Commentary: A DOJ Roadblock to America’s Big Tech Beatdown?

It’s safe to say that Big Tech hasn’t had a great month.

Google received a beating at the Supreme Court for allegedly stealing the coding needed to create Android. Congress subpoenaed Facebook and Twitter for deliberately blocking news coverage potentially damaging to one political party — a move that culminated in a high-profile hearing yesterday. And now, the Department of Justice has charged Google with illegally maintaining its search and advertising monopoly.

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Rep. Steve Cohen and Democrats Accuse White House Press Secretary of Violating Hatch Act

Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) and other Democrats have accused White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany of violating the HATCH Act. Cohen retweeted an article from The New York Times that accused McEnany of breaking the law.
“Kayleigh McEnany’s violations of the #HatchAct would be a scandal in any other administration,” wrote Cohen. “Grifters and miscreants. Utterly appalling. #CultureOfCorruption”

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Justices Deny Fast, New Look at Pennsylvania Ballot Deadline

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it would not grant a quick, pre-election review to a new Republican appeal to exclude absentee ballots received after Election Day in the presidential battleground state of Pennsylvania, although it remained unclear whether those ballots will ultimately be counted.

The court’s order left open the possibility that the justices could take up and decide after the election whether a three-day extension to receive and count absentee ballots ordered by Pennsylvania’s high court was proper.

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Commentary: With Justice Amy Coney Barrett Confirmed, Will Joe Biden Pack the Supreme Court If He Wins?

The U.S. Senate has confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court by a vote of 52 to 48, creating a new 6 to 3 majority of Republican-appointed justices on the nation’s highest court—and the Democratic Party is in an absolute panic over the outcome.

Almost as soon as Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, Democrats were already threatening to abolish the filibuster in order to amend the Judiciary Act of 1869 and pack the Supreme Court — increasing the threshold way beyond the current nine justices set by law.

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‘Charges of a Rigged Election Could Explode’: Wisconsin Can’t Count Late Ballots, Supreme Court Rules

The Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling Monday night in a 5-3 vote, prohibiting the State of Wisconsin from counting mail-in ballots that arrive days after the election.

Voting rights groups, state and national Democratic parties and the League of Women voters sought to extend ballot counting in Wisconsin, according to NBC News. They argued that the coronavirus pandemic presents challenges to voters who wish to vote by mail, but the Supreme Court ruled that citizens have plenty of options if they wish to vote.

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Omar Calls for Packing the Court After Barrett Confirmation

Rep. Ilhan Omar called for “expanding” the U.S. Supreme Court Monday night after the Senate voted to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Barrett was confirmed in a vote of 52-48 Monday evening and was sworn in shortly after by Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during a ceremony at the White House. Every Democratic senator, including both of Minnesota’s U.S. senators, voted against her confirmation. Sen. Susan Collins was the only Republican to vote against Barrett’s confirmation.

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Sorority Apologizes for Congratulating Amy Coney Barrett

The Kappa Delta sorority deleted and apologized for a congratulatory message for Amy Coney Barrett, who was a member of the sorority during her time at Rhodes College.

The sorority tweeted an image of a statement, saying “KD alumna Amy Coney Barrett was nominated to serve on the Supreme Court. While we do not take a stand on political appointments, we recognize Judge Coney Barrett’s significant accomplishment. We acknowledge our members have a variety of views and a right to their own beliefs.”

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Senate Votes to Advance Barrett; Confirmation Expected Monday

Senate Republicans voted overwhelmingly Sunday to advance Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett toward final confirmation despite Democratic objections, just over a week before the presidential election.

Barrett’s confirmation on Monday was hardly in doubt, with majority Republicans mostly united in support behind President Donald Trump’s pick. But Democrats were poised to keep the Senate in session into the night in attempts to stall, arguing that the Nov. 3 election winner should choose the nominee to fill the vacancy left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

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Almost Two in Three Voters Oppose Biden Packing the Supreme Court, Poll Finds

Nearly two in three voters say they oppose 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden adding more Supreme Court justices if he is elected, according to a poll exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Marist poll, sponsored by the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, found that 61% of voters oppose Biden packing the court. This number includes 63% of Independents and 31% of Democrats.

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Amy Coney Barrett Has More Support Than Any Other Trump Supreme Court Nominee, Poll Shows

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has more support than either of President Donald Trump’s previous nominees, a poll released Wednesday found.

A Morning Consult poll released Wednesday found that 51% of voters said the Senate should confirm Barrett, numbers which have risen three percentage points from last week. The poll surveyed 1,994 voters between October 16 and October 18  with a 2-point margin of error.

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Justices to Weigh Trump Census Plan to Exclude Noncitizens

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up President Donald Trump’s policy, blocked by a lower court, to exclude people living in the U.S. illegally from the census count that will be used to allocate seats in the House of Representatives.

Never in U.S. history have immigrants been excluded from the population count that determines how House seats, and by extension Electoral College votes, are divided among the states, a three-judge federal count said in September when it held Trump’s policy illegal.

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Supreme Court Declines to Hear Tennessee’s Challenge to Federal Refugee Resettlement Program

Supreme Court of the United States

The U.S. Supreme Court said this week it will not hear Tennessee’s challenge of the federal refugee resettlement program, which claimed it violated the 10th Amendment.

Tennessee’s Republican-led government had asked for the review, The Associated Press reported. The court filed its denial earlier, letting a lower court ruling stand.

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GOP Pushes Barrett’s Nomination Ahead, Dems Decry ‘Sham’

Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination cleared a key hurdle Thursday as Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans powered past Democrats’ objections in the drive to confirm President Donald Trump’s pick before the Nov. 3 election.

The panel set Oct. 22 for its vote to recommend Barrett’s nomination to the full Senate for a final vote by month’s end.

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Commentary: If Republican Senators Were Like Crazy Mazie

As I emerged from the Jewish Holy Season, marking the beginning of Year 5781 since Creation, I was jolted from the spirituality and meaningfulness of Sukkot, Sh’mini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah into the reality of the New Filth that permeates American politics. The media like to blame the president for the degradation, but he is not the cause. He is the response and the reaction.

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Supreme Court Halts Census in Latest Twist of 2020 Count

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that the Trump administration can end census field operations early, batting aside a lawsuit that warned the truncated schedule will lead to minorities being undercounted in the crucial once-a-decade head count.

Still, the decision was not a total loss for the plaintiffs, who managed to get two extra weeks of counting people as the case challenging the U.S. Census Bureau’s decision to end the census in September made its way through the courts.

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Barrett Urges Senate Judiciary Committee Not to Assume She Will Judge Like Scalia

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett urged the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday not to assume that she will judge like the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

The Supreme Court nominee repeatedly emphasized to senators in Tuesday’s hearing that though Scalia was one of her mentors and an “eloquent defender of originalism” and that Scalia’s “philosophy is mine,” that doesn’t mean she would always reach the same conclusions as Scalia.

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Senator Klobuchar Calls Barrett Hearings a ‘Sham’ on Opening Day

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) called the confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett “a sham” in her opening statement.

Klobuchar and her colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee convened Monday morning for the opening day of hearings, which will continue through Thursday. Barrett’s nomination was announced by President Donald Trump last month during an event in the White House Rose Garden.

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Commentary: Amy Coney Barrett Exposes Society’s Double Standard on Family Size

Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, has seven children. Unless you have been living under a rock, you already knew that. All the media coverage of her nomination, which was announced on September 26, devoted extensive attention to this fact.

If a poll were to be taken, no doubt more Americans would be able to identify the birth country of Barrett’s two adopted children (Haiti), than the Federal Court Circuit on which she currently serves as a judge (the Seventh).

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Pro-Gun Group Details Why They Think Amy Coney Barrett Would Defend Firearm Rights

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett would be a stalwart supporter of the Second Amendment if confirmed to the court, according to a gun-rights group.

The legislative counsel for the Gun Owners of America, one of the country’s largest pro-gun advocacy organizations, said Barrett appears to be a strict constitutionalist. He also pointed to a dissenting opinion the judge wrote in 2019 in which she wrote in favor of a non-violent felon seeking to restore his firearms rights.

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Supremes Hear Google, Oracle Case of Copyright Clash

The topic was high tech: the code behind smartphones.

But on Wednesday the Supreme Court looked to more low tech examples, from the typewriter keyboard to restaurant menus, try to resolve an $8 billion-plus copyright dispute between tech giants Google and Oracle.

The case, which the justices heard by phone because of the coronavirus pandemic, has to do with Google’s creation of the Android operating system now used on the vast majority of smartphones worldwide. In developing Android, Google used some of Oracle’s computer code.

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Kamala Harris Refuses to Answer Question on Packing the Supreme Court

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris wouldn’t answer a question about packing the Supreme Court during the vice presidential debate Wednesday.

Harris refused to explain her position on packing the court during a discussion on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy left by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Vice President Mike Pence pushed Harris on her position multiple times.

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Voters Increasingly Support Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme Court, Poll Shows

Voters are increasingly backing the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, a Morning Consult and Politico poll released Wednesday showed.

Almost half, 46%, of voters polled by Morning Consult/Politico between Oct. 2 – 4 said that the Senate should confirm Barrett, the poll found. These numbers were up 9 percentage points since Trump first announced he was nominating Barrett on Sept. 26, according to the poll.

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Michigan Supreme Court Overturns Whitmer’s Emergency Powers

The Michigan Supreme Court on Friday struck down Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s coronavirus orders, following months of back and forth between the Democratic governor and the Republican legislature.

The court said that Whitmer cited authority for her multitude of executive orders from a 1945 law that is unconstitutional, the Emergency Powers of the Governor Act of 1945. Republicans said Whitmer should used have a 1976 law, which requires legislature approval to continue after any emergency declaration lasting 28 days, ClickOnDetroit said.

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Kamala Harris Dodges Court Packing Question Following Debate

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris dodged questions about whether or not her party would seek to add Supreme Court justices if Republicans were to confirm a justice before the November election.

“There should be consideration to adding seats to the U.S. Supreme Court,” CNN’s Jake Tapper said following the first presidential debate on Tuesday. “Neither you nor Joe Biden are willing to give a straight answer as to whether or not you’re willing to entertain that idea.”

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Court Pick Barrett Visits Senate Ahead of Confirmation Fight

President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, was on Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a day of meetings with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other pivotal Republican senators in preparation for her fast-track confirmation before the Nov. 3 election.

Joined by Vice President Mike Pence, McConnell said he was glad to welcome Barrett and “get the process started” on her confirmation. But the Republican leader declined to answer questions about whether the judge should recuse herself if legal challenges to the election between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden land at the high court.

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Joe Biden Staffer Suggests Orthodox Catholics, Jews and Muslims Shouldn’t Be on Supreme Court

One of Joe Biden’s staffers suggested Monday that Orthodox Catholics, Jews, and Muslims should be disqualified from serving on the Supreme Court due to their “intolerant” views.

Biden campaign Deputy Data Director Nikitha Rai criticized Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s religious views in a Twitter conversation Monday night with Brookings Institute Senior Fellow Shadi Hamid.

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Commentary: ‘Never Trump’ Now Means ‘Never Constitution’

We went from Never Trump to Never Constitution in a nanosecond, it seems.

Entrenched foes of the president base their opposition on the unproven allegation Donald Trump is staining our democracy and defiling the Constitution. That arc now has reached almost full circle as the president’s enemies, desperate to deprive him of any victory, are concocting harebrained compromises outside the clear boundaries of the Constitution related to the next Supreme Court justice.

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Trump Picks Conservative Amy Coney Barrett for Supreme Court

President Donald Trump nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court on Saturday, capping a dramatic reshaping of the federal judiciary that will resonate for a generation and that he hopes will provide a needed boost to his reelection effort.

Republican senators are already lining up for a swift confirmation of Barrett ahead of the Nov. 3 election, as they aim to lock in conservative gains in the federal judiciary before a potential transition of power. Trump, meanwhile, is hoping the nomination will serve to galvanize his supporters as he looks to fend off Democrat Joe Biden.

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Trump Has Reportedly Chosen His Next Supreme Court Justice Nominee

President Donald Trump will nominate federal Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the United States, multiple outlets reported Friday evening.

Sources close to the process said that Trump will announce Barrett as the Supreme Court nominee Saturday, according to the New York Times. Trump is not known to have met with any other candidate for the vacancy, the Times reported, noting that aides warned there is a possibility Trump could change his mind before the announcement.

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Minnesota, Virginia Congressmen Propose Constitutional Amendment to Limit Supreme Court Size at Nine Justices

U.S. Reps. Collin C. Peterson (D-MN-07) and Denver Riggleman (R-VA-05) said they want to make sure that neither political party can ever pack the Supreme Court.

In a bipartisan joint press release issued Thursday, the representatives said they introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to permanently set the number of U.S. Supreme Court Justices at nine.

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