- Ben Affleck and ex Jennifer Garner share an affectionate moment as he leans on her shoulder before driving her Daily Mail
- Jennifer Garner & Ben Affleck’s Intimate Photos Show the True Depth of Their Co-Parenting Bond Yahoo Life
- Exes Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner share intimate moment inside car together Page Six
- Jennifer Garner looks ‘happy’ as she steps out after intimate moment with Ben Affleck The News International
- Exes Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck Were Photographed Sharing Hug in Los Angeles Yahoo Life
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Tag Archives: leans
Titans CB Caleb Farley leans on faith after father’s death in explosion – ESPN – ESPN
- Titans CB Caleb Farley leans on faith after father’s death in explosion – ESPN ESPN
- Investigation after Titans cornerback Caleb Farley’s dad killed in massive home explosion l GMA ABC News
- Former Virginia Tech Defensive Back Caleb Farley Struck with an Unbearable Tragedy Gobbler Country
- CBJ Buzz: NFL player Caleb Farley’s Mooresville home destroyed in explosion; Lowe’s stock pops on earnings day – Charlotte Business Journal The Business Journals
- 1 killed, 1 injured after explosion levels $2M Mooresville home owned by NFL player Caleb Farley Queen City News
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ABC Leans Into Unscripted For Strike Contingent Schedule; ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Back On Mondays As Net Hopes For Scripted Midseason Including ‘9-1-1’ – Deadline
- ABC Leans Into Unscripted For Strike Contingent Schedule; ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Back On Mondays As Net Hopes For Scripted Midseason Including ‘9-1-1’ Deadline
- ABC Fall Schedule Shocker: Entire Scripted Slate MIA as Writers’ Strike Imperils New TV Season TVLine
- NBC’s Fall Schedule Raises Big Questions About The Law And Order Franchise’s Future CinemaBlend
- ABC Pushes Scripted Premieres from Fall 2023 Primetime Schedule, Goes Virtually All-Unscripted Variety
- ABC Already Put an Hour of ‘Abbott Elementary’ Reruns on Its Fall Schedule IndieWire
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Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ Leans Into Glossiness Over Realism: TV Review – Variety
- Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ Leans Into Glossiness Over Realism: TV Review Variety
- The Jewish history behind the WWII rescue that inspired Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’ The Times of Israel
- ‘Transatlantic’ Review: Netflix’s Glossy but Superficial Account of a World War II Rescue Network Hollywood Reporter
- Netflix’s ‘Transatlantic’: Tale of WWII refugee rescue DW (English)
- A Lightly Entertaining Primer- Transatlantic Brings Out A Story Adjacent To Holocaust Lehren
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Supreme Court leans toward limiting judicial scrutiny of U.S. elections
WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Wednesday appeared to ready to limit judicial power to overrule voting policies crafted by state politicians but might not go as far as Republican North Carolina lawmakers want in a case the liberal justices painted as a threat to American democratic norms.
The court heard arguments in a case the state lawmakers have used to try to persuade the justices to endorse a contentious legal theory gaining traction in conservative legal circles that would prevent state courts from reviewing the legality of actions by state legislatures regulating federal elections.
The Republican lawmakers are appealing the top North Carolina court’s decision to throw out the map they devised for the state’s 14 U.S. House of Representatives districts as unlawfully biased against Democratic voters. Another state court then replaced that map with one drawn by a bipartisan group of experts.
The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority, and its most conservative justices including Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch appeared willing to embrace the “independent state legislature” doctrine presented by the Republican legislators.
While the conservative justices in general asked questions that indicated skepticism toward the state court actions, some signaled that the Republican argument that state constitutions cannot constrain the power of legislatures in setting rules for congressional and presidential elections might go too far.
Under the once-marginal legal theory they are now promoting, the lawmakers argue that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures – and not other entities such as state courts – authority over election rules and electoral district maps.
The court’s liberal justices suggested the doctrine could free legislatures to adopt all manner of voting restrictions. Lawyers arguing against it also said it could sow confusion by allowing voting rules that vary between state and federal contests.
“This is a proposal that gets rid of the normal checks and balances on the way big governmental decisions are made in this country,” liberal Justice Elena Kagan said, referring to the interaction between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. “And you might think that it gets rid of all those checks and balances at exactly the time when they are needed most.”
America is sharped divided over voting rights. Republican-led state legislatures have pursued new voting restrictions in the aftermath of Republican former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him through widespread voting fraud.
The court’s eventual decision, due by the end of June, could apply to 2024 elections including the U.S. presidential race.
During the three-hour argument, the justices touched on the issue of enabling federal courts to review state court actions to ensure that judges do not behave like legislators or unfairly apply vague state constitutional provisions such as those requiring free and fair elections to disempower lawmakers.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts wondered whether such broadly worded provisions provide proper “standards and guidelines” for state courts to apply.
[1/2] A general view of the U.S. Supreme Court building in the rain the day before the start of the court’s new term in Washington, U.S. October 2, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
ALITO WEIGHS IN
Alito dismissed arguments that legislatures would be unchecked if the Republican position carried the day.
“Under any circumstances, no matter what we say the ‘Elections Clause’ means, Congress can always come in and establish the manner of conducting congressional elections,” Alito said, referring to the Constitution’s elections language.
The doctrine is based in part on the Constitution’s statement that the “times, places and manner” of federal elections “shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” The Republican lawmakers argued that the state court usurped the North Carolina General Assembly’s authority under that provision to regulate federal elections.
Kagan said the theory would free state legislators to engage in the “most extreme forms of gerrymandering” – drawing electoral districts to unfairly improve a party’s election chances – while enacting “all manner of restrictions on voting,” noting that lawmakers by virtue of coveting re-election may have incentives to suppress, dilute and negate votes.
Kagan said the theory also could let legislatures insert themselves into the process of determining winners in federal elections – a sensitive issue following the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack by Trump supporters who sought to block congressional certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.
‘HISTORICAL PRACTICE’
Some conservative justices appeared to balk at aspects of the Republican arguments.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh emphasized the “historical practice” that “nearly all state constitutions regulate federal elections in some way.” Roberts said another check on a legislature’s power – a state governor’s veto – “significantly undermines the argument that it can do whatever it wants.”
David Thompson, arguing for the North Carolina lawmakers, said the Constitution “requires state legislatures specifically to perform the federal function of prescribing regulations for federal elections. States lack the authority to restrict the legislature’s substantive discretion when performing this federal function.”
Kavanaugh told Thompson that his position on the theory’s breadth “seems to go further” than that conceived by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist in a concurrence to a 2000 ruling deciding a presidential election’s outcome – an opinion seeing state courts as exceeding their authority on federal elections.
North Carolina’s Department of Justice is defending the state high court’s February ruling alongside the voters and voting rights groups that challenged the map approved by the legislature in November 2021. They are backed by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration.
Elizabeth Prelogar, arguing for Biden’s administration, said empowering state legislatures the way the Republicans want would “wreak havoc in the administration of elections across the nation” and cause federal courts to become flooded with lawsuits concerning state-administered elections.
Reporting by Andrew Chung in Washington and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Biden administration leans on Tesla for guidance in renewable fuel policy reform
June 23 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden rarely mentions electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) in public. But privately his administration has leaned on the company to help craft a new policy to allow electric vehicles (EVs) to benefit from the nation’s lucrative renewable fuel subsidies, according to emails reviewed by Reuters.
The Biden administration contacted Tesla on its first day in office, marking the start of a series of meetings on the topic between federal officials and companies linked to the EV industry over the months that followed, according to the emails.
The administration’s early and extensive outreach reflects that expanding the scope of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) to make it a tool for electrifying the nation’s automobile fleet is one of Biden’s priorities in the fight against climate change.
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The RFS, which dates back to 2005, is a federal program that requires transportation fuel sold in the United States to contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels. Until now, it has been primarily a subsidy for corn-based ethanol.
The White House’s outreach to Tesla also shows that, despite a public grudge match between Biden and Tesla founder Elon Musk, the Biden team tried early on to involve the carmaker in one of its key policy pushes. Biden has set a target to make half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 zero-emissions vehicles.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which administers the RFS, is expected to unveil proposed changes to the policy sometime this year, defining new winners and losers in a multibillion-dollar market for credits, known as RINs, that has supported corn growers and biofuels producers for more than a decade.
Early signs are that the administration is leaning toward a rule that benefits carmakers like Tesla, giving them the greatest access to so-called e-RINS, or electric RINs. But the reform could also spread the subsidy to related industries too, like car charging companies and landfills that supply renewable biogas to power plants, according to industry players.
“We have heard through the grapevine that car companies are really, really going to like this rule,” said Maureen Walsh, director of federal policy with the American Biogas Council, speaking at a conference in May. But she added: “We have all been scrapping at that pile.”
The idea of including electric vehicles in the RFS has been under consideration for years, but gained steam as Biden’s transition team zeroed in on EVs as a job-friendly solution to the climate crisis. Transport accounts for more than a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
The EPA said it was consulting “all interested stakeholders” in its RFS policy review.
The current RFS requires oil refiners to blend ethanol and other biofuels into the fuel pool or buy RINs from those who do. That policy has spurred an economic boom in Farm Belt states. But it has also angered environmental groups who say the extra corn production damages land and water while prolonging the era of the internal-combustion engine.
Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, has voiced disapproval over an e-RIN program. The group sees the RFS as a policy that has failed to increase production of new generation lower-carbon fuels, while also harming the environment. It also sees expanding the program as a slippery slope toward increasing the use of feedstocks for wood and wood waste, which can generate electricity.
“The RFS should be reformed to tackle giveaways for dirty corn ethanol. It shouldn’t be expanded to include new giveaways for factory farming and woody biomass,” said Friends of the Earth spokesman Lukas Ross.
TURN TO TESLA
On the morning of Biden’s presidential inauguration in January 2021, EPA staffer Dallas Burkholder emailed a top Tesla lobbyist, Rohan Patel, to set up a meeting on how to incorporate electric cars into the RFS, according to the documents reviewed by Reuters. They scheduled a meeting for a week later, records show.
Since then, the Biden EPA has had additional meetings on the topic with Tesla, groups representing biogas producers like Waste Management Inc (WM.N) and Republic Services Inc (RSG.N) and charging station companies like ChargePoint Holdings Inc (CHPT.N), according to the documents.
The EPA has also set up at least one meeting with White House staff members, including climate adviser Ali Zaidi, to discuss the reforms, according to the emails.
The Biden White House has been an unapologetic supporter of the EV industry, pinning much of its climate hopes on getting more electric cars on the road. The bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed last year included $7.5 billion for new EV charging stations and Biden has sought to reinstate expired tax credits to help consumers pay for new vehicles.
Even so, Tesla’s CEO, Musk, has often been at odds with the White House, sending out harsh tweets directed at Biden. In February, Biden publicly acknowledged the role of Tesla in EV manufacturing, after Musk repeatedly complained about being ignored. read more
WHAT EVERYONE WANTS
Tesla is seeking changes to the RFS that will allow it to earn renewable fuel credits based on kilowatt hours driven or similar metrics, according to two sources familiar with the plan. The company has also explored partnerships with biogas-producers to give them leverage in whatever market emerges from the new rule, the sources say.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
Members of the car-charging industry, meanwhile, are also pushing for a share.
Matthew Nelson, a lobbyist with Electrify America, a charging company trade group, wrote to the EPA in October and told them that e-RINs would do more to enable Biden’s 2030 goals of 500,000 charging stations and 50% EV sales than any other policy, according to the emails. He added that charging companies need the credit to compete with gasoline.
The United States currently has about 48,000 charging stations, concentrated around coastal regions, according to Department of Energy data.
Biogas producers, like landfills, also want credits, arguing they provide renewable fuel to the grid that generates the power for electric vehicles.
Biogas-derived electricity is already eligible for generating RINs. But the EPA has never approved an application from the industry because it has yet to determine the best way to trace the power entering EVs back to its origin.
In 2020, landfill gas generated about 10 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or 0.3% of U.S. utility-scale power.
“We feel that implementing the electricity program in the RFS aligns well with the Biden administration’s climate goals,” Carrie Annand, executive director of the Biomass Power Association, wrote to the EPA, according to the documents.
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Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw in Philadelphia and Stephanie Kelly in New York
Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Trump leans toward endorsing Doug Mastriano for Pa. governor
Former President Trump is leaning strongly toward endorsing highly controversial Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano for governor, according to three sources familiar with his private deliberations.
Why it matters: Mastriano — who was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — has gone beyond trying to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. He’s proposed defying Pennsylvania’s popular vote outcome and spoke at an event last month that promoted QAnon conspiracies.
What we’re watching: Democrats are salivating because they see him as beatable in a general election even in a political environment that’s extremely favorable to Republicans. Leading Democratic candidate Josh Shapiro even ran an ad highlighting Mastriano in the primary contest.
- With time running out before Tuesday’s primaries, Republicans are panicking about the prospect of such a polarizing candidate with limited appeal leading the ticket and are mounting a last-ditch effort to stop him, as Politico first reported.
- Others in the Republican gubernatorial contest include former Rep. Lou Barletta, former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain and businessman Dave White.
Flashback: In the 2016 primary, then-candidate Trump won Pennsylvania after his more traditional Republican opponents split the remainder of the GOP vote.
Between the lines: Trump is worried about his endorsed Senate candidate Dr. Oz losing, according to two sources familiar with the situation, so his endorsement of Mastriano could be a way of hedging his bets on Tuesday.
- Republicans are also belatedly panicking over the previously unimaginable prospect that Kathy Barnette could win their party’s nomination for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, as Axios reported.
Biden not expected to attend Beijing Olympics as White House leans toward diplomatic boycott
Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have advocated for a diplomatic boycott in protest of China’s human rights abuses. Some Republicans have even suggested no American athletes attend either, but the official said a full boycott is unlikely right now.
The topic of the Olympics and Biden’s attendance did not come up during his three-and-a-half hour meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping Monday night.
On Tuesday, Biden was asked whether there would be a US delegation to the Beijing Olympics. The President — who had his back turned when the question was asked — replied: “I’m the delegation and I dealt with it.”
However, White House deputy press secretary Chris Meagher clarified on Wednesday that “the President was not providing an update in his answer last night.”
Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US and allies are in “active conversations” about how to approach the upcoming Winter Olympics in China.
Blinken, appearing virtually at the New York Times DealBook Summit, was asked whether he thinks American athletes should participate since he has said in the past that China is involved in genocide, given its policies toward Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province.
“We are talking to, to allies, to partners, to countries around the world about how they’re thinking about the games, how they’re thinking about participation,” Blinken said. “It’s an active conversation. We’re coming, we’re coming up on the games, but let me leave it at that for today.”
The games are set to begin on February 4 in Beijing and last until February 20. When asked what date the deadline is for the US and other countries to make a decision, Blinken sidestepped.
“Well, let’s see,” he said. “The games are coming up, when, in February, early in the year, so before then.”
Biden and Xi’s virtual summit — seen as some of the most critical diplomatic talks of Biden’s presidency — yielded no significant breakthroughs. However, it served as an auspicious restart to relations following significant deterioration during the final year of the Trump administration and continued hostility into the Biden administration, including when US and Chinese diplomats traded barbs during a March summit in Alaska.
Throughout this week’s virtual summit, the leaders engaged in a “healthy debate,” according to a senior Biden administration official present for the discussions.
Biden raised concerns about human rights, Chinese aggression toward Taiwan and trade issues.
Nearly every major issue Biden is focused on — including addressing supply chain issues, climate change, North Korea and Iran — has a nexus to China. And the two countries, which have the world’s two largest economies, remain in disputes over trade, military aggression, global infrastructure, public health and human rights.
Biden has long argued that democracies can deliver more effectively than autocracies like China, and he’s used his now-passed infrastructure package to show domestically how political parties in democracies can work together. On a more global scale, he’s also forged international infrastructure agreements intended to compete with China’s Belt and Road initiative.
Xi, meanwhile, cemented his consolidation of power last week when the Chinese Communist Party adopted a landmark resolution elevating him in stature to his two most powerful predecessors — Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping. He is attempting to seek an unprecedented third term in power at the 20th Party Congress next fall.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
CNN’s Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
Biden leans on Scranton. In D.C., Park Avenue may be winning.
For years, he has been making this case, crafting a public persona as a pugilist for the American working class. But in recent months, the messaging has taken on elevated importance. His presidency rests on passing a massive social spending and climate bill through Congress in the next few weeks or months. And in order to do that, he’s sold it as a generational chance to create economic equity.
Scranton was an obvious backdrop, tailor-made to provoke a sense of working class America. Biden had crafted his 2020 presidential campaign around these ideas too, a Robinhood-themed agenda, minus the actual thievery. It was Scranton vs. Park Avenue—the place of his birth held up as the very symbol of the plight of the average family against the extravagances of the wealthy.
But scripts like this aren’t always without complications. And what Biden has found out is that populism may sell electorally but it doesn’t always translate into legislative language.
Back in Washington on Wednesday, reports emerged that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) was balking at the president’s proposal to pay for his agenda by raising tax rates on the wealthy and corporations. Democrats insisted that they had other ideas for revenue. But, for the time being, chalk one up for Park Avenue.
Biden showed no signs of concern as he spoke. His party is still inching toward a deal on a multi-trillion Build Back Better domestic spending plan that could end up funding everything from parental leave to child and elderly care.
But the path to this point has taken an obvious toll. Sinema’s opposition to corporate and income tax hikes on high earners, threatens one of the party’s more attractive lines of messaging — that the rich need to finally pay their fair share. And, in the Capitol, Democrats have begun to concede that all the messiness of negotiations has hurt their standing with the public. When reporters asked Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) about a recent poll showing few Americans knew what was contained in the Build Back Better plan, the majority whip blamed his own party.
“I don’t doubt that one bit, and I think [it’s] our fault. We oversold it and underperformed for too long,” Durbin told reporters Wednesday. “Now we get a chance to close it the right way, hopefully.”
On Wednesday, Biden tried to get a little of that momentum back. He has largely operated in private in recent weeks, giving just five economic-themed speeches since Labor Day. But back in Scranton, he spun tales of his youth, how his relatives congregated around tables after meals, dispensing worldly advice to maintain his courage, loyalty and dignity — all eventually built into his constitution. He retold stories of his dad losing his job and his health insurance, then of the death of his first wife and daughter, and how he worked as a single dad for years.
“I believe that home is where your character is etched,” he said.
Shane Cawley, a fourth generation iron worker and union member who introduced Biden to the crowd, gave a boost to Biden’s domestic spending plan, pointing to added assistance for child care and elder care as vital to his family in Pennsylvania.
“We work hard for every dollar that we earn and some days it feels like the odds are stacked against us,” Cawley said, before introducing Biden.
Biden’s last trip to Scranton had been on Election Day, when he stopped at his childhood home and signed a wall there. “From this house to the White House with the grace of God,” he wrote.
Biden did indeed make it to the presidency, as he was reminded of on the drive to Wednesday’s speech. Just weeks earlier, new signage had gone up along Interstate 81 designating the Central Scranton Expressway as President Biden Expressway. Another roadway in town was renamed Biden Street just before his visit.
Scranton transformed Biden. The question now is how far beyond street signs he can transform Scranton.
“I think the Scranton visit brings back the conversation to where Biden and the average American sees it — are we going to fix the things we need to fix in this county?” said Greg Schultz, Biden’s former campaign manager. “So much of the recent debate has been about the legislative process and policy maneuvering — these are important but at the end of the day people want their government to understand their problems and try to make them a little better. Biden returning home helps bring him and the issues back to a home base.”
Pompeo leans into pro-Trump lane in fiery CPAC speech
In a speech promoted as focusing on the Bill of Rights, Pompeo heavily laid into Democrats, arguing they “pretend they care about jobs in America” and ripped the Biden administration for cutting a key permit for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. He slammed his predecessor as secretary of state, John Kerry, now Biden’s climate envoy, for suggesting in a January press briefing that fossil fuel workers who lost their jobs can “make … solar panels.”
“You ask the good people in the middle of Texas, Oklahoma, or Kansas, or South Dakota, or Pennsylvania, you think petroleum engineers and rig hands are going to make solar panels?” he added.
He also conflated the Trump administration’s economic and immigration records with the administration’s foreign policy.
“’America First’ is right for America,” Pompeo said. “The entire world benefits when America is fearless and bold and strong.”
“[Democrats] want to defund the police while they barricade the Capitol,” Pompeo said. “This is backwards. And canceling our freedom to assemble peacefully while censoring our communications online is completely antithetical to what our founders understood about America.“
The former Kansas lawmaker is among a group of potential populist candidates jostling amid the Republican Party’s reckoning in the post-Trump era — even as the former president remains broadly popular among GOP voters.
Some of those in that lane include Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, all of whom have already spoken at CPAC. Trump is set to speak at CPAC on Sunday.
More than half of Republicans said in a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult Poll that they’d vote for the former president if the primary was being held today, with all other contenders well behind. Mike Pence led the secondary group at 12%. Pompeo drew 2%.