04/27/23

Good morning! It’s Thursday April 27th.

American Immigration Lawyers Association Day of Action.

Really important day. Could really use a shorter name. How about… AILDADA.

As in… Ai-lotta important work being done. Great job!

….it needs workshopping. I know that.

And now, the news.

Trump Civil Case

-via NPR

Okay, so here’s what we’re gonna do today. I woke up not feeling 100% and, to be honest, wasn’t even sure I would put out an episode today. But there are a few stories I didn’t want to miss. So it’ll be a shorter episode today but, as always, there are links to everything I talked about in show notes in case you want to take a closer look.

Let’s start with Trump’s civil case in New York, where writer E. Jean Carroll is suing for an alleged rape that took place in a New York department store in 1996. Carroll is suing to say that Trump, who has been exactly as abhorrent about all of this as you would imagine and says this is a lie and con job, defamed her by saying the case was a hoax. Carroll wrote about the alleged rape in her 2019 memoir.

So the case is about that, which means it makes absolute sense that Trump continued to do just that, by again saying her story was a lie, on his ironically named Truth Social on Wednesday, as Carroll took the stand.

Trump’s lawyer, Joey Tapiocy (his real name is Joe Tacopina but… come on…) says it’s fine because, even though the judge said Trump’s comments were entirely inappropriate, the jurors in the case were asked not to follow news about it…

Trump has not attended the trial so far. We’ll see what happens when he is called to testify.

Tedward Cruz Lied About the Election Too!

-via Daily Beast

Tedward Cruz (this is how you know I don’t feel well because I would love to spend hours just riffing on this one. The beard alone!)… Tedward Cruz is in a little bit of hotwater after MSNBC aired more of the whistleblower audio of Tedward doing, what appears to be, well… attempting to overthrow democracy, via the 2020 election.

According to the tapes, Cruz apparently tried to sell his plan to Fox News Host Martiromo 4 days before the Capitol riot. The plan? To steal the Queen’s jewels. No no… it was to blocking the Biden certification on the 6th, and then establishing a commission to investigate the nonexistent claims of fraud, and whoops! I guess that commission just magically would pick Trump.

Like… guys… for Trump? Have you met him? He’s… not the one. He sucks. Anyway, he went on to say that he wanted to find a way forward that would be inline with the Constitution and the law. And if by “inline with” he meant – I want them both to know I’m breaking both of them – then yeah man. I’d say ya got it.

“Lock him up. Lock him up!”

Abby Grossberg, the whistleblower, says she has 90 more tapes. I hope they’re embarrassing! I mean, everything Tedward does in embarrassing. But still… we love it.

Disney Suing DeSantis

-via NY Times

And finally… Disney – have you heard of them? Probably. They’re, like, a huge company and you’d have to be an absolute unhinged dinkus to think that you, alone, can fight them. Disney is suing Ron DeSantis for what they are calling “a targeted campaign of government retaliation” after Disney the did the bare minimum and, when DeSantis revealed his horrific, hateful just to be hateful “Don’t Say Gay” bill, under then-CEO Bob Chapek, they did the bare minimum to fight back. But even the bare minimum was too much for DeSantis to… bear.

Two different kinds of bare in that sentence!

I’m no lawyer but… the amount of times that DeSantis was like “this is to get back at Disney because I want everyone to be filled to the brim with hate and general ding dong-ness like I am! Hear that? This is 100% to get back at Disney. Only Disney. Just them.”… seems like that’s gonna work against him in court.

Disney is specifically suing DeSantis, the five-member board that was created specifically against Disney, and other state officials.

And the best part is… DeSantis, who will never be president, truly thinks this makes him look good. So he’ll never reverse court.

GOOD.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

Well, that’s the news as of this recording on Wednesday morning. There will be no news on Friday or Monday.

Expect Kevin McCarthy to make his first attempt at a budget vote this week. Honestly, could have even happened by the time you hear this. We’ll talk about that, and all the rest, on Tuesday.

I’m proud of immigration lawyers. No jokes, just proud.

It’s also National Devil Dog Day! I forgot about devil dogs! So good!!

But still, even though they are delicious (if you don’t know what a devil dog is, this is likely very confusing. It’s not an animal, it’s a dessert)… but more than a perfect devil dog… because you are also sweet but unforgettable… I’m proud of you.