Statement from President Joe Biden on Tentative Agreement Between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the Writers Guild of America
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I applaud the Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for reaching a tentative agreement that will allow writers to return to the important work of telling the stories of our nation, our world – and of all of us. This agreement, including assurances related to artificial intelligence, did not come easily. But its formation is a testament to the power of collective bargaining. There simply is no substitute for employers and employees coming together to negotiate in good faith toward an agreement that makes a business stronger and secures the pay, benefits, and dignity that workers deserve. I urge all employers to remember that all workers – including writers, actors, and autoworkers – deserve a fair share of the value their labor helped create.

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Former Mueller investigation prosecutor Andrew Weissmann is being sued by Stefan Passantino, a Trumpworld-paid lawyer who initially represented former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, reported The Guardian's Hugo Lowell on Friday.

Passantino alleges that Weissmann, a frequent legal commentator on cable news, defamed him when he said that he had "coached" Hutchinson to lie to the House January 6 Committee during her testimony.

Hutchinson gave bombshell allegations to the Committee about former President Donald Trump's activities on the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, claiming, among other things, that Trump demanded the Capitol take down security for the rioters because "they're not there to hurt me," and that he physically fought with his Secret Service driver when he refused to take him to the Capitol to join the rioters. Secret Service officials have disputed Hutchinson's version of events.....

But the allegations around Passantino are not isolated. Other attorneys who have been paid by Trump-linked groups to represent witnesses in investigations have also been accused of giving conflicted advice. Yuscil Taveras, an IT worker at the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort who reportedly witnessed the concealment of classified information, switched from a lawyer paid by Trump groups to a federal public defender, and changed his testimony as he did so.

Vaccine skepticism has found a home in the post-pandemic GOP. And it’s not just related to the Covid shot.

Before 2020, polls showed little overall difference along partisan lines on issues related to vaccination, such as whether students should be inoculated against measles to attend public schools. But since Covid, Republican voters have diverged from everyone else.

A new POLITICO | Morning Consult poll, conducted as part of POLITICO’s ongoing series about the rising anti-vax movement, shows Republican voters are less likely than Democrats or independents to say vaccines are safe for children. It also shows that as many Republicans now say they care more about the risks of vaccines than they do about the health benefits......

Among Democratic voters, 76 percent said they “care more about potential health benefits than the potential health risks of vaccines.” But among Republicans, it’s split evenly: 51 percent care more about the potential health risks, while 49 percent care more about the benefits.


.....In fact, the Republican voters who are most uneasy about vaccines are more likely to vote for Trump than other candidates, despite his role in developing the Covid shot. A third of Trump-supporting Republicans (34 percent) said vaccines in general are unsafe for children under 18. That’s double the share of Republicans supporting one of his opponents in the primary, only 17 percent, who said most vaccines aren’t safe for kids.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg has launched criminal investigations against county officials she was publicly feuding with at least four times since she took office in 2017, the Chronicle has found. Taxpayers have covered nearly $1 million in legal bills for public employees who were pulled into the investigations but never charged with crimes.

Ogg’s actions against the county officials and their staffers, with whom she’s also clashed on issues like bail reform and budget requests, are especially striking because they’re with members of her own party. Ogg, a Democrat, is facing a tough reelection fight next year against a well-financed opponent. She declined to be interviewed for this story. .....

In one case, Ogg made “both explicit and implicit threats” of a criminal inquiry as the county budget office hesitated to grant her requests for more funding, according to former county administrator Dave Berry.

At a county meeting in March 2022, Ogg accused the budget team of acting like a “thief in the night” with her office’s funds, which the budget team denied. She said they’d seized and mishandled almost $5 million. Given the grand jury investigations she had launched against their colleagues by that point, county officials took her words seriously.....

Though Ogg is the first Democrat to be elected Harris County’s top prosecutor in decades, she has bristled at carrying out many of the reforms that members of her own party — particularly Hidalgo and County Commissioner Rodney Ellis — have been pushing. (Ellis has taken on Hidalgo’s responsibilities since she went on an extended medical leave of absence in July.)

The latest report on Clarence Thomas' questionable ethics does many things. For one, it reminds us that we have a series of such reports about a Supreme Court justice, who continues to sit on the court undisturbed. That’s something we’re living through.

More specifically, another one of the things ProPublica’s latest Thomas report highlights is the GOP’s hypocrisy when it comes to judicial recusal.,,,,,

Indeed, we can expect Thomas to take a similar path as fellow conservative Justice (and fellow ProPublica ethics reporting subject) Samuel Alito, who recently and unconvincingly declined to recuse from a case that’ll also be heard this coming term. The case was brought by a lawyer who conducted fawning interviews of Alito for The Wall Street Journal opinion section. That case, too, involving taxes, is a big one for the conservative legal movement.

To be sure, it would be somewhat surprising, yet welcome, if, like Alito, Thomas were to even try and explain his likely decision to not recuse here.

I should also point out that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from this Chevron case, called Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, presumably due to her participation in the case while she was on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, where she sat prior to her high court appointment by Joe Biden.

For years, groups at the vanguard of the anti-vaccine movement had been operating with relatively small budgets and only a handful of staff.

Now, they’re awash in cash.

The Covid-19 pandemic has produced a remarkable financial windfall for anti-vaccine nonprofits. Revenue more than doubled for the Informed Consent Action Network and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Children’s Health Defense in 2021 compared to the year prior, according to a POLITICO analysis of tax filings. The nonprofits that survived on operating budgets of around a few million dollars just a few years prior are now raking in more than $10 million each.

“Covid vaccines have been the foot in the door for the more general anti-vaccine movement. And unfortunately, that door is open pretty wide now,” said Dr. Dave Gorski, a Michigan-based oncologist who has been tracking anti-vaccine efforts for two decades.

The funding spike reflects a sea change for once-fringe entities. The anti-vaccine movement has now emerged as a modern political force. In practical terms, greater funds enable anti-vaccine groups to expand their public reach, sue federal agencies and organize like-minded activists at the state level, as well as expand their reach abroad.

G’mar chatima tovah. At sundown, it is officially Yom Kippur, the holiest of days on the Jewish calendar.

While Jews around the world prepare for their fast on this solemn Day of Atonement, anti-Semitic lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene couldn’t help but weigh in on the holiday.

The Republican congresswoman, who once spread a conspiracy theory that secret Jewish space lasers cause wildfires and was the keynote speaker at an event hosted by avowed Nazi Nick Fuentes, wrote on X (formerly Twitter):

“To all those preparing for the solemn day of Yom Kippur, I wish you a meaningful fast.

Gamar Chasima Tova!”