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Trump Committed Fraud and Deceived Banks While Growing His Real Estate Empire, Judge Says: Report

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Donald Trump committed fraud, deceived banks, and inflated the value of his real estate holdings a judge said Tuesday, granting New York Attorney General Letitia James partial summary judgment in her civil case against the ex-president.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron “has ruled that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House,” The Associated Press reports. Judge Engoron “found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.”

“The decision, days before the start of a non-jury trial in Attorney General Letitia James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse,” The AP adds.

Attorney General James “is seeking $250 million in penalties and a ban on Trump doing business in New York, his home state. The trial could last into December, Engoron has said.”

READ MORE: McCarthy Now Blaming Likely Shutdown on Fentanyl, President Biden, and His Own House Republicans
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Over Two-Thirds of Voters In Favor of Birthright Citizenship as SCOTUS Set to Decide

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The Supreme Court is expected to rule on birthright citizenship—automatic citizenship for anyone born in the U.S.—Friday morning. Ahead of that decision, a new poll says over two-thirds of American voters are in favor of keeping it.

A new poll by Emerson College shows that 67.9% of voters say that birthright citizenship should continue for anyone born in the United States, compared to 32.1% who say it should no longer apply to the children of undocumented immigrants.

The notion is particularly popular among Democrats (89.5%) and independent voters (66.1%), but Republicans were just about evenly split. Slightly more Republicans, 50.7% felt that birthright citizenship should end for undocumented immigrants, while 49.3% were in favor of keeping it.

The poll surveyed 1,000 voters over June 24-25, and has a margin of error of 3%.

READ MORE: ‘Why Even Have the Statue of Liberty?’: Internet Blasts Lindsey Graham for Bill to End Birthright Citizenship

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would strip birthright citizenship from the more than 150,000 children born yearly to undocumented immigrants in the United States, according to Reuters.

Federal judges have issued injunctions against the executive order, saying it violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The 14th Amendment lays out the rules granting citizenship. Section 1 begins “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

The matter is before the Supreme Court, and it is expected to rule on the case Friday morning, the last day of the current term. The Court has a 6-3 conservative lean, with three of the justices appointed by Trump.

The current Court has made a number of controversial decisions favoring Trump, most notably in Trump v. United States. That 2023 ruling decided that the president has wide-ranging legal immunity from criminal prosecution. Though the president has no immunity for unofficial acts as president, all official acts have “presumptive immunity,” meaning prosecutors would have to prove why immunity wouldn’t apply.

The Court has also ruled against Trump this term. In AARP v. Trump, the court ruled 7-2 that Trump could not immediately deport Venezuelan nationals. The Court ruled that the potential deportees needed at least 24 hours notification so they could organize a defense.

Many legal experts do not know what to expect from the Court’s ruling on birthright citizenship, according to the SCOTUSblog. Though the current Court has often gone along with Trump, birthright citizenship has been long enshrined in case law.

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GOP INCOMPETENCE

Democratic Reps Say FEMA Cuts Are Leading to Hurricane Katrina-Level Disaster

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In a new op-ed, Democratic Reps. Rick Larsen of Washington and Greg Stanton of Arizona draw parallels to the Trump administration’s cuts to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, better known as FEMA, and the lead-up to the devastation caused by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.

The Hill published the representatives’ op-ed on Thursday. They warn that hurricane season is coming and FEMA is in “disarray,” pointing out that President Donald Trump has called on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to dismantle FEMA by the end of the year.

“It’s eerily reminiscent of the summer of 2005, when hasty organizational changes, brain drain and unqualified leadership plagued FEMA in the lead up to its catastrophic response to Hurricane Katrina. The images we saw along the Gulf Coast then shocked the nation, and communities are still recovering to this day,” Larsen and Stanton wrote. “As we approach the 20-year anniversary of that catastrophe, this administration seems dead set on repeating history’s mistakes.”

READ MORE: No Trump, No FEMA? Tornado Ravaged City’s Mayor Pleads for Federal Assistance

The representatives pointed out that the Department of Government Efficiency got rid of 2,000 FEMA workers. The White House had also been approving and denying requests for disaster relief funds without informing FEMA, according to CNN, causing delays.

“As Trump hobbles FEMA’s disaster preparation, he’s also playing politics with federal funding for recovery. So far, almost every approved disaster declaration has been for Republican-led states, while requests from Democratic governors — including Washington — remain pending or have been denied outright. Even conservatives have had to grovel to Trump for federal assistance,” the representatives wrote.

Larsen and Stanton are referring to actions like Trump’s desire to tie California’s disaster relief to the passage of a voter ID law. Another example is when Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former press secretary, had to publically beg Trump to reverse his decision to deny aid after tornadoes hit the state.

During Trump’s second term, the United States’ disaster response record has not been great. During his January tour of parts of North Carolina damaged by Hurricane Helena, he called FEMA “not good.”

“FEMA turned out to be a a disaster. And you could go back a long way, you could go back to Louisiana, you could go back to some of the things that took place in Texas. And it turns out to be the state that ends up doing the work. It just complicates it. I think we’re gonna recommend that FEMA go away. And we pay directly and we pay a percentage to the state, but the state should fix it,” Trump said at the time.

And in May, when tornadoes hit states including Kentucky, Missouri and Illinois, St. Louis, Missouri Mayor Cara Spencer said that FEMA was completely absent, despite the devastation.

“FEMA has not been on the ground—we do not have confirmed assistance from FEMA at this point,” Spencer said. “I do want to say, however, every other level of government has been on the ground with us, helping in every capacity possible. But when you have a disaster of this scale, eight miles of just pure destruction, this tornado didn’t just touch down and leave, this tornado ripped through our community for a full eight miles in the city of St. Louis, and this is an area that has needed help, that we need investment, you know, our North St. Louis has been neglected for a long time, and we need the help of our partners here.”

At the time, Noem said that she’d spoken to the governors of those states and offered resources. But she also said the feds would defer to local governments.

“We discussed how while emergency management is best led by local authorities, we reinforced that DHS stands ready to take immediate action to offer resources and support,” Noem wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Local emergency managers should swiftly notify people in the affected areas to take action to protect themselves and their belongings. DHS stands ready to help when a state needs, requests, and declares an emergency.”

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CIVIL RIGHTS

DOJ Says University of California’s ‘Diverse’ Hiring May Run Afoul of Civil Rights Act

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The Department of Justice announced an investigation into the University of California system, saying its policy of valuing diversity in hiring could run against the Civil Rights Act.

On Thursday, the DOJ sent a letter to Dr. Michael Drake, the president of the university. The DOJ said it was investigating whether or not the hiring plan laid out in the UC 2030 Capacity Plan violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII is meant to protect potential hires from being denied a job based on protected classes like race, sex or religion.

“Public employers are bound by federal laws that prohibit racial and other employment discrimination,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “Institutional directives that use race- and sex-based hiring practices expose employers to legal risk under federal law.”

READ MORE: DEI Policies Go Against 1964 Civil Rights Act, DOJ Warns

The 2030 Capacity Plan addresses both enrollment goals and faculty hiring. One of its goals is “reflecting California’s racial/ethnic diversity.”

“Faculty are the backbone to the University of California – they create highly ranked academic programs, develop the curriculum, and produce research that yields important discoveries and scholarly works,” the plan reads. “For UC to remain excellent, it must grow and diversify its faculty. The University is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty, both underrepresented minorities and female faculty.”

To fulfill this goal, UC says it started the Advancing Faculty Diversity (AFD) program with both state funding and funding that came directly from the UC president’s office.

“AFD identifies best practices in equity opportunity hiring by providing competitive awards to campus pilots testing new interventions aimed at increasing faculty diversity and improving academic climate and faculty retention,” the plan reads.

Though the plan cites diverse hiring as a goal, it does not lay out how exactly this is being accomplished. The only other reference to the program is in the section about UC San Diego specifically, where it says the campus is “actively involved” in AFD, “and has already invested in 28 new [full-time equivalent programs], half in a cohort on STEM impacts on the Black diaspora and half on Latinx/Chicanx experience in Humanities and Social Sciences.”

Though the DOJ alleges the 2030 Capacity Plan “directs its campuses to hire ‘diverse’ faculty members to meet race- and sex-based employment quotas,” the UC website makes no mention of such quotas. UC describes its AFD program as awarding “competitive grants to faculty project leads on all ten campuses in two priority areas: recruitment and improving climate & retention.”

This is just the latest in the Trump DOJ’s fight against “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” or DEI policies, often using the Civil Rights Act as a cudgel. Though the landmark Act was meant to help qualified women and people of color find work they’d been shut out of before, many right-wing pundits claim it’s resulted in white men being blocked out of jobs.

A number of studies—including three from the National Bureau of Economic Research—show this claim is unfounded, according to The Oregonian. These studies, each published in the last six years, say white people are still more likely to be hired than people of color.

“We thought if we’re going to see [a preference for female or minority candidates] anywhere, we’re going to see it in these prestigious employers who tell us up and down they’re trying to hire for diversity,” Wharton economist Corinne Low told the paper. “We see either no preference, or we actually see a penalty toward female and minority candidates.”

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