But Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina had demurred when asked several times by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan whether Trump would testify, leaving the option open.
On Tuesday, however, Tacopina informed Kaplan that Trump had decided against taking the witness stand.
The jury, however, will hear from Trump, albeit not live or in person. An attorney for Carroll said she expects to play about 45 minutes of a videotaped deposition of Trump for jurors.
Jurors heard from a variety of witness on Tuesday, including a friend of Carroll’s, Lisa Birnbach, who testified that Carroll called her about five minutes after the alleged incident at Bergdorf’s and, “breathless” and “hyperventilating,” told Birnbach that Trump had attacked her. Jurors also heard from a woman named Jessica Leeds, who has accused Trump of sexually assaulting her on an airplane in the late 1970s.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“Disney now is forced to defend itself against a State weaponizing its power to inflict political punishment,” the lawsuit states.
The two opposing moves Wednesday represent an escalation in the ongoing battle between the Florida governor and Disney. The fight was sparked last year after Disney publicly criticized Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature for approving a bill banning teachers from leading classroom lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation, known by opponents as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
DeSantis, who supported the legislation and signed it into law, later pushed Florida lawmakers to strip Disney of its self-governing status that the company enjoyed for decades at its central Florida theme parks. Disney remains one of Florida’s biggest employers, with more than 70,000 employees at its theme parks near Orlando.
The governor also previously appointed a new board to oversee Disney’s Florida district. But in a surprise move last February, the Central Florida board that had been controlled by Disney quietly approved a pact that gave Disney authority over its parks. The DeSantis administration only learned about the agreement in March and scrambled to respond.
Some Republicans criticized DeSantis over the Disney flap, claiming that the governor — who is expected to jump into the 2024 presidential race — was outmaneuvered by the corporation. Former President Donald Trump, who already announced his presidential bid and is known for fighting with rivals, called DeSantis’ feud with Disney a “political stunt” and lamented that the entire episode is unnecessary.
On Wednesday, the DeSantis-appointed Central Florida Tourism Oversight District Board of Supervisors, during a meeting in Lake Buena Vista, voted to invalidate the February pact in an attempt to wrestle back control of Disney. But that move may be on hold as the lawsuit winds its way through the courts.
Former Florida Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson, an attorney hired by the district, said that the old board attempted to act without the legal authority to act.
“Everyone must play by the same rules,” Lawson said. “Disney was openly and legally granted unique and special privilege, that privilege of running its own local government for a time. That era has ended.”
Jeremy T. Redfern, deputy press secretary for DeSantis, responded to questions in an email stating: “We are unaware of any legal right that a company has to operate its own government or maintain special privileges not held by other businesses in the state. This lawsuit is yet another unfortunate example of their hope to undermine the will of the Florida voters and operate outside the bounds of the law.”
Representatives of Disney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In its lawsuit, Disney stated that it regretted that the ongoing fight has led to a federal lawsuit.
“Governor DeSantis and his allies paid no mind to the governing structure that facilitated Reedy Creek’s successful development until one year ago, when the Governor decided to target Disney,” the lawsuit states. “There is no room for disagreement about what happened here: Disney expressed its opinion on state legislation and was then punished by the State for doing so.”
The lawsuit repeatedly claims that DeSantis targeted Disney and is punishing the company for speaking out against the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. It adds that DeSantis and the new board are violating Disney’s constitutional and the First Amendment rights, adding that once the “political story” was set, the retaliation only became worse, the lawsuit read.
“Indeed, Governor DeSantis has reaffirmed, again and again, that the State campaign to punish Disney for its speech about House Bill 1557 has been a coordinated and deliberate one from the start,” according to the lawsuit. “Disney’s commentary on House Bill 1557 was, he claimed, a ‘declaration of war’ and ‘a textbook example of when a corporation should stay out of politics.’”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“Trump was almost twice her size,” Crowley said to the jury. “He held down her arm, pulled down her tights and then he sexually assaulted her.”
Trump, who isn’t required to appear at the proceedings, didn’t attend the first day of the trial. His lawyer, Joe Tacopina, sought to portray Carroll’s claim as a “sick story” while also trying to reassure jurors that they could side with his client even if they dislike him.
“You can hate Donald Trump. It’s OK,” Tacopina told jurors. “But there’s a time and a secret place for that. It’s called a ballot box. Not here, in a court of law.”
“While no one is above the law, no one is also beneath the law,” he continued. “Politicians don’t make this country great, jurors do.”
Carroll, Tacopina argued, was motivated by money and by politics. He questioned her claim that no shoppers or employees were around to witness the incident in the department store, and he emphasized that she couldn’t recall certain details, most notably the precise timing of the alleged attack.
“You learned that E. Jean Carroll can’t tell you the date. She can’t tell you the month. She can’t tell you the season. She can’t even tell you the year,” he said.
“Evidence will tell you that E. Jean Carroll can’t do any of those things because the story isn’t true.”
To combat some of those arguments, Crowley emphasized two main points in her opening statements: that Carroll’s account is corroborated by two friends she told contemporaneously and by former Bergdorf Goodman employees who can testify to physical attributes of the store at that time, and that Trump’s alleged assault of Carroll is part of a pattern. More than two dozen women have accused him of sexual misconduct.
Two other women who have accused Trump of sexual assault, Jessica Leeds and Natasha Stynoff, are set to testify, and Carroll’s attorneys have received permission from the judge to use the “Access Hollywood” tape — in which Trump boasts on a hot mic that “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything,” adding, “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything” — as evidence at trial.
Trump’s lawyer, Tacopina, dismissed the significance of the tape, calling it a “lewd conversation from 20 years ago.” The tape was recorded in 2005 and became public in 2016.
“It’s foolish, but it’s locker room talk,” he said. “It’s not an admission.”
Crowley also seized on a statement Trump made in disputing Carroll’s claims that Carroll is “not my type!”
First, Crowley told the jury, “we all know what that means: He was saying she was too ugly to assault.”
Later in her remarks, she also argued that his comment was not only offensive but also a lie. Describing a portion of his videotaped deposition that Carroll’s lawyers intend to show the jury, Crowley showed jurors a black and white photograph of Trump with Carroll.
“When Trump was shown this photograph at his deposition late last year, he looked at it, he pointed to it, unprompted, and he said, ‘It’s Marla! Yeah, it’s Marla, my wife,’” Crowley said, raising her voice.
“He mistook her for Marla Maples, his second wife, a former model, who he admitted was exactly his type.”
The trial is expected to last between one and two weeks, and testimony is set to begin Wednesday. While Trump isn’t expected to attend the trial in coming days, the judge nevertheless offered an instruction that appeared aimed at the absent defendant.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who in court filings took issue with Trump’s recent comments urging his supporters to protest criminal charges against him, advised the lawyers to warn their clients against making remarks that “inspire violence.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
And, of course, a civil verdict against Trump would add to his avalanche of legal troubles as he is seeking to regain the presidency while under indictment in an unrelated case and facing the possibility of additional criminal charges in several other investigations.
The trial is also risky for Carroll, who must convince a jury to believe her accusation against an incredibly high-profile defendant for an incident that allegedly occurred nearly 30 years ago and lacked any eyewitnesses.
According to Carroll, one night in either late 1995 or early 1996, she bumped into Trump while she was leaving Bergdorf Goodman. He recognized her, she said, because they had met once before and “had long traveled in the same New York City media circles.” Telling her that he was at the store to buy a present for “a girl,” Trump asked Carroll for her advice, and after the two discussed a few ideas, Trump suggested visiting the lingerie department, according to the lawsuit.
There, on the counter, they saw a lilac gray see-through bodysuit, and the two teased each other about which one of them should try it on, the lawsuit says. According to Carroll, Trump then “grabbed” her arm, “maneuvered” her to the dressing room and closed the door. There were no attendants or other shoppers nearby, Carroll said.
Once inside the dressing room, Trump pushed her up against the wall, bumping her head and “putting his mouth on her lips,” according to Carroll. After she pushed him back, she said, he “seized both of her arms,” pushed her again and then “jammed his hand under her coatdress and pulled down her tights.”
After unzipping his pants, “Trump then pushed his fingers around Carroll’s genitals and forced his penis inside of her,” according to the lawsuit.
After breaking free by raising up her knee and pushing him off, she said she ran out of Bergdorf’s and immediately called a friend, Lisa Birnbach, and told her about the incident. “He raped you,” Birnbach said, according to Carroll. Birnbach encouraged her to call the police, but “still in shock and reluctant to think of herself as a rape victim, Carroll did not want to speak to the police,” the lawsuit says.
Several days later, Carroll says she disclosed the events to another friend, Carol Martin. Martin advised Carroll to tell no one, advice she says she took.
Carroll’s attorneys have indicated they likely will call both Birnbach and Martin to testify. Both women backed up her account in media interviews shortly after Carroll went public with her claims in 2019.
Trump, for his part, denies the entire episode. He said in 2019 that he had “never met this person in my life” and that she was manufacturing stories about him for the purpose of selling a book in which she detailed the alleged assault. Last year, he repeated the denials on his social media site and again accused her of promoting a “hoax,” adding that, “while I am not supposed to say it, I will. This woman is not my type!”
In court filings, Trump’s attorneys have suggested that his defense may include questioning the plausibility of Carroll’s claim that there were no customers or staff around to witness the incident, drilling into the notion that she can’t pinpoint the date when the attack allegedly occurred and arguing that Carroll is politically and financially motivated.
Lawyers for Carroll and Trump declined to comment.
Carroll is suing him for sexual assault under the Adult Survivors Act, a 2022 New York law that gave a one-year window beginning in November of that year for people to sue their alleged assailants even if the statute of limitations had expired, which it had in Carroll’s case. In addition to the sexual-assault claim, Carroll is suing Trump in this week’s trial for defamation over his 2022 comments.
In a separate lawsuit, she is also suing him for defamation regarding his 2019 comments; the trial for that case is delayed pending a ruling on whether Trump can be sued personally for comments he made while he was president.
Civil lawsuits arising from sexual assaults are not uncommon. (Trump is not even the first president to be sued for sexual misconduct: Paula Jones famously sued Bill Clinton during his presidency for sexual harassment in a case that reached the Supreme Court.) But the Trump trial will require highly unusual measures. Perhaps most significantly, the judge presiding over the case, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, has ordered an anonymous jury — meaning the names of the jurors will not be disclosed to the public or to Carroll, Trump or their attorneys — due to “a very strong risk that jurors will fear harassment.”
In his order regarding the unusual step of protecting the juror’s identities, Kaplan, a Clinton appointee, cited a series of alleged threats of violence by Trump, his attacks on jurors in other cases, his encouragement of the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol and his statement urging his supporters to protest what he predicted would be his arrest in connection with the district attorney’s investigation.
In another twist, Trump has indicated that he probably won’t attend the trial. In a court filing, his lawyers cited the “logistical burdens” of him appearing in court due to his Secret Service protection, a wrinkle the judge rejected as an adequate reason for failing to appear, while noting that he has no legal obligation to either attend or testify.
In other ways, however, the case is typical of sexual assault lawsuits. Such cases are commonly brought many years after the incident in question, because victims often take a long time to come to terms with what has happened to them, and often center on a situation witnessed by no one but the plaintiff and the defendant, said Peter Saghir, a lawyer who represented Anthony Rapp in his battery trial against Kevin Spacey, whom Rapp accused of making a “sexual advance” on him in 1986. (A jury found Spacey not liable for battery.)
“These cases are so difficult because these events are almost always unwitnessed,” Saghir said. “I’m sure Trump is going to be arguing, clearly if I raped someone, why wasn’t she screaming? Why wasn’t she yelling? There’s no video. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. It’s usually one person’s word against the other word.”
In Carroll’s case, he noted, she does have corroboration from the two friends she says she told contemporaneously.
Carroll’s case is also likely to hinge on her own testimony and whether a jury believes her story, said Jordan Merson, a lawyer who represents five women suing Bill Cosby for sexual abuse. “It seems like Trump’s legal team is going after her credibility, so her cross examination when she’s on the witness stand is going to be a very important part of the case.”
Merson noted that cross examination for a sexual assault victim can be “very difficult” because the plaintiff is being challenged on something they typically find painful to talk about under even the most inviting circumstances.
If the jury does believe Carroll’s story about the alleged rape, Merson said the defamation claim may significantly boost any monetary award she is given. Carroll is seeking unspecified damages — and for Trump to retract the statement he made about her on his social media site.
“Juries tend to be very sympathetic to survivors of sexual abuse, especially if there’s any type of verbal disparagement thereafter,” Merson said. “If the jury finds for Ms. Carroll, you could be looking at a very significant damages award,” he said. “Many millions of dollars.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Members of the legal team representing Dominion Voting Systems leave the Leonard Williams Justice Center on Tuesday in Wilmington, Del. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
By Matt Taylor
Updated:
WILMINGTON, Del. — Fox News agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems to settle a defamation lawsuit over false elections claims, Dominion’s lawyers said Tuesday.
The voting machine company accused the conservative network of deliberately spreading bogus conspiracy theories about its products after the 2020 election in a bid to win back viewers. Dominion’s lawsuit had asked for $1.6 billion in damages before the two sides reached the last-minute settlement after a jury had been selected and as the trial was about to begin.
“The truth matters. Lies have consequences,” Dominion attorney Justin Nelson said outside the courthouse. “Over two years ago, a torrent of lies swept Dominion and election officials across America into an alternative universe of conspiracy theories, causing grievous harm to Dominion and the country.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Critics have accused conservative opponents of Biden policies of filing their lawsuits in particular divisions in the district, seeking to guarantee they’re heard by a sympathetic judge. The Biden administration, for example, has accused Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton of “judge shopping” in recent cases he’s filed in the district challenging various administration policies.
The lawsuit that Pittman agreed to transfer on Monday was brought by a for-profit college trade association that wants to block a new Biden administration policy that makes it easier for student loan borrowers to have their debts forgiven when they are misled or defrauded by their college.
Career Colleges & Schools of Texas, which filed the case in February, is trying to block the Education Department’s rewrite of federal standards — known as “borrower defense to repayment” — that govern when the agency discharges a student loan based on a college’s misconduct. The group argues that the policy, which is set to take effect July 1, is an illegal and unfair effort by the Biden administration to provide more loan forgiveness to borrowers while sticking colleges with the bill.
In a six-page decision, Pittman rejected arguments by the Austin-based association that it should be able to pursue the case in the Fort Worth division of the Northern District of Texas on behalf of member schools in that area that would be affected by the new policy even though the group itself doesn’t have any office or employees there.
Pittman ruled that connection to the district was too far removed. Career Colleges & Schools of Texas “may have an interest in assisting various burdened parties in the division, but it does not have any presence,” Pittman wrote, concluding that “venue is improper” in his district.
The Biden administration had asked that the case be moved either to Austin where the college group is based or federal district court in Washington, D.C. Pittman ruled that Austin would be the “more appropriate” venue because it still “affords some ‘respect’ to Plaintiff’s original choice of forum — even though it was an incorrect one.”
The Justice Department declined to comment. An attorney representing Career Colleges & Schools of Texas said that the organization would not comment on pending litigation.
The Northern District of Texas is widely seen a one of the nation’s most conservative with GOP appointed judges who have demonstrated a willingness to strike down major Democratic policies.
Pittman, for example, was the judge who first blocked Biden’s sweeping student debt relief program last fall. His colleague Judge Reed O’Connor is a George W. Bush appointee who notably struck down the Affordable Care Act in 2018.
More recently, another judge in the district, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, authored the controversial ruling earlier this month that overturned the Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of a common abortion pill. That decision is on pause while the Supreme Court hears an emergency appeal.
Josh Gerstein contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
San Francisco: A new lawsuit has been filed against Google seeking 3.4 billion pounds ($4.2 billion) in compensation for publishers for lost revenue.
According to the claim, made by ex-Guardian technology editor Charles Arthur, Google illegally used its dominant position in online advertising to reduce publishers’ profits, the BBC reported.
Google stated that it would vigorously oppose the “speculative and opportunistic” action.
In the lawsuit, Arthur claimed that because of Google’s abuse of its position, ad-tech services were inflated, and publishers’ ad sales revenues were unlawfully reduced, the report said.
“The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is currently investigating Google’s anti-competitive conduct in ad-tech, but they don’t have the power to make Google compensate those who have lost out. We can only right that wrong through the courts, which is why I am bringing this claim,” Arthur was quoted as saying.
It is the second such lawsuit, following a similar one filed in November last year.
The claim was brought by former UK’s communications regulator Ofcom director Claudio Pollack, who is seeking damages of up to 13.6 billion pounds from Google, the report mentioned.
Meanwhile, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal has said that Google will have to pay the fine of Rs 1,337.76 crore, imposed on it by the Competition Commission of India (CCI).
The CCI had, on October 30, 2022, imposed a fine of Rs 1,337.76 crore on Google for anti-competitive practices in relation to Android mobile devices.
Some uncertainty remained about who at Fox authorized specific broadcasts and what those people knew or believed at the time, Davis continued.
“The Court does not weigh the evidence to determine who may have been responsible for publication and if such people acted with actual malice – these are genuine issues of material fact and therefore must be determined by a jury,” the judge wrote in his 81-page ruling.
Fox reacted to the ruling by insisting that the company is standing up for free-speech principles.
“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news. Fox will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings,” the company said.
A spokesperson for Dominion welcomed Davis’ ruling. “We are gratified by the Court’s thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox’s arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial,” the firm said.
Davis has set jury selection for April 13 and the trial to begin in April 17 in Delaware Superior Court in Wilmington, assuming that the sides don’t reach a financial settlement in the meantime.
The trial is expected to feature testimony from top Fox personalities including Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and others. The pre-trial litigation has already uncovered documents showing that the hosts and anchors did not believe many of the charges being leveled on their programs and that, in the wake of President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 race, the company was desperately looking for ways to keep its Trump-supporting viewers from defecting to rivals like Newsmax and One America News.
Dominion filed the suit in 2021, contending that Fox gravely damaged the voting company’s reputation by repeatedly airing false charges about it even after being given details about the misstatements.
In recent court filings, Fox’s attorneys argued that the network wasn’t endorsing the claims leveled by Trump and allies like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, but was simply conveying newsworthy statements being issued by important public figures. The judge rejected those arguments.
“Fox dedicates little to its argument on falsity. It claims that ‘[t]he question is whether the press reported the “true” fact that the President made those allegations,’” Davis wrote. “However, falsity refers to the content of the statement, not the act of republishing it. Therefore, the question of falsity is whether the content of the allegations was true, not whether Fox truthfully republished the allegations.”
Davis also said Fox’s reports and interviews often aired the claims without rebuttal or context, further undercutting the network’s arguments.
“The evidence does not support that FNN conducted good-faith, disinterested reporting….FNN’s failure to reveal extensive contradicting evidence from the public sphere and Dominion itself indicates its reporting was not disinterested,” the judge wrote.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan (R) — a staunch Willow supporter — said he was already preparing to help defend the Biden administration from “frivolous legal challenges” against the $8 billion project.
“We are coordinated and ready to defend this decision,” he told reporters Monday.
Biden officials have sought to balance interest in continued leasing in oil- and gas-producing states like Alaska with the president’s clean energy priorities. Environmentalists who have generally backed the president’s climate initiatives have also repeatedly pushed the federal government to go even further by eliminating new oil and gas leasing on federally controlled lands.
Cancellation of the Willow project would have been a key win to block future fossil fuel extraction on public lands. Now environmentalists’ pressure campaign against the project is transitioning to legal action against the approval process by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management.
Trustees for Alaska, which successfully sued to block a Trump-era Willow approval in 2020, is reviewing whether the Biden administration’s green light for the project fully complies with an earlier court order. A federal judge in 2021 blocked Willow after finding that BLM had failed to conduct an adequate analysis of the project’s environmental impacts.
Judge Sharon Gleason of the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska sent BLM back to the drawing board after finding the agency had not done enough to model the impact of the project on foreign emissions, properly weigh alternative designs or approve a project that provided maximal surface area protections within the leasing area.
BLM’s court-ordered environmental review did address the greenhouse gas modeling concerns, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other potential problems with the agency’s emissions and impact analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act, said Psarianos of Trustees for Alaska. NEPA requires agencies to take a “hard look” at environmental impacts of major federal actions but does not require a specific outcome for a project.
“We have some big, big questions about whether they actually complied with the NEPA requirement to assess impacts from those greenhouse gas emissions, even if they accurately quantified them,” she said.
Environmental groups will also be looking at how BLM responded within its final approval — known as a record of decision, or ROD — to Gleason’s finding that the agency had misinterpreted its statutory authority to assume ConocoPhillips had the right to extract all the oil and gas that was under its lease.
“The ROD does try to grapple with that,” said Psarianos.
BLM stated that its project screening criteria were “reevaluated and augmented” to address the court’s concerns about the amount of extraction approved under the Trump administration.
“That’s something we’re going to have to look at and dig into and see, whether that’s defensible for them,” Psarianos said.
Environmental groups will also be looking at compliance under other statutes such as the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act, which outlines conservation requirements specifically for the Alaska petroleum reserve, also referred to as the NPR-A.
In its new record of decision released Monday, BLM said it had responded to the concerns raised by Gleason, who was appointed during the Obama administration, and was moving forward with an alternative Willow design that “requires the fewest ice roads, fewest total miles of infield pipelines, least water use, fewest vehicle trips, fewest fixed-wing aircraft trips, fewest helicopter trips, and fewest acres of screeding.”
The project design no longer allows gravel fill in a marine area and reduces the number of facilities, water and gravel use, and operational activities. The changes “reduce impacts to important surface resources and subsistence uses as compared to the other action alternatives,” BLM said.
The approved alternative also had the least total greenhouse gas emissions, making the decision to move forward with the project “consistent with the principles and objectives” in 2021 climate orders issued by President Joe Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, according to BLM.
Willow will include nearly 200 oil wells along with other supporting infrastructure. ConocoPhillips also added three boat ramps to help offset the impacts of the project to the Alaska Native community of Nuiqsut. The tiny city is located closest to the development, and its residents have strongly opposed Willow for its impacts on subsistence hunting and fishing — even as many other Alaska Native leaders have backed the project.
BLM’s final approval includes two fewer drilling sites than what was proposed by ConocoPhillips under the Trump administration. The company had previously warned the Biden administration that approving fewer than three well sites would not be economically viable.
ConocoPhillips praised the Biden administration’s decision Monday, saying it was compatible with White House climate and energy policies.
‘Huge disappointment’
In a separate announcement Monday, the White House said it plans to protect 16 million acres of public lands and federal waters from oil and gas development — although environmental groups say the move does not offset their concerns about Willow.
The Biden administration indefinitely withdrew 2.8 million acres of the Beaufort Sea from oil and gas leasing and announced plans for a new rulemaking to consider conservation measures for more than 13 million acres in the NPR-A that serves as important habitat for grizzly and polar bears, as well as caribou and migratory waterfowl.
“Today’s withdrawal ensures this important habitat for whales, seals, polar bears as well as for subsistence purposes will be protected in perpetuity from extractive development,” the White House said in a memorandum.
Psarianos said that the entire western Arctic deserves protection from oil and gas drilling.
“The Willow approvals … would unlock a large area for industrial development,” she said. “That just in and of itself is a completely unacceptable threat for the reserve, to subsistence and to the climate.”
Environmentalists said the Biden administration’s approval of the Willow project is in line with other oil and gas leasing decisions from Interior.
“President Biden’s decision to approve the massive Willow fossil fuel project is undoubtedly a blow to our collective ability to address the climate crisis,” Jim Walsh, policy director of Food and Water Watch, said in a statement. “But this administration has not yet demonstrated a strong commitment to stopping new fossil fuel projects.”
The Biden administration has already faced a series of lawsuits challenging its analysis of the risks of oil and gas leasing.
That has included litigation over Lease Sale 258 in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, the recent lawsuit against Lease Sale 259 in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as other challenges to onshore leases and drilling permits, said Kristen Monsell, oceans program litigation director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Monsell said that the Biden administration’s approval of drilling permits on public lands has outpaced the rate under former President Donald Trump.
“The Biden administration has been a huge disappointment,” she said.
Emma Dumain contributed to this report.
A version of this report first ran in E&E News’ Energywire. Get access to more comprehensive and in-depth reporting on the energy transition, natural resources, climate change and more in E&E News.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“There is nothing in those documents to show they operate like a real news organization,” said Doug Gordon, a Democratic strategist. “If you are running a campaign in 2024, how do you in good faith hand your ads to Fox when you know they handed them over to Republicans? If there are any general election debates, how do you let Fox be a moderator?”
There is no indication, at this juncture, that major Democratic entities are ready to halt their ad buys on Fox News, let alone its many affiliates. But that is partially because few Democratic campaigns or causes are currently spending ad money. In the interim, the Dominion lawsuit revelations have led to louder calls for the party to make a firm break from any involvement with the cable channel, whom they view as functionally a campaign arm for Republicans. Democrats spanning the ideological spectrum have even started calling on the White House Correspondents’ Association — the group of news reporters advocating for press access — to boot Fox News reporters from the briefing room.
“They are arguably the most important entity of the American right and the Republican Party,” said Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, suggesting that The Associated Press include in its stylebook that Fox News is not a news organization. “There needs to be a serious conversation now about whether Fox can continue to be a member of the White House Correspondents Association. Keeping them there seems not to be OK.”
Even with its reputation for airing reliably conservative content, Fox News remains a major player in Democratic politics. More self-identified Democrats consistently watch the network than any other cable channel, according to Nielsen MRI Fusion. And a faction of Democrats sees value in both reaching those voters and trying to persuade the independents and Republican-leaning ones who tune into the channel.
In the 2020 campaign cycle, the network hosted a presidential debate, accepted some $7.4 million in advertising from Joe Biden’s presidential campaign to Fox News, according to the tracking firm AdImpact, and held town halls with Democratic primary contenders. While Biden administration officials have selectively chosen to appear on Fox News for interviews, the president’s aides have also sought out opportunities to use the network as a cudgel against Republican lawmakers — whether on economic issues or matters of public safety.
White House officials, for their part, describe their relationship with Fox employees who cover them closely as combative but mostly cordial. But they also view the Dominion lawsuit revelations as a cover of sorts to treat Fox News with a bit more frostiness than other media outlets. Biden aides have privately bristled at news reporters who just weeks ago piled on criticism of the president for side stepping a customary Super Bowl interview with Fox.
“Regardless of any new revelations of media bias and hypocrisy during the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden won the most votes of any candidate in American history because of his vision for the middle class, his message, and his record,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement. “And anyone who is surprised by such revelations hasn’t been paying attention to — or watching — Fox News lately.”
Bates and others have been trolling Fox of late, including sending a statement to the network for inclusion in a story questioning whether viewers and readers should trust Fox News’ reporting on Biden, citing executives’ reported kid-glove treatment of Trump. The White House statement to Fox was reported by Semafor.
Fox, in turn, accused the White House of resorting to “junior varsity campaign style stunts.”
Other Democrats want the president and his party to react more aggressively. On the House floor, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) teed off on censorship legislation, arguing “it would still be strange to say that Fox News was censoring itself” when it knowingly amplified 2020 election lies. MoveOn, the liberal advocacy outfit, urged cable service chief executives to make Fox News optional. And the Progressive Change Campaign Committee called for the White House Correspondents’ Association to remove Fox from the press pool.
Congress’ top two Democrats also weighed in, writing to Murdoch to urge his network to stop spreading false election narratives and “admit on the air that they were wrong to engage in such negligent behavior.”
Fox News has resisted covering the Dominion lawsuit. But in a statement, a Fox representative said, “Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims.”
“Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment.”
A Dominion spokesperson said in a statement: “The evidence will show that Dominion was a valuable, rapidly growing business that was executing on its plan to expand prior to the time that Fox began endorsing baseless lies about Dominion voting machines. Following Fox’s defamatory statements, Dominion’s business suffered enormously.”
A spokesperson for Fox News said it not only tops competitors combined in the ratings, “but has the most politically diverse audience with more Democrats and Independents watching than either CNN and MSNBC. This is another predictable attack by left-wing groups desperate for attention and relevancy.”
Intermittent lashings of Fox News from the left are not a new occurrence. Democratic politicians from the White House to statehouses have long weighed whether trying to reach the network’s coveted audience is worth the cost of appearing to legitimize the network. Those who advocate for engagement say it’s folly to imagine the channel will have less impact if the party ignores it. Those who call for a boycott argue it makes no sense to push the party’s agenda on daytime airwaves only to find it demonized at night. And increasingly, they think that whatever editorial line existed between its dayside hosts and its bombastic prime time names has become blurrier and blurrier.
As the debate starts anew, several top strategists and communications aides said they believe the Dominion revelations will spur legitimate news organizations to stop treating Fox as one of their own.
“Democrats reached a verdict on Fox News many years ago. The only open question is does the rest of the political media ecosystem treat them as legitimate or not?” asked Eric Schultz, a deputy press secretary under former President Barack Obama. “The latest revelations mostly call into question everybody else’s long-standing defense of the network.”
But even those, like Schultz, who argue that Fox News’ reputation should be permanently tainted by the Dominion suit are reluctant to call for Democrats to completely shut out the network.
“It would be like unilaterally not engaging on Facebook — in many ways a toxic platform but where millions of people get their information,” he said.
James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, said there was no reason to approach the network differently now because of the Dominion lawsuit revelations.
“They get viewers only because they tell viewers what they want to hear or see,” he said. “They want to be brainwashed. They show up at the front door of the cleaners. They leave their brain there — ‘wash and fold and I’ll pick it up.’”
Instead, Carville offered that there was a utility to having the network as a foil, noting that Biden’s White House hasn’t suffered from having Fox News in the briefing room, led by network scion Peter Doocy.
“Sites on the left love when they smack Peter Doocy back,” he said. “And usually, for more than half the people who see it, it’s Fox that looks stupid.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
