Good Morning!!
âThe eyes of the world are upon you,â Eisenhower speaking to troops before Normandy invasion.
Today is the 80th anniversary of D-Day, and President Biden is in France to mark the occasion. Some reports:
CBS News: Biden lauds WWII veterans on D-Day 80th anniversary, vows NATO solidarity in face of new threat to democracy.
President Biden and key U.S. allies were in Normandy Thursday to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the U.S.-led allied forcesâ D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France. The brazen air and sea invasion would mark the beginning of the end of World War II, leading to the defeat of Adolf Hitlerâs Nazi German forces in Europe less than a year later.
Mr. Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were together to mark the most significant victory of the Western allies in the war, as well as the largest seaborne invasion in history. Mr. Biden is in France through the weekend for D-Day anniversary commemorations and plans to meet with leaders of key allies during his visit.
âSeventy-three-thousand brave Americans landed at Utah and Omaha beaches in Normandy on June 6, 1944 and the president will greet American veterans and their family members while in France to honor their sacrifice,â White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in announcing the presidentâs trip.
Mr. Biden and first lady Jill Biden met WWII veterans one by one ahead of a memorial ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery on Thursday, presenting each one with coins made to commemorate the D-Day anniversary. He chatted and joked with some of the men, asking about their hometowns, thanking them for their service and calling them the greatest generation ever.
The president delivered remarks later Thursday at a commemoration ceremony that was also attended by members of Congress from both parties, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and speaker emerita Nancy Pelosi.
The Independent: D-Day â latest: Biden warns world âwill not surrender to bulliesâ as he commemorates 80th anniversary.
President Joe Biden has vowed to not âsurrender to the bulliesâ as he praised D-Day veterans for their bravery at a commemorative event.
The US President addressed the crowd in Ver-sur-Mer, France, on the 80th anniversary of the landings as he promised the 50 countries standing with Ukraine âwill not walk awayâ.
âMake no mistake the autocrats of the world are watching closely to see what happens in Ukraine. To see if we let this illegal aggression go unchecked,â he said.
âTo surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable.â
He added: âHistory tells us freedom is not free. You want to know the price of freedom come here to Normandy to look.â
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden greet a World War II veteran during ceremonies to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy. AP
Yahoo News: D-Day latest: Biden brands Putin âtyrant and bullyâ in Normandy speech.
US President Joe Biden referred to Vladimir Putin as a âtyrantâ and a âbullyâ in his D-Day commemoration speech, after hailing the âresoluteâ Second World War troops who fought in Normandy 80 years ago today.
President Biden was among the speakers at an international gathering in northern France to commemorate the June 1944 conflict. Biden recognised the bravery of troops who stormed the beaches in Normandy, before going on to speak about the Ukraine war and how âthe struggle between dictatorship and freedom is unendingâ.
Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron had given Franceâs highest award, the Legion dâHonneur, to a number of US veterans, while the Danish prime minister said it is our generationâs âresponsibilityâ to stand up to Vladimir Putin.
The New York Timesâ Roger Cohen has a special report on D-Day with photos by Laetitia Vancon: D-Day at 80: Veterans of the pivotal battle of World War II are disappearing. Europe, facing new conflict, recalls what their comrades died for.
They were ordinary. The young men from afar who clambered ashore on June 6, 1944, into a hail of Nazi gunfire from the Normandy bluffs did not think of themselves as heroes.
No, said Gen. Darryl A. Williams, the commanding general of United States Army Europe and Africa, the allied soldiers âin this great battle were ordinary,â youths who ârose to this challenge with courage and a tremendous will to win, for freedom.â
In front of the general, during a ceremony this week at Deauville on the Normandy coast, were 48 American survivors of that day, the youngest of them 98, most of them 100 years old or more. The veterans sat in wheelchairs. They saluted, briskly enough. Eight decades have gone by, many of them passed in silence because memories of the war were too terrible to relate.
When the 90th anniversary of D-Day comes around in 2034, there may be no more vets. Living memory of the beaches of their sacrifice will be no more.
âDark clouds of war in Europe are forming,â General Williams said, as he alluded to allied determination to defend Ukraine against Russian attack. This 80th anniversary of the landings is a celebration, but a somber one. Europe is troubled and apprehensive, extremism eating at its liberal democracies.
For more than 27 months now, there has been a war on the continent that has taken hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian and Russian lives. Russia was not invited to the commemoration even though the role of the Soviet Red Army in the defeat of Hitler was critical. A decade ago, President Vladimir V. Putin attended. Now he speaks of nuclear war. It is a time of fissuring and uncertainty.
Remembering the fight against Hitler in WWII is so important today, when a criminal and conman has apparently hypnotizes a large portion of the U.S. population. We canât allow him to end our democracy and turn Europe over to Putin.
Back in the USA, Senate Republicans showed their true colors yesterday in a vote to protect the right to contraception.
CNN: Senate GOP blocks bill to guarantee access to contraception.
Senate Republicans voted Wednesday to block a bill put forward by Democrats that would guarantee access to contraception nationwide, as Democrats seek to highlight the issue in the run up to Novemberâs elections.
The bill â the Right to Contraception Act â would enshrine into federal law a right for individuals to buy and use contraceptives, as well as for health care providers to provide them. It would apply to birth control pills, the plan B pill, condoms and other forms of contraception.
The legislation failed to advance in a procedural vote by a tally of 51 to 39. Most Republicans dismissed the effort as a political messaging vote that is unnecessary and overly broad.
GOP Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins crossed over to vote with Democrats in favor of advancing the bill. Schumer switched his vote to a no at the last minute in a procedural move that will allow Democrats to bring the bill back up in the future if they want.
âThis is a show vote. Itâs not serious,â GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said. âPlus, itâs a huge overreach. It doesnât make any exceptions for conscience. ⌠Itâs a phony vote because contraception, to my knowledge, is not illegal. Itâs not unavailable.â
The vote is part of a larger push by Senate Democrats to draw attention to how the Supreme Courtâs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has affected all aspects of reproductive health â not just abortion â as the election draws closer. Democrats are highlighting the issue this month, which marks the two-year anniversary of the high courtâs ruling.
âIn the coming weeks, Senate Democrats will put reproductive freedoms front and center before this chamber, so that the American people can see for themselves who will stand up to defend their fundamental liberties,â Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said ahead of the vote.
Democratic senators have also introduced a legislative package to establish a nationwide right to in-vitro fertilization, which is expected to come up for a vote as soon as next week.
The Daily Beast: Biden Campaign Names and Shames Republicans Who Voted to Block Contraception Bill.
The Biden campaign posted a video on Wednesday night showing the faces of the 39 senators who voted against the legislation. (Seven Republican senators were not present for the vote.)
âThese are the Trump-aligned Republicans who just blocked a bill to protect a womanâs right to contraception,â the campaign tweeted on XâŚ.
Ahead of the vote, Schumer said that Senate Democrats would âput reproductive freedoms front and center before this chamber, so that the American people can see for themselves who will stand up to defend their fundamental liberties,â according to the Associated Press.
Polling has consistently shown that there is broad bipartisan support among American voters for contraception, with 92 percent of respondents telling Gallup in 2022 that birth control was âmorally acceptable.â
Republicans argued that legislation to enshrine the right to contraception is unnecessary, as it remains freely accessible and available across the countryâŚ.
But Schumer said in a post-vote speech that âwe are kidding ourselves if we think the hard-right is satisfied with overturning Roe,â warning that birth control could be next as reproductive rights continue to be threatened.
âSo, make one thing clear: today was not a âshow voteâ â this was a show-us-who-you-are vote,â he said. âAnd Senate Republicans showed the American people exactly who they are.â
Recall that after the Dobbs decision, Clarence Thomas stated his desire to overturn the decisions that made contraception, same sex marriage, and sex between same sex partners basic rightsâall based on the right to privacy.
Speaking of the right wing SCOTUS justices, last night a former clerk of Samuel Alito appeared on Lawrence OâDonnellâs MSNBC show.
HuffPost: Former Alito Law Clerk âAghastâ After Seeing Jan. 6 Flag Outside His Home, Calls For Recusal.
A former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said Wednesday she was shocked after learning two flags affiliated with rioters during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection were flown outside his homes, saying she believed he should recuse himself from several cases before the court.
Susan Sullivan, who worked as a clerk while Alito was a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, spoke to MSNBCâs Lawrence OâDonnell amid the controversy surrounding the flags.
âI was aghast when I saw those photographs because Iâve never known Justice Alito to be anything other than an honorable man, to be a man of integrity,â Sullivan, now a professor at Temple University, told OâDonnell. âIt is irrelevant if Mrs. Alito flew it or not. The fact is that flag was there.â
âThis is not an insignificant symbol,â she went on. âIrrespective of why it is there, who put it there, it shouldnât have been there. The problem is that flag is incendiary and it cannot do anything other than raise a reasonable inference of bias.â
Alito has rejected the calls for him to recuse from January 6 related cases.
âI am confident that a reasonable person who is not motivated by political or ideological considerations or a desire to affect the outcome of Supreme Court cases would conclude that the events ⌠do not meet the applicable standard for recusal,â he wrote in a letter to lawmakers last month. âI am therefore required to reject your request.â
Sullivan rejected that claim in the Wednesday interview and an earlier opinion piece in The Philadelphia Inquirer, saying recusal was warranted especially because of the decision before the court.
â[It is] the symbol of these people who attacked the capitol. They support Trump unconditionally,â she said. âSo if you have cases before the court that directly relates not just to the former president but to criminal cases that involve that election processâŚâ
âThe stakes have never been higher and recusal is, to me, it just defies logic that one would not recuse themselves from a case like this,â Sullivan added. âThe stakes are too high.â
Why isnât Senator Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee doing anything to rein in Alito?
Noah Berlansky at Public Notice: Dick Durbin needs to step up and do his damn job.
The Republican-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday held a lengthy oversight hearing to badger Attorney General Merrick Garland and push the GOPâs false narrative about President Biden weaponizing the DOJ against Donald Trump.
Even though the hearing was conducted in obvious bad faith, it was in some ways successful, at least in the limited sense that Republicans grabbed a lot of headlines and forced Garland to spend a day on the defensive. Virtually every major news outlet it extensive coverage, ranging from the New York Times to MSNBC to NewsmaxâŚ.
Congressional oversight hearings give Congress a chance to focus the national conversation on what members want to talk about. It gives them a chance to pressure executive branch officials to adopt congressional priorities, or to explain and potentially embarrass themselves.
In contrast, Democrats in the Senate have been bizarrely reluctant to use hearings to advance their agenda. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has refused to hold hearings to investigate egregious evidence of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas receiving gifts from far right billionaires, or to demand answers from Alito about his apparent embrace of the insurrection. Instead, heâs posting weak statements on social media meekly calling for right-wing members of the Court to do a better job policing themselves.
Republicans like Jim Jordan are ignorant about a lot of things. But they understand that the gavel is power, and they are not afraid to use it. Senate Democrats need to get over their qualms and, in this instance, behave more like their rivals across the aisleâŚ.
Hearings drive narratives. But they can do more than that. Congress has real power to pressure government officials, and hearings are a way to demonstrate and exercise that power.
Read more at Public Notice.
More odds and ends:
The Daily Beast: Hunter Biden Prosecutors Mightâve Already Lost the Jury.
The Hunter Biden trial starting in Wilmington, Delaware, is a poster-child case for potential jury nullification.
Biden, the only surviving son of President Joe Biden, is being tried for possessing a firearm while being a user of illegal drugs or drug addict and for lying about the same on a purchase form when he bought a gun. On the surface, the prosecutionâa culmination of more than a half-decade of investigation by Special Counsel David Weissâwould appear to have a slam dunk case because there is no real dispute he bought the gun, or that he had a drug addiction around the time he bought the gun.
The strict definition of jury nullification is when a jury has determined that a defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubtâbut either rejects the evidence or refuses to apply the law because the jury âwants to send a message about some social issue that is larger than the case itself, or because the result dictated by law is contrary to the juryâs sense of justice, morality, or fairness.â
Mr. and Mrs. Hunter Biden
Letâs be clear. Juries are not supposed to do that. They are supposed to convict if the evidence proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt and acquit if it doesnât.
But while the definition of nullification conjures up images of a jury making a social justice-inspired speech in refusing to convict, the reality is quite different because the jury does not need to make such a blatant statement. Rather, the sense that jurors may have of unfairness can be evidenced in an acquittalâdespite strong evidence of guilt. (Thereâs also, of course, the possibility of a hung jury.)
What that means is skilled defense counsel can bring out the factors of unfairness without having to specifically ask a jury to ignore evidence or the law, while skilled prosecutors need to guard against the kind of evidence and testimony that may lead to nullification.
Thus far, the trial is revealing an outmatched prosecution, which has already blundered into a couple of minefields. Defense counsel Abbe Lowell is a seasoned high-profile defense counsel who has defended Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner and got former presidential candidate John Edwards acquitted on campaign finance charges (brought by then-DOJ lawyer Jack Smith).
In the opening by the Biden defense team, Lowell focused on the requirement that the false statements on the gun ownership form had to be âknowingââa term that Lowell claimed the prosecution tried to avoid in its opening. The utility of this defense is that it works synergistically with the effects of Bidenâs admitted drug addiction affecting his decision-making abilities, as well as necessitating a deep dive into the details of his addiction and the specific timeline of when he was using crack cocaine and his efforts to get clean.
The defense appears to be setting up a defense theory that, on the specific date Biden bought the gun, he genuinely believed he was not an addict because he had just finished an 11-day rehabilitation program.
More at the link.
Alan Feuer at The New York Times: Judge Reshuffles Hearings in Trump Documents Case.
The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trumpâs classified documents case abruptly changed the proceedingâs schedule on Wednesday, reshuffling the timing for hearings on an array of important legal issues.
The move by the judge, Aileen M. Cannon, was unlikely to have much impact on the overall trajectory of the case, but it reflected the substantial number of unresolved legal motions she is juggling. Last month, Judge Cannon scrapped the caseâs trial date, saying she could not yet pick a new one because of what she described at the time as âthe myriad and interconnectedâ questions she had still not managed to consider.
Judge Cannon kept in place a hearing she had set for June 21 to discuss a motion by Mr. Trumpâs lawyers to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that Jack Smith, the special counsel named to oversee the prosecutions of Mr. Trump, was illegally appointed to his job.
Similar motions have been rejected in cases involving other special counsels, including Robert S. Mueller III, who investigated connections between Russia and Mr. Trumpâs 2016 campaign, and David C. Weiss, who has brought two criminal cases against Hunter Biden, President Bidenâs son.
The most important change Judge Cannon made to the schedule in a brief order was arguably the cancellation of a three-day hearing that had been set to take place starting June 24 in Federal District Court in Fort Pierce, Fla.
The hearing was originally meant to consider whether Mr. Trumpâs lawyers should be permitted access to communications between prosecutors working for Mr. Smith and officials at the National Archives and several national security agencies.
Giddy up
The lawyers want those communications to bolster their claims that Mr. Smith worked hand in glove with the Biden administration and members of the so-called deep state to bring the documents case against Mr. Trump.
Prosecutors had objected to holding the proceeding at all, telling Judge Cannon in March that no similar hearings had ever been held in the Southern District of Florida, where she sits. In her order on Wednesday, she said she would place the hearing back on her calendar at some point in the future.
Instead of that hearing, Judge Cannon said there would now be a shorter one, on June 24 and 25, to consider different topics, including any lingering discussion about Mr. Smithâs appointment.
Judge Cannon also told the defense and the prosecution to be ready to debate Mr. Trumpâs motion to exclude from the case any evidence â including more than 100 classified documents â that the F.B.I. discovered in August 2022 when agents searched Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trumpâs private club and residence in Florida.
The two sides will argue as well over Mr. Trumpâs attempt to suppress the private audio notes that prosecutors obtained from one of his lawyers through a process that pierced the normal protections of attorney-client privilege. The notes by the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, were central to the governmentâs allegations that Mr. Trump had obstructed the governmentâs repeated efforts to reclaim the classified materials he took to Mar-a-Lago.
Finally, the parties are expected to discuss Mr. Smithâs request to Judge Cannon to alter Mr. Trumpâs conditions of release by barring him from making public statements that could endanger F.B.I. agents working on the case.
Aileen Cannon is an expert at causing unnecessary delays without triggering an appeal to the 11th Circuit. If she rules that Jack Smith was illegally appointed, that would be cause for immediate appeal, so she will probably find some way to just waste more time.
Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Trial Lawyer Lost 8 Lbs Skipping Trumpâs McDonaldâs Courthouse Lunches.
Donald Trumpâs lead lawyer says the former presidentâs seven-week criminal trial in New York took a physical tollâbut he still managed to lose weight by skipping Trumpâs notoriously unhealthy meals.
Todd Blanche appeared on a podcast, For The Defense, hosted by the attorney David Oscar Markus.
âWas it McDonaldâs for lunch every single day, or did you get something else?â Markus asked.
âOh, no-no-no,â Blanche said. âWell, first of all, I didnât have lunch one day. I ate in the morning and at night.â
Delivery of McDonalds order for Trumpâs courthouse lunch
âLook, President Trumpâs team takes care of everybody. Like, everybody gets food. You know, thereâs a lot of food. Itâs not always McDonaldâs. Thereâs a lot of⌠variety. Thereâs pizza, and thereâs other non-healthy alternatives to McDonaldâs.â
Blanche smiled, turning away from the camera and raising his eyebrows.
âLook, I loved it, because, you know, you come in from lunch, and as you know when youâre on trial, youâre trying to figure out what the heck youâre gonna stuff in your belly with the hour that you have. And we would walk in, and there would just be this, just, plethora of just food everywhere,â he said, gesturing with his hands.
The public got a peek last Thursday, when Donald Trump Jr. posted a TikTok video from what legal teams sometimes call the âwar room,â where defendants strategize during breaks. The clip showed Trump Sr. sitting before a half-finished 20-ounce Diet Coca-Cola, an opened bag of Layâs potato chips, a box of Milk Duds, a Milky Way bar, a theater-sized box of Whoppers malted milk balls, and what appeared to be four Hostess SnoBallsâŚ.
Trumpâs go-to McDonaldâs mealâtwo Big Macs, two Filet-O-Fish, and a chocolate shakeâwas first described by close ally Corey R. Lewandowski in a 2017 book, Let Trump Be Trump.
How is it possible that Trump hasnât had a heart attack by now?
Thatâs all I have for you today. I hope youâre enjoying your Thursday.
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