marjorie-taylor-greenes-tweet-comparing-vaccinations-to-the-holocaust.html
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