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Trump’s Shoot-the-Moon Legal StrategyWith less than a week to go before the start of his trial in New York on falsifying records, former President Donald Trump has sued Juan Merchan, the judge presiding over the case. The suit is sealed, but it is reportedly related to a gag order Merchan recently placed on Trump.The suit seems highly unlikely to succeed, and it’s only the latest in a series of Trump broadsides against the judge. He accused Merchan of bias because the judge’s daughter has worked in Democratic politics, citing an account on X that the court says does not belong to her. In response, District Attorney Alvin Bragg asked Merchan to broaden an existing gag order, which barred Trump from attacking witnesses, jurors, and others, to also cover family members of the judge and the prosecutor. Merchan agreed, and ever since, Trump has continued to attack him. Last week, Trump…

CNN’s Laura Coates Asks Maggie Haberman How Trump Will ‘Handle’ Sexual Abuse Coming Up At New …CNN anchor Laura Coates asked CNN commentator and New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman how former President Donald Trump will “handle” all of his past misconduct being introduced at his current trial, including the sexual abuse for which he was found liable. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has filed notice that if Trump decides to testify in the Stormy Daniels hush money-election interference trial that got underway this week, he will seek to discredit Trump using a list of “all misconduct and criminal acts of the defendant.” Haberman was a guest on Wednesday night’s edition of CNN’s Laura Coates Live, during which Coates noted that “You know Trump better than most” and asked for her insights on how Trump would deal with his past being brought up in the new trial: COATES: Maggie, I’m so glad that you’re here. You almost need no introduction…

Second Amendment Roundup: ATF redefines “engaged in the business”ATF’s Final Rule Definition of “Engaged in the Business” as a Dealer in Firearms amounts to 466 pages of responses to comments and the final rule itself.  Over 252,000 of the 258,000 comments or 98% in favor of the proposed rule were form letters with identical text found online and recommended by (anti-gun) organizations.  Only 5,140 were not form letters.  Of the 99,000 comments opposed to the rule, 80,000 or 81% were form letters.  That means that 18,810 were not form letters.  So more than three times the numbers of opponents filed comments with actual substance as did those in favor. The final rule is substantially the same as the proposed rule.  See my previous post “‘He’s at it again!’  Merrick Garland proposes ever-more intrusive ATF regulations.”  A number of points that I (and others) made in comments filed in opposition to…

Why We Remember ColumbineTwenty-five years ago today, two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killed 12 classmates and a teacher, wounded 21 more people, and ended their rampage with a double suicide. The murders dominated news coverage for weeks, first in horrified reaction to the slaughter and then as every faction with a moral panic to promote tried to prove their chosen demon was responsible for the massacre. Even after the nightly newscasts moved on, the slayings left a deep imprint on popular culture, inspiring songs and films and more. They remain infamous to this day. Why does Columbine still loom large? The easy answer would be that it was such a terrible crime that people found it hard to forget it. That is certainly true, but it doesn’t fully answer the question, since there have been several terrible crimes since then that do not have the place……

West Virginia Takes a Stand Against Lawsuit Abuse with New Reform  The trucking industry is celebrating a significant victory in West Virginia with the enactment of a crucial legal reform aimed at curbing lawsuit abuse. Recently signed into law by Governor Jim Justice, S.B.583 has introduced a cap on non-economic damage awards at $5 million. This move is a response to longstanding concerns about the exploitative practices in civil litigation that have not only affected the trucking industry but also imposed additional costs on consumers through higher insurance premiums and product prices. American Trucking Associations (ATA) President and CEO Chris Spear commended the West Virginia Legislature and Governor Justice for implementing what he describes as a “commonsense reform.” According to Spear, the trucking industry plays a pivotal role in the U.S. economy by delivering essential goods and supporting quality jobs. He criticized the misuse of the civil litigation system by…

How Texas’s New Immigration Law Could Backfire for RepublicansIn the days after the November election in 2020, I traveled from Laredo, Texas, down along the Rio Grande into one of the great heartlands of Mexican America, a place locals proudly refer to by its area code, “the 956.” Along this stretch of the Texas border, towns are up to 98 percent Latino; Spanish is so common that Anglos have to learn the language if they want to order at restaurants. Yet on Election Night, residents had shocked the country by turning out for Donald Trump in record numbers.In Zapata County, where Trump became the first Republican to win the presidential vote since Warren Harding in 1920, I asked Cynthia Villarreal, a longtime Democratic organizer, what explained Trump’s success after four years of immigration raids and family separation. Villarreal told me that, in South Texas, many Mexican Americans don’t identify as…