Thursday, Apr 25th
Last update10:47:15 PM GMT
Political Glance
An Iowa woman found guilty on 52 counts of voter fraud, carried out in support of her Republican husband, was given an eight-month custodial sentence.
Kim Taylor, of Woodbury county, will serve four months in prison and four in home confinement, KTIV, a Sioux City TV station, reported. Subject to two years’ supervised release, Taylor will also pay $5,200.
Each count carried a maximum penalty of five years in prison – or 260 years in all.
Former White House spokesperson Hope Hicks is expected to testify in Donald Trump's upcoming New York hush money trial, according to multiple media reports.
Hicks served as the Trump 2016 presidential campaign press secretary, and later became communications director in the Trump White House. NBC News and CNN both reported on Hicks' expected testimony, citing a source familiar with the matter.
Hicks may have been present for discussions about paying adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her story about having an affair with Trump before he was president quiet, according to previously revealed court filings. The documents showed former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who made a $130,000 payment to Daniels, was in touch with Hicks at a time when an FBI agent investigating the matter believed a series of emails, text messages, and phone calls concerned preventing Daniels from going public.
Abortion will officially be on the ballot in Florida this fall, after the state's Supreme Court on Monday issued one ruling approving a ballot measure that could expand access to the procedure, but another that paves the way for a strict six-week ban.
The ballot measure would guarantee abortion access through viability, often 24 weeks of pregnancy. With this, Floridians have the chance to essentially vote on whether to reinstate what was once the federal standard set by Roe v. Wade, before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark case in 2022.
The judge in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York City has agreed to tighten his gag order due to his “vitriolic” attacks on the judge’s family.
In an order on Monday evening, New York Supreme Court judge Juan Merchan said that Mr Trump’s statements represented a “very real” threat to the integrity of the trial.
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg had earlier asked the judge to extend his gag order to cover court officers’ families due to Mr Trump’s “extreme and deliberate provocations”.
Several social media posts cited by Mr Bragg appeared to have been deleted on Monday evening.
“The average observer must now, after hearing defendant’s recent attacks, draw the conclusion that if they become involved in these proceedings, even tangentially, they should worry not only for themselves but for their loved ones as well,” Judge Merchan wrote.
The pressure had been heating up over the past month for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to come up with cash or find a bonding company willing to cover the approximately $454 million judgment that Trump and several of his business entities face.
Judge Arthur F. Engoron imposed the judgment, which includes interest, after concluding Trump got better loan and insurance terms by fraudulently inflating the value of his assets over several years. Trump sons Eric and Don Jr. also face judgments totaling more than $9 million and former Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg was ordered to pay over $1 million.
Voters in the north-west Oklahoma city of Enid are being asked to decide whether a councilmember who attended the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 should be removed from his post.
Iraq war veteran Judd Blevins, 42, was elected to Enid’s city council to be the commissioner of its first ward last year. He soon faced an effort by the Enid social justice committee, which claimed Blevins “embraces the same Nazi ideology [the US] defeated almost 80 years ago” during the second world war.
"[T]his Court should make abundantly clear that the March 26 Order protects family members of the Court, the District Attorney, and all other individuals mentioned in the Order," said the letter, which was sent to the judge Thursday.
"Furthermore, the Court should warn defendant that his recent conduct is contumacious" -- i.e., stubbornly or willfully disobedient -- "and direct him to immediately desist," the letter said.
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