The day before Donald Trump was indicted last week for trying to obstruct the 2020 election, his FEC reports revealed the extent to which he uses his donors’ money, rather than his own, to pay his lawyers.
The Haake Take
Sabrina Haake is a 25-year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. Her columns appear in OutSFL, Chicago Tribune, State Affairs, and Howey Politics. She and her wife split their time between South Florida and Chicago.
Watching politicians like Ron DeSantis ignore climate change while the nation cooks is like being trapped in the backseat of a car - windows up and locked - with a crazed driver who won’t stop smoking. Coughing falls on deaf ears. Complaining makes him chain-smoke. Explaining the science of carcinogens and lungs makes him twitch and light cigars - simultaneously.
Every other week another SCOTUS scandal breaks, but no justice is more tainted than Clarence Thomas.
The Elon Musk-Mark Zuckerberg rivalry, entertaining as it is, dances around a crucial question: How do we reign in extremism on social media? If it can’t be done without offending the First Amendment, how do we bracket and tag misinformation so that people are at least aware that they are being manipulated, not informed?
In 1896, the Supreme Court issued one of the most shameful decisions in US history, Plessy vs. Ferguson. Plessy upheld “separate but equal” public accommodations, barring recently freed black people from “white” accommodations including train cars, lodging, and schools, and justified the murderous scourge of Jim Crow laws.
A federal judge has blocked enforcement of Florida’s drag ban as overly broad under the First Amendment. Issuing an injunction to bar enforcement of the suspect law, the judge found the ban unconstitutionally vague and “dangerously susceptible to standardless, over broad enforcement which could sweep up substantial protected speech…”
For the first time in U.S. history, a former commander in chief has been charged under the Espionage Act with jeopardizing national security. Equally dangerous, he is working to erode the rule of law rather than bend to it.
Ron DeSantis, Republican candidate for President, still refuses to admit Joe Biden won in 2020, supported election deniers in 2022, and denies J6 was an insurrection. Last week he announced that “on day one” in the oval office, he’d ‘aggressively’ review pardons for the J6 rioters, suggesting relief for those unfortunate victims of “political targeting.”
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