Tuesday, October 3, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.
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Gavin Newsom’s brilliant choice to replace Dianne Feinstein.
Democratic Strategist Laphonza Butler to Fill Feinstein’s Senate Seat.
Laphonza Butler, president of EMILY’s List, speaks during an event in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2023.
LOS ANGELES — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday selected Laphonza Butler, a Democratic strategist and adviser to Kamala Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign, to fill the vacant U.S. Senate seat held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
In choosing Butler, Newsom fulfilled his pledge to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein’s seat became open. However, he had been facing pressure from some Black politicians and advocacy groups to select Rep. Barbara Lee, a prominent Black congresswoman who is already running for the seat.
Butler will be the only Black woman serving in the U.S. Senate, and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to represent California in the chamber.
Newsom said in a statement that the priorities Feinstein fought for in Congress — reproductive freedom, equal protection and safety from gun violence — were under assault in the nation. "Laphonza will carry the baton left by Sen. Feinstein (and) continue to break glass ceilings and fight for all Californians in Washington D.C.,” he said.
Butler leads Emily’s List, a political organization that supports Democratic women candidates who favor abortion rights. She also is a former labor leader with SEIU 2015, a powerful force in California politics.
Her appointment sets up a potentially tricky political calculus in the crowded 2024 contest to succeed Feinstein, which has been underway since the beginning of the year.
Newsom spokesman Anthony York said the governor did not ask Butler to commit to staying out of the race. The deadline for candidates to submit paperwork to seek the office is Dec. 8. Should Butler enter the contest, she could set up a competition for the relatively small but influential group of Black voters in California and possibly undercut Lee's chances.
Emily's List is known as a fundraising powerhouse, and raising huge sums of campaign cash is a must in any statewide California race. Newsom's statement said she will step down from the organization.
The decision carried the threat of political fallout for Newsom, who is seen as a potential future national candidate. The candidate favored by Black voters has won the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination every cycle since 1992. The Congressional Black Caucus was among the groups and Black politicians that had urged Newsom to appoint Lee, calling her the best qualified choice for the post.
The long-serving Feinstein died last Thursday at age 90 after a series of illnesses.
The long-serving Feinstein died last Thursday at age 90 after a series of illnesses.
Butler has never held elected office but has a long track record in California politics. She served as a senior adviser to Harris's 2020 presidential campaign while working at a political firm filled with strategists who have worked for Newsom and many other prominent state Democrats. She also briefly worked in the private sector for Airbnb.
She called Feinstein “a legendary figure for women in politics and around the country,” in a statement posted after Feinstein's death.
Emily's List, the group Butler leads, focuses on electing Democratic women who support abortion rights. With the U.S. Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn women's constitutional right to abortion, the issue has become a galvanizing one for many Democrats.
Equality California, the nation’s largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, said the appointment “will give our ... community another voice in Congress at a time when our rights and freedoms are under attack across the country.”
It’s not Newsom’s first time selecting a U.S. senator, after being tasked with choosing a replacement for Kamala Harris when she was elected vice president; at that time he selected California Secretary of State Alex Padilla for the post. It was one of a string of appointments Newsom made in late 2020 and early 2021, a power that gave him kingmaker status among the state’s ambitious Democrats.
The seat is expected to stay in Democratic hands in the 2024 election. Democrats in the liberal-leaning state have not lost a statewide election since 2006, and the party holds a nearly 2-to-1 voter registration advantage over Republicans. (Time).
One more thing.
By this appointment of Laphonza Butler, Gavin Newsom kept his promise to appoint a black woman.
At this juncture in the political life of the nation, Newsom also made a statement that seems strong and especially appropriate from the Governor of California. He appointed a lesbian.
Laphonza Butler is 45. If, as we should expect, she joins the contest for the Senate on her own recognizance and wins, Democrats will be assured of having a formidable Senator in place for decades.
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The first of the Trump trials begins. The 250 million civil lawsuit in New York.
The former guy sucks up all the air in the news rooms. He hijacked the coverage of the trial, which, as the New York Times reported, “imperils his company and threatens his image as a master of the business world.”
His message outside the courtroom was violent and threatening of the NYS District Attorney and the Presiding Judge.
After calling the trial a scam and a “continuation of the single greatest witch hunt of all time, Trump he reiterated his claims that James, a Democrat, is trying to stop his bid to return to the White House.
“What we have here is an attempt to hurt me in an election,” he said outside court. “You ought to go after this Attorney General.”
As for the judge, Arthur Engoron, Trump called him “rogue” and said he should be disbarred.
“For years, Donald Trump falsely inflated his net worth to enrich himself and cheat the system,” New York’s District Attorney Letitia James said in a statement Monday. (Source. New York Times).
Stay tuned. This trial should last through December.
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Clarence Thomas recuses as Supreme Court rejects ex-Trump lawyer John Eastman's appeal.
John Eastman with Rudy Giuliani on Jan. 6, 2021.
Thomas, who is under fire over claims of ethical lapses, was criticized for not recusing himself from a separate Jan. 6-related case because his wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, supported then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
WASHINGTON — Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas for the first time recused himself from a case involving the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by then-President Donald Trump's supporters as the Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal brought by former Trump legal adviser John Eastman.
Thomas, under fire over claims of ethical lapses, had participatedlast year when the court rejected Trump's bid to prevent White House documents from being handed over to the House committee investigating Jan. 6.
Then, Thomas was the only justice to signal support for Trump's legal arguments.
This time, Thomas stepped aside in the case involving Eastman, who was one of his law clerks.
The case also involved the now-defunct Jan. 6 committee, centering on the efforts by Eastman, a former law professor, to prevent his former employer, Chapman University of Orange, California, from handing over archived emails sent from or to Eastman's account.
As is typical for justices, Thomas did not explain why he recused himself. In addition to Thomas' professional history with Eastman, another reason he might have stepped aside is that some of the released emails reportedly mentioned Thomas as being the justice likely to be most receptive to Trump's arguments.
The case was effectively moot even before the Supreme Court's action Monday, as the committee obtained relevant emails and has concluded its investigation.
Eastman had pushed the discredited argument that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the power to refuse to certify the 2020 presidential election results.
He has also been indicted in connection with efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.
Eastman recently vouched for Thomas after various news reports alleged that the justices had fallen short of ethical standards. Separately, he faces disbarment proceedings in California over his role in the election.
Thomas had faced criticism for failing to recuse himself from Trump's Jan. 6 case because his wife, the conservative political activist Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, had been a vocal supporter of Trump’s efforts to overturn the election.
Anthony Caso, Eastman’s lawyer, said in an email Monday he was “disappointed” that the Supreme Court did not throw out the district court ruling that allowed the emails to be disclosed now that the case is moot.
Caso previously wrote in a court filing for the appeal that the lower court decision "cast aspersions not just on Dr. Eastman but also on his former client, the former president of the United States." (NBC News).
One more thing.
We should recall that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol obtained email correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, Justice Thomas’ wife, and lawyer John Eastman, one of the originators of the plan to have Vice President Pence refuse to certify the electoral count to settle the 2020 election.
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Nobel Prize recognizes scientists who laid groundwork for COVID-19 vaccines.
Secretary-General of the Nobel Assembly Thomas Perlmann speaks in front of a picture of Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman, winners of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm on Monday.
A biochemist born in Hungary and an American immunologist have won the 2023 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for research that led to the development of the two most important COVID-19 vaccines.
Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman met at copy machine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and collaborated for decades to try to find ways to use genetic material called messenger RNA, or mRNA, to make vaccines.
The scientists discovered that modifying a chemical building block of mRNA kept the immune system from destroying the material and enabled it to instead stimulate protection against viruses. They published a seminal paper describing their work in 2005.
When the pandemic erupted, the vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech used the pair's techniques to create highly safe and effective vaccines in record time.
If COVID-19 Vaccines Bring An End To The Pandemic, America Has Immigrants To Thank
"MRNA vaccines, together with other COVID-19 vaccines, have been administered over 13 billion times," Rickard Sandberg, a Nobel committee member said Monday in announcing the award. "Together they have saved millions of lives, prevented severe COVID-19, reduced the overall disease burden and enabled societies to open up again."
The advance also spurred interest in using mRNA technology to find out diseases, ranging from the flu to possibly cancer, the committee said.
The committee members said they hope the award might help overcome some of hesitancy that has plagued efforts to get more people to get vaccinated against COVID and save even more lives.
The pair's discovery "fundamentally changed our understanding of how mRNA interacts with our immune system," the panel that awarded the prize said. In addition, the work "contributed to the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times."
Speaking to reporters at the University of Pennsylvania Monday, Weissman, 64, said the pair had to overcome many obstacles.
"We couldn't get funding. We couldn't get publications. We couldn't get people to notice RNA as something interesting. And pretty much everybody gave up on it," Weissman said. "But Kati (Karikó) lit the match and we spent the rest of our 20 plus years working together figuring out how to get it to work."
Karikó, 68, had to overcome big challenges. For years, she went from one low-paying research job to another and even slept in her office at times. She says she was forced to retire from Penn and then commuted to work at BioNTech. But said she never gave up. And her mother never gave up hope she'd eventually win a Nobel.
"My mom, who passed away two years ago at age 89, every fall she was listening and she said to me, 'You know, you might get this year.' And I said, 'Mom, I couldn't even get a grant,' " Karikó said in a 2020 interview with NPR.
The first prize in the category was awarded in 1901. Of the 227 people whose work has been recognized with the prize, Karikó is only the 13th woman among them. (NPR).
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