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Hillary Watch 2016: Tina Brown Endorses Clinton For President

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 Not a day goes by without national media outlets reporting on Hillary Clinton’s immediate future, while seeking definitive answers to the question–will she run for president in 2016?  The New Civil Rights Movement joins the “Hillary Watch” obsession

All of a sudden Hillary Clinton is everywhere this week.  And the national media is following and anticipating her every move.

Citizen Hillary emerges from a short respite since stepping down as Secretary of State in February to deliver two major speeches this week on “women,”  her raison d’etre.  Tonight she will appear at the annual Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards (an organization she helped found) in Washington, D.C. and again on Friday in New York City, where she will speak at the annual Women in the World Summit, organized by Tina Brown, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast/Newsweek.

As Chris Mathews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball said to Brown last night “you got the big “get” of the week” in booking Hillary to speak and Brown did not make waste of the moment. With little prodding from Mathews, Brown endorsed Clinton for president in 2016, who was appearing side-by-side with Howard Fineman, the editorial director at the Huffington Post.

Fineman jumped on the Clinton bandwagon too, calling Hillary’s  colossus global network of women leaders that she launched in 1995 from Beijing when she delivered an electrifying speech, uttering “women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights” to women around the world, just maybe what ultimately convinces Clinton to run in 2016 (before the segment was done, Fineman had already tweeted out Brown had endorsed Clinton for president).

But Brown began early yesterday, pumping “Hillary” news first thing, when she appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, by addressing one the most persistent questions among women’s rights advocates who supported Clinton’s “smart” power initiatives as Secretary of State, when she asked “will Hillary Clinton’s women and girls initiatives at the State Department agenda survive” (a Daily Beast article penned by journalist Kathleen Parker) as she transitions from government to an unknown future.

Ultimately, whatever Clinton ultimately decides to do, until she definitively announces she will run for president or not, the media is reporting her every move.

Last week alone, Atlantic Magazine, CNN, MSNBC (two shows), Bloomberg News, Buzzfeed,  The Hill, Politico.com, Roll Call and The New York Times published stories about Hillary Clinton, reporting on what she has been up to since she departed her State Department post in February.

While reporters sniff out what Hillary Clinton is up to, her supporters have been busy too. Indeed,  tonight, Clinton will be greeted by supporters, organized by a Hillary Super PAC, who will be staging near the Kennedy Center when she arrives for the evening affair.

Rally for Hillary Hillary Super PACs have been sprouting up since January, among them, the most serious professional effort is evidenced in Ready for Hillary 2016 , spearheaded by Allida Black, a George Washington University professor, who is working about 30 hours a week and has been a Hillary supporter since the 2008 campaign.

Black  is eager to burnish the PAC’s credentials and recently announced its first donor was Ann Lewis, former communications director in the Clinton White House and that co-founder Adam Parkhomenko was an employee of HillPAC, Friends of Hillary and Clinton’s 2008 campaign. Ready for Hillary has also recently hired digital director Nickie Titus, who previously served as director of digital media for Sen. Tim Kaine’s successful campaign in Virginia, who had also worked at Blue State Digital. And the PAC has also hired Rising Tide Interactive, a digital consulting firm.

Overlooked by nearly everyone last week, was reporting by the intrepid Maggie Haberman, Politico.com and a New York  City based political journalist, who reported on Morning Joe late last week that she was now convinced Hillary Clinton is running in 2016.  According to Haberman, Hillary has a “transition team” assisting her in a return to “normal life;” “she is writing a book and there will be a book tour that will fold into a campaign launch. To date Haberman’s reporting was the most definitive evidence put forward by a national political reporter until Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times confirmed Haberman’s reporting with an A1 story (bottom of the fold) , leading with a donor angle, reporting all leading Democratic big donors were frozen in place, until she decides.

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But last week’s reporting began with long-time Clinton operative James Carville who told Luke Russert of MSNBC that there was a groundswell of support building for a Hillary Clinton run in 2016 and the “pressure will be “unimaginable” and that Democrats all over the country are excited by the prospect of the former first lady taking the plunge.”

“I think it’ll be unimaginable,” Carville said. “I mean, if — I just go around the country and if there’s a Democrat that does not want her to run, I have not met them. Now she is her own person and seems perfectly willing to resist that kind of pressure, but in terms of encouragement, I don’t think there’s ever been anybody that is a prohibitive front-runner for a party’s nomination as former Secretary of State Clinton is right now. You can feel it out there wherever I go and whenever people talk to me, it’s the same thing.”

No doubt Hillary kept her options open for running for president when she endorsed marriage equality for the the Human Rights Campaign in mid-March. Bill Clinton has been traveling the country backing Democratic candidates in primaries. Carville and Harold Ickes Jr. have said they will raise money for her.  She has about a half of dozen staff members on payroll that will be funded by her paid speeches–the first one is scheduled on April 24th.

How will Hillary handle the pressure and manage people’s expectations?  Stay tuned.  We are just getting started. It is almost a 1,000 days until the next “official” campaign begins.

Image courtesy of the Ready for Hillary PAC.

DomiheadshotTanya L. Domi is the Deputy Editor of the New Civil Rights Movement.  She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and teaches human rights in East Central Europe and former Yugoslavia. Prior to teaching at Columbia, Domi was a nationally recognized LGBT civil rights activist who worked for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force during the campaign to lift the military ban in the early 1990s. Domi has also worked internationally in a dozen countries on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights and gender issues. She is chair of the board of directors for GetEQUAL. Domi is currently writing a book about the emerging LGBT human rights movement in the Western Balkans.

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News

‘Rejection of Trump’: 1 in 5 Indiana GOP Voters Just Cast Their Ballot for Nikki Haley

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May 8, 2024

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Nikki Haley dropped out of the 2024 presidential race exactly two months ago, and yet on Tuesday 128,000 Indiana GOP primary voters cast their ballot for the former Trump UN Ambassador instead of the presumptive Republican nominee.

“Unexpected warning signs for Trump in busy Indiana primary,” reports Politico, which notes, “Nikki Haley’s performance in the already concluded presidential race could be a sign of trouble for Trump in more competitive states.”

Haley, also a former South Carolina governor, was consistently getting double-digit percentages of the GOP primary vote before she dropped out of the race, even in red states. (All vote totals and percentages are from the Associated Press via Google and are current as of time of publication.)

In Alabama, Haley took 13%. In Oklahoma, 15.9%. In Texas, 17.4%. Tennessee, 19.5%.

READ MORE: ‘This Isn’t Justice’: Legal Experts Blast Cannon for Postponing Trump Case Indefinitely

But after Haley dropped out, effectively handing Trump the nomination, Republican primary voters continued to vote for her, and continued to vote for her almost always in double-digit percentages.

In Arizona, Haley won 17.8% of the primary vote. In Georgia, 13.2%. In Kansas, 16.1%.

And last night in Indiana, Haley took 21.7% of the vote.

It’s not just solidly “red” states.

In New Hampshire, Haley won a whopping 43.2% 0f the GOP primary vote.

Tuesday night as the Indiana results were still coming in but pretty much solidified, David Nir, publisher of Daily Kos Elections, asked, “Is Nikki Haley getting *more* popular? Right now, she’s at 21.6% in Indiana with more than 70% reporting. If it holds, that would be her best showing since dropping out after Super Tuesday.”

Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, replied, “No. It doesn’t have much at all to do with Nikki Haley. It’s that the broadest coalition in American politics is the anti-Trump coalition.”

READ MORE: Johnson Demands All Trump Prosecutions Cease, Vows to Use Congress ‘In Every Possible Way’

Amanda Carpenter, a Republican political commentator who once worked for far-right GOP lawmakers including Senators Ted Cruz and Jim DeMint, agrees with the anti-Trump theory.

“It’s almost as if…more and more Republicans, each day, are rejecting Trump. Perhaps these [Indiana] voters heard what their former congressman and Governor and later Vice President Mike Pence had to say about the president he served?” she wrote. “In all seriousness though, this is not a Nikki Haley movement showing up in double digits in multiple states. It’s anti-Trump GOP voters. Can you hear them yet? This is real.”

The New York Times last month took a look at what is called the “zombie vote,” votes for candidates who have already dropped out.

According to the Times, the “zombie vote in this year’s Republican primary has actually been low by historical standards. In Democratic and Republican primaries going back to 2000, roughly a quarter of voters picked a candidate other than the eventual nominee even after all the other serious contenders had exited the race.”

READ MORE: Trump Threatens to Violate Gag Order and Go to Jail: ‘I’ll Do That Sacrifice Any Day’

“For Mr. Trump,” the Times adds, “what matters is how many of Ms. Haley’s primary voters will rally behind him come November. Polls have shown that her supporters are likely to say they will vote for Mr. Biden. Even so, those same polls often find that many of those voters already supported Mr. Biden in 2020.”

The Nation’s John Nichols last month pointed to just that, after the Pennsylvania primary:

“Haley is not campaigning, but she just won almost 158,000 GOP primary votes in the critical state of Pennsylvania. Democrats think they can swing many of them to Biden.”

Late Tuesday night, pointing to Haley taking more than a third of the vote in some Indiana counties, Nichols concluded, “These numbers continue a pattern of rejection of Donald Trump by precisely the Republicans and Republican-leaning independents he needs in November.”

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‘This Isn’t Justice’: Legal Experts Blast Cannon for Postponing Trump Case Indefinitely

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May 7, 2024

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U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon late Tuesday afternoon issued an indefinite postponement of the court date in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump on Espionage Act charges, in the indictment commonly referred to as the classified documents case.

Claiming it would be “imprudent and inconsistent with the Court’s duty to fully and fairly consider the various pending pre-trial motions before the Court,” along with other matters, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, wrote: “the Court finds that the ends of justice served by this continuance…outweigh the best interest of the public and Defendants in a speedy trial.”

Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports, “It may be months before we know the new schedule.” Trial had been slated to begin May 20.

“With 13 days before her trial was supposed to kick off, Judge Cannon finally says what has been obvious to every legal journalist I know: She’s not just canceling the existing trial date; she’s also not picking a replacement,” MSNBC legal correspondent Lisa Rubin reports.

READ MORE: Johnson Demands All Trump Prosecutions Cease, Vows to Use Congress ‘In Every Possible Way’

The 37 count indictment was brought after Trump removed well over 1000 items, including hundreds of classified documents, out of the White House, retained then refused to return them, allegedly violating several statutes under the Espionage Act.

“Trump mishandled classified documents that included information about the secretive U.S. nuclear program and potential domestic vulnerabilities in the event of an attack,” according t0 the federal indictment, Reuters reported last year.

The trial now is not expected to conclude before the November presidential election this year.

“This is news but it’s hardly unexpected,” declared professor of law, former U.S. Attorney, and MSNBC contributor Joyce Vance wrote. “Judge Cannon seems desperate to avoid trying this case. This isn’t justice. defendants aren’t the only ones with speedy trial act rights, we the people have them too.”

“After the election,” professor of law and former chief White House ethics lawyer Richard Painter commented, “if Trump wins Jack Smith gets fired, the case gets dismissed, and Judge Cannon is ready for SCOTUS.”

READ MORE: Trump Threatens to Violate Gag Order and Go to Jail: ‘I’ll Do That Sacrifice Any Day’

Attorney and author Luppe B. Luppen noted, “Judge Cannon’s rationale for indefinitely postponing Trump’s classified documents trial is that a large number of pretrial motions remain unresolved—a state of affairs she has literally engineered by failing to resolve them.”

Professor of law and noted election law expert Rick Hasen asked: “Is it too cynical to believe that Judge Cannon timed the announcement of the postponement of a Trump classified documents trial to take away from the salacious sex details from Stormy Daniels’ testimony today?”

National security attorney Brad Moss served up a “silver lining to Cannon not setting a new trial date: she isn’t blocking the DC or Georgia election cases from resuming in the late summer/early fall, pending SCOTUS ruling on immunity.”

Foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst David Rothkopf added, “Justice delayed is justice denied. Both the defendant and the public have the right to a trial ‘without unnecessary delay.’ (Sixth Amendment.) When does Jack Smith seek a remedy for the problem Judge Cannon clearly represents? Tick freaking tock.”

READ MORE: Judge Hands Trump ‘Incarceration’ Threat as Experts Say Next Time He’ll Toss Him in Jail

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Trump Battled to Go to Son’s Graduation – So Why Is He Speaking at a Fundraiser That Day?

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20 hours ago

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May 7, 2024

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Last month Donald Trump falsely told reporters Justice Juan Merchan had blocked him from attending his youngest son’s high school graduation, refusing to give him the day off from his required attendance at his New York criminal court case.

Justice Merchan had actually told Trump he would take the request under advisement, but Trump quickly ran to reporters painting the judge as heartless.

On April 15 Trump said, “it looks like the judge will not let me go to the graduation of my son who’s worked very, very hard and he is a great student.”

“It looks like the judge isn’t going to allow me to escape this scam. It’s a scam trial,” Trump alleged.

The Associated Press reported, “Trump then furthered his criticism of the judge on his Truth Social platform, writing in one post both that he ‘will likely not be allowed to attend’ and that ‘the Judge, Juan Merchan, is preventing me from proudly attending my son’s Graduation.’ He wrote in another post less than two hours later that he is ‘being prohibited from attending.'”

READ MORE: Johnson Demands All Trump Prosecutions Cease, Vows to Use Congress ‘In Every Possible Way’

None of that was accurate.

Last week Judge Merchan granted Trump the day off from court to attend his son’s high school graduation.

But The Lincoln Project and others on Tuesday posted the announcement for “Minnesota’s 2024 Lincoln Reagan Dinner With Special Guest DONALD J. TRUMP” on Friday, May 17, 2024.

Trump, as The New Republic notes, will be the headline speaker at the event in Saint Paul, Minnesota, which starts at 5:00 PM.

The fundraiser offers supporters the opportunity to spend $100,000, which grants them “10 VIP Dinner Seats | 10 VIP Reception Passes | 3 Photo Opportunities with President Trump.”

Or, for example, for $50,000, a supporter can get a “Chairman’s Host Table – 10 VIP Dinner Seats | 10 VIP Reception Passes | 1 Photo Opportunity with President Trump.”

KARE reports “the visit is expected to be the former president’s first trip to Minnesota of the 2024 election cycle.”

READ MORE: ‘I’m Not Talking About That Meeting’: Noem Implies She May Have Met With Kim Jong Un

Trump has strong motivation to head to Minnesota.

Over the weekend, as NBC News reports, “Top officials for former President Donald Trump’s campaign believe they can flip Democratic strongholds Minnesota and Virginia into his column in November, they told donors behind closed doors at a Republican National Committee retreat Saturday.”

Barron Trump’s graduation from Oxbridge Academy in Palm Beach, Florida reportedly will be the same day, May 17. Depending on timing, It’s possible Trump could fly from Florida to Minnesota to get to the fundraiser by 5 PM.

Watch Trump’s remarks from April 15 below or at this link.

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