Expelled Evangelical Pastor Jim Conrad Proudly Defends Welcoming LGTBQ Members to His Church!

Georgia SBC church faces banishment for accepting LGBTQ members

Pastor Jim Conrad

Dear Commons Community,

Pastor Jim Conrad and his church have been expelled from the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), America’s largest Protestant denomination, for welcoming a queer couple and their kids into his congregation.

Pastor Conrad, of Kennesaw’s Towne View Baptist Church, first got in trouble with the Southern Baptist Convention after welcoming the gay couple with three adopted children as members of his church in October 2019.  As reported by the Associated Press and the Huffington Post.

“We decided that ‘all means all,’” Conrad told HuffPost in an email. “We will share His Good News with everyone and welcome anyone who calls Jesus Lord.”

About 30% of the congregation left after Conrad took this stance, which meant the church’s budget shrunk and the pastor took a pay cut, according to The Associated Press. And on Tuesday, the SBC’s executive committee announced that it was kicking Towne View Baptist out of its network of churches for “affirming homosexuality.”

“We are guilty as charged,” the pastor said. 

Conrad, a longtime Southern Baptist, said he felt some personal grief over being expelled from a denomination that has been part of his spiritual life for decades. But the SBC has moved farther to the right in recent years than the pastor is comfortable with, he said.

Conrad also pointed out that conservative theology on sexual orientation and gender is “at least complicit” in the “alarmingly” high rate of suicide attempts among LGBTQ adolescents. 

“Telling teens that the God who created them in his image hates them because they aren’t straight or cisgender is a dangerous message,” he said.

Conrad said his church doesn’t plan to appeal the executive committee’s decision. Asked if he would make the same decision again, knowing the outcome, Conrad wrote, “YES!”

“If the grace of God isn’t for everybody then it’s not for anybody,” Conrad wrote. 

The SBC’s executive committee announced the expulsion at the close of the denomination’s annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. In addition to Towne View Baptist, the committee disfellowshipped a second church for apparently affirming homosexuality ― Kentucky’s St. Matthews Baptist Church. The church reportedly made financial contributions to another Baptist network, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which lets member churches hire LGBTQ individuals in non-ministerial roles.

Two additional churches were also disfellowshipped at the meeting, both for employing pastors convicted of sex offenses ― Tennessee’s Antioch Baptist Church and Pennsylvania’s West Side Baptist Church. The SBC has faced calls in recent years for greater accountability on the issue of sexual abuse. 

The SBC, which was founded in 1845 in defense of slavery, views itself as a network of over 50,000 independent and self-governing Baptist churches. This doctrine of autonomy has sometimes prevented the group from acting in a unified way on certain issues, such as creating a denomination-wide database of sex offenders. But this doesn’t mean joint action is rare ― the SBC has reportedly disfellowshipped at least six churches in little over a decade for affirming or endorsing queer relationships.  

The expulsions come at a time when Black members of the SBC are questioning whether the denomination will also hold churches accountable for failing to understand how racism still affects Black Americans. 

Earlier this year, two Southern Baptist pastors from Texas publicly compared Vice President Kamala Harris to the Bible’s Queen Jezebel ― drawing on a trope that Black religious scholars say is both racist and sexist. One of those pastors, Steve Swofford, sits on the SBC’s executive committee and was the chair of the team responsible for selecting the committee’s president. He has yet to face discipline for his words. The SBC executive committee chairman was not available for comment, a spokesperson said.

Some Black pastors have left or have contemplated leaving the denomination over leaders’ unwillingness to grapple with how systemic racism persists in America. One of those pastors is Dwight McKissic, a conservative Black pastor from Texas whose ties to the SBC have been fraying in recent weeks.

McKissic suggested on Twitter that, while he agrees with the SBC’s decision to boot out churches over their approach to LGBTQ people, he thinks churches should also be disfellowshipped for not disciplining their members for “racism & rebellion.” 

Kudos to Pastor Conrad for sticking to his Christian beliefs!

Tony

Video: Republicans Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney Disagree on Trump Leading the GOP!

 

Dear Commons Community,

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Republican Conference Chairwoman Liz Cheney disagreed yesterday (see brief video above) after they were asked whether former President Donald Trump should speak at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend.

At a GOP leadership news conference, McCarthy told reporters, “Yes, he should.” (Trump is expected to deliver remarks Sunday at the conference in Orlando, Florida.)

Cheney, who voted in January to impeach Trump over his role in inciting the assault on the Capitol, said that decision isn’t up to her, but made clear she doesn’t want him leading their party.

“That’s up to CPAC. I’ve been clear on my views about President Trump,” Cheney said. “I don’t believe that he should be playing a role in the future of the party or the country.”

McCarthy, of California, then abruptly ended the news conference by saying, “On that high note, thank you very much.”

Cheney, of Wyoming, came under fire from her own party after her impeachment vote. Her state party censured her, though she easily won a vote of confidence to remain chairwoman of the House Republican Conference.

McCarthy is a longtime ally of Trump’s, though NBC News recently reported that they got into an expletive-laden argument on a phone call as the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was still unfolding, three sources briefed on the matter said. McCarthy, however, visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida several days after the former president left office last month.

The split between the two GOP leaders reflects a broader gap over Trump’s role in the party, especially amid rumors of a 2024 run. The Republican base is largely supportive of the former president, but some GOP officials have already said they wouldn’t back a future bid for re-election.

It is clear that there is a major battle brewing within the Republican Party that will have to resolve itself by the 2022 mid-term elections.

Tony

 

Video: Dr. Anthony Fauci – Political Divisiveness Contributed to 500,000 Deaths Due to Coronavirus!

Dear Commons Community,

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said political divisiveness and mixed signals contributed significantly to the “stunning” U.S. COVID-19 death toll, which on Monday surpassed 500,000 lives lost.

The country had recorded more than 28 million COVID-19 cases and 500,054 fatalities as of Monday afternoon, according to a Reuters tally of public health data. In an interview (see video above) with Reuters, Fauci said the pandemic arrived in the United States as the country was riven by political divisions in which wearing a mask became a political statement rather than a public health measure.

“Even under the best of circumstances, this would have been a very serious problem,” Fauci said, noting that despite strong adherence to public health measures, countries such as Germany and the UK struggled with the virus.

“However, that does not explain how a rich and sophisticated country can have the most percentage of deaths and be the hardest-hit country in the world,” said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a top adviser to President Joe Biden. “That I believe should not have happened.”

While the United States has just about 4% of the global population, it has recorded nearly 20% of all COVID-19 deaths.

Fauci said the emergence of more contagious variants of the coronavirus, especially ones from South Africa and Brazil that have been shown to reduce the immunity from natural infections and vaccines, have made it challenging to predict when the nation will be able to put the pandemic behind it.

Fauci and Biden have said the United States should return to something approaching pre-pandemic normal life around Christmas. That could change, he cautioned.

The variants also change the equation when it comes to herd immunity, in which a population becomes protected from infection because of high levels of immunity from vaccines or infections.

Asked whether that is still achievable, Fauci said, “I think we can get herd immunity at least against getting sick.”

Dr. Fauci remains the number one person we can rely on to keep us informed about COVID-19!

Tony

 

Barack Obama, Sports World Wish Tiger Woods Well After Horrendous Car Crash!

Tiger Woods in surgery after California car accident, suffers major injuries to legs

Dear Commons Community,

Tiger Woods was seriously injured in a single-car rollover crash in Los Angeles yesterday after leaving his hotel for a television shoot.  Photos  (see above) from the scene showed Woods’ vehicle rolled over on its side on a hillside away from the road.

Woods was the only person in the car, according to the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. Lt. Michael White told reporters that his injuries are not life-threatening. His agent Mark Steinberg announced that Woods underwent surgery afternoon.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Woods suffered a shattered ankle and two leg fractures, one of them compound. Deputy Carlos Gonzalez, who was first on the crash scene, told reporters that Woods was “very fortunate … to come out of this alive.”

News of the crash sent shockwaves through the sports world and beyond. CNN devoted over 100 minutes of its two-hour news prime news coverage from 5:00 – 7:00 pm last night covering Woods accident. President Barack Obama as did athletes from across the sports spectrum sent well wishes to Woods as details of the crash emerged (see tweets below).

Woods is a special golfer and a special person.  We wish him  a speedy recovery!

Tony

————————
Barack Obama @BarackObama

Sending my prayers to @TigerWoods and his family tonight—here’s to a speedy recovery for the GOAT of golf. If we’ve learned anything over the years, it’s to never count Tiger out.

———————–

Praying for my brother@TigerWoods as we all anxiously await more news. Thinking of him and his entire family. ———————-

Stephen Curry @StephenCurry30
Heal up quickly @TigerWoods! Praying for you and your family. God is in control always. Stay strong
———————-
We are all pulling for you, Tiger. We are so sorry that you and your family are going through this tough time. Everyone hopes and prays for your full and speedy recovery.
———————-

Artificial Intelligence:  Here, There, Everywhere – Oh My!

Artificial Intelligence: making the most of lockdown | FundCalibre

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article this morning entitled,  A.I. Here, There, Everywhere, that describes how many of us are already living with artificial intelligence.  Written by Craig S. Smith, host of the podcast Eye on A.I., it also portends of how A.I. is increasingly being personalized and integrated into a myriad of activities such as controlling the temperature in our homes, determining customer preferences, and medical monitoring.  I particularly was interested in Smith’s description of A.I. in education where he describes two-dimensional avatars as teachers.

“Researchers are working on combining the technologies to create realistic 2D avatars of people who can interact in real time, showing emotion and making context-relevant gestures. A Samsung-associated company called Neon has introduced an early version of such avatars, though the technology has a long way to go before it is practical to use.

Such avatars could help revolutionize education. Artificial intelligence researchers are already developing A.I. tutoring systems that can track student behavior, predict their performance and deliver content and strategies to both improve that performance and prevent students from losing interest. A.I. tutors hold the promise of truly personalized education available to anyone in the world with an Internet-connected device — provided they are willing to surrender some privacy.

“Having a visual interaction with a face that expresses emotions, that expresses support, is very important for teachers,” said Yoshua Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal and the founder of Mila, an artificial intelligence research institute. Korbit, a company founded by one of his students, Iulian Serban, and Riiid, based in South Korea, are already using this technology in education, though Mr. Bengio says it may be a decade or more before such tutors have natural language fluidity and semantic understanding.”

Those of you who follow this blog, know I believe that A.I. will make major changes to the way we teach and learn in our schools and universities in the not-too-distant future.

Below  is Smith’s entire article.

Tony

—————————————————————-

New York Times

A.I. Here, There, Everywhere

By Craig S. Smith

Feb. 23, 2021

I wake up in the middle of the night. It’s cold.

“Hey, Google, what’s the temperature in Zone 2,” I say into the darkness. A disembodied voice responds: “The temperature in Zone 2 is 52 degrees.” “Set the heat to 68,” I say, and then I ask the gods of artificial intelligence to turn on the light.

Many of us already live with A.I., an array of unseen algorithms that control our Internet-connected devices, from smartphones to security cameras and cars that heat the seats before you’ve even stepped out of the house on a frigid morning.

But, while we’ve seen the A.I. sun, we have yet to see it truly shine.

Researchers liken the current state of the technology to cellphones of the 1990s: useful, but crude and cumbersome. They are working on distilling the largest, most powerful machine-learning models into lightweight software that can run on “the edge,” meaning small devices such as kitchen appliances or wearables. Our lives will gradually be interwoven with brilliant threads of A.I.

Our interactions with the technology will become increasingly personalized. Chatbots, for example, can be clumsy and frustrating today, but they will eventually become truly conversational, learning our habits and personalities and even develop personalities of their own. But don’t worry, the fever dreams of superintelligent machines taking over, like HAL in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” will remain science fiction for a long time to come; consciousness, self-awareness and free will in machines are far beyond the capabilities of science today.

Privacy remains an issue, because artificial intelligence requires data to learn patterns and make decisions. But researchers are developing methods to use our data without actually seeing it — so-called federated learning, for example — or encrypt it in ways that currently can’t be hacked.

Our homes and our cars will increasingly be watched over with A.I.-integrated sensors. Some security cameras today use A.I.-enabled facial recognition software to identify frequent visitors and detect strangers. But soon, networks of overlapping cameras and sensors will create a mesh of “ambient intelligence,” that will be available to monitor us all the time, if we want it. Ambient intelligence could recognize changes in behavior and prove a boon to older adults and their families.

“Intelligent systems will be able to understand the daily activity patterns of seniors living alone, and catch early patterns of medically relevant information,” said Fei-Fei Li, a Stanford University computer science professor and a co-director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence who was instrumental in sparking the current A.I. revolution. While she says much work remains to be done to address privacy concerns, such systems could detect signs of dementia, sleep disorders, social isolation, falls and poor nutrition, and notify caretakers.

Streaming services such as Netflix or Spotify already use A.I. to learn your preferences and feed you a steady diet of enticing entertainment. Google Play uses A.I. to recommend mood music that matches the time and weather. A.I. is being used to bring old films into focus and bring black-and-white into color and even add sound to silent movies. It’s also improving streaming speed and consistency. Those spinning animations that indicate a computer is stuck on something may soon be a relic of the past that people will recall with fondness, the way many of us do with TV “snow” today.

Increasingly, more of the media we consume will actually be generated by A.I. Google’s open-source Magenta project has created an array of applications that make music indistinguishable from human composers and performers.

The research institute OpenAI has created MuseNet, which uses artificial intelligence to blend different styles of music into new compositions. The institute also has Jukebox, which creates new songs when given a genre, artist and lyrics, which in some cases are co-written by A.I.

These are early efforts, achieved by feeding millions of songs into networks of artificial neurons, made from strings of computer code, until they internalize patterns of melody and harmony, and can recreate the sound of instruments and voices.

Musicians are experimenting with these tools today and a few start-ups are already offering A.I.-generated background music for podcasts and video games.

Artificial intelligence is as abstract as thought, written in computer code, but people imagine A.I. embodied in humanoid form. Robotic hardware has a lot of catching up to do, however. Realistic, A.I.-generated avatars will have A.I.-generated conversations and sing A.I.-generated songs, and even teach our children. Deepfakes also exist, where the face and voice of one person, for example, is transposed onto a video of another. We’ve also seen realistic A.I.-generated faces of people who don’t exist.

Researchers are working on combining the technologies to create realistic 2D avatars of people who can interact in real time, showing emotion and making context-relevant gestures. A Samsung-associated company called Neon has introduced an early version of such avatars, though the technology has a long way to go before it is practical to use.

Such avatars could help revolutionize education. Artificial intelligence researchers are already developing A.I. tutoring systems that can track student behavior, predict their performance and deliver content and strategies to both improve that performance and prevent students from losing interest. A.I. tutors hold the promise of truly personalized education available to anyone in the world with an Internet-connected device — provided they are willing to surrender some privacy.

“Having a visual interaction with a face that expresses emotions, that expresses support, is very important for teachers,” said Yoshua Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal and the founder of Mila, an artificial intelligence research institute. Korbit, a company founded by one of his students, Iulian Serban, and Riiid, based in South Korea, are already using this technology in education, though Mr. Bengio says it may be a decade or more before such tutors have natural language fluidity and semantic understanding.

There are seemingly endless ways in which artificial intelligence is beginning to touch our lives, from discovering new materials to new drugs — A.I. has already played a role in the development of Covid-19 vaccines by narrowing the field of possibilities for scientists to search — to picking the fruit we eat and sorting the garbage we throw way. Self-driving cars work, they’re just waiting for laws and regulations to catch up with them.

Artificial intelligence is even starting to write software and may eventually write more complex A.I. Diffblue, a start-up out of Oxford University, has an A.I. system that automates the writing of software tests, a task that takes up as much as a third of expensive developers’ time. Justin Gottschlich, who runs the machine programming research group at Intel Labs, envisions a day when anyone can create software simply by telling an A.I. system clearly what they want the software to do.

“I can imagine people like my mom creating software,” he said, “even though she can’t write a line of code.”

 

What’s Next in the Trump Investigation after Supreme Court Ruling?

Cyrus Vance's Office Sought Reduced Sex-Offender Status for Epstein - The  New York Times

Cyrus Vance., Jr.

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that paves the way for prosecutors in New York to begin combing through Mr. Trump’s financial records.  This was a blow to Trump and his business organization.  The New York Times has an article this morning laying out what the Supreme Court ruling means to the investigation.  Here in New York, district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. is generally considered as someone not to mess with.  Below is the entire article.

This sounds like a lots of trouble for Trump!

Tony

_____________________________________________________

The New York Times

Here’s What’s Next in the Trump Taxes Investigation

By William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Benjamin Weiser

Feb. 22, 2021

Terabytes of data. Dozens of prosecutors, investigators and forensic accountants sifting through millions of pages of financial documents. An outside consulting firm drilling down on the arcana of commercial real estate and tax strategies.

That is the monumental task that lies ahead in the Manhattan district attorney’s criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his family business after a United States Supreme Court order on Monday cleared the way for prosecutors to obtain eight years worth of Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other financial records.

The brief, unsigned order was a resounding victory for the prosecutors and defeat for Mr. Trump, capping his bitter and protracted legal battle to block the release of the records — an effort that twice reached the Supreme Court — and delivering a jolt to the prosecutors’ efforts after the lawsuit stalled them for more than a year.

The investigation is one of two known criminal inquiries into Mr. Trump, the other coming from prosecutors in Georgia scrutinizing Mr. Trump’s effort to persuade local officials to undo the election results there. When Mr. Trump left office, he lost the protection against indictment that the presidency afforded him.

The district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., issued a terse statement, saying: “The work continues.” A spokesman for his office declined to comment further on the investigation.

The crucial next phase in the Manhattan inquiry will begin in earnest this week when investigators for the district attorney’s office collect the records from the law firm that represents Mr. Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA, according to people with knowledge of the matter, as well as former prosecutors and other experts who described the next steps on the condition of anonymity.

The investigators, carrying a copy of the August 2019 grand jury subpoena that was at the heart of the lawsuit, will go to the law firm’s office in New York’s Westchester County. They will leave with a vast trove of digital copies of the returns, reams of financial statements and other records and communications relating to Mr. Trump’s taxes and those of his businesses.

Then, the investigators will deliver the mass of data to the office of Mr. Vance, where the team of prosecutors, forensic accountants and analysts have been investigating Mr. Trump and his companies for a wide range of possible financial crimes. Mr. Vance, a Democrat, has been examining whether Mr. Trump, his company and its employees committed insurance, tax and banking fraud, among other crimes, people with knowledge of the matter have said.

Even before the Supreme Court ruling, the investigation had heated up, with Mr. Vance’s office issuing more than a dozen subpoenas in recent months and interviewing witnesses, including employees of Deutsche Bank, one of Mr. Trump’s top lenders.

The subpoenas relate to a central aspect of Mr. Vance’s inquiry, which focuses on whether Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, inflated the value of some of his signature properties to obtain the best possible loans, while lowballing the values to reduce property taxes, people with knowledge of the matter have said. The prosecutors are also examining the Trump Organization’s statements to insurance companies about the value of various assets.

Now armed with the records from Mazars — including the tax returns, the business records on which they are based and communications between the Trump Organization and its accountants — prosecutors will be able to see a fuller picture of potential discrepancies between what the company told its lenders and tax authorities.

The prosecutors have also subpoenaed the Trump Organization for records related to tax write-offs on millions of dollars in consulting fees, some of which appear to have gone to the president’s elder daughter, Ivanka Trump, an arrangement first reported by The New York Times. The company turned over some of those records last month, two people with knowledge of the matter said, though the prosecutors have questioned whether the company has fully responded to the subpoena.

It remains unclear whether the prosecutors will ultimately file charges against Mr. Trump, the company, or any of its executives, including Mr. Trump’s two adult sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.

In a lengthy and angry statement that included a reiteration of many of his familiar grievances, Mr. Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court and the investigation, which he characterized as “a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country.”

He added: “For more than two years, New York City has been looking at almost every transaction I’ve ever done, including seeking tax returns which were done by among the biggest and most prestigious law and accounting firms in the U.S.”

Mr. Trump’s lawyers are likely to argue to prosecutors that Mr. Trump could not have duped Deutsche Bank because the bank, a sophisticated financial player, conducted its own analysis of Mr. Trump’s properties.

Mazars said in a statement that it was aware of the new ruling. “As we have maintained throughout this process, Mazars remains committed to fulfilling all of our professional and legal obligations,” the statement said.

The biggest challenge for Mr. Vance’s prosecutors will be to piece together the jigsaw puzzle of tax records, financial statements and the supporting documents Mr. Trump’s companies provided to the accountants.

Early this month, Mr. Vance enlisted a prominent figure in New York legal circles, Mark F. Pomerantz, to help with the investigation. Mr. Pomerantz, a former senior federal prosecutor with significant experience both investigating and defending complex white-collar and organized crime cases, will handle interactions with key witnesses, among other tasks.

For additional help, Mr. Vance’s office has hired FTI, a large consulting company that can analyze some of the industries in which Mr. Trump’s companies operate, including commercial real estate, as well as tax issues, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The firm will also load the trove of records into a data analysis and document management system that it can use to explore them and seek patterns in support of the investigation, the people said.

The action by the Supreme Court justices, who without noted dissent denied Mr. Trump an emergency stay so the court could fully review issues in the case for a second time, will not put Mr. Trump’s tax returns in the hands of Congress or make them automatically public. Grand jury secrecy laws will keep the records private unless Mr. Vance’s office files charges and enters the documents into evidence at a trial.

The public has already learned a great deal about Mr. Trump’s taxes through other means.

The New York Times obtained tax-return data extending over more than two decades for Mr. Trump and the hundreds of companies that make up his business organization, including detailed information from his first two years in office.

The Times published a series of investigative articles last year based on an analysis of the data showing that Mr. Trump paid virtually no income tax for many years and that he is currently under an audit in which an adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million. He and his companies file separate tax returns and employ complicated and sometimes aggressive tax strategies, the investigation found.

But the Supreme Court’s action set in motion a series of events that could lead to the extraordinary possibility of a criminal trial for former president. At a minimum, the ruling wrests from Mr. Trump control of his most closely held financial records and the power to decide when, if ever, they would be made available for public inspection.

Mr. Trump and his lawyers have long fought to keep the records secret. After promising during the 2016 campaign that he would release his tax returns, as every presidential candidate has done for at least 40 years, he refused to do so, providing a persistent line of criticism for Democrats and other adversaries.

In addition to fighting the subpoena from Mr. Vance’s office in court, Mr. Trump sued to block the congressional subpoena and successfully challenged a California law requiring presidential primary candidates to release their returns.

The Supreme Court’s ruling comes nearly 18 months after Mr. Trump first sued Mr. Vance, seeking to block the subpoena from his office and spurring a legal battle that reached the Supreme Court for the first time last summer. In a landmark decision in July, the court rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that as a sitting president, he was immune from investigation. The case was argued by Mr. Vance’s general counsel, Carey Dunne, who is helping lead the investigation.

But the court said Mr. Trump could challenge the subpoena on other grounds, such as its relevance and scope. Mr. Trump then launched a new legal fight, arguing that the subpoena was overly broad and amounted to political harassment. After losing that argument in the lower courts, Mr. Trump asked the Supreme Court to delay enforcement of Mr. Vance’s subpoena until it could decide whether to hear Mr. Trump’s appeal.

It was that request that the Supreme Court denied, effectively ending the former president’s legal quest, legal experts said.

“Trump will not be given deference as a former president,” said Anne Milgram, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who later served as New Jersey’s attorney general. “Under the eyes of the laws of the state of New York, he has the same rights as others in the state. Neither more nor less.”

Reed Brodsky, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor, said that Mr. Trump’s lawyers will likely tell him that further attempts to block the subpoena could undermine their ability to argue the merits of his defense.

“They’re at risk, if they continue to make arguments that are frivolous, of undercutting their credibility,” Mr. Brodsky said.

 

Facebook Strikes Deal to Restore News Sharing in Australia!

Facebook strikes last-minute deal with Australia around news content - Axios

Dear Commons Community,

Facebook reached an agreement yesterday with the Australian government that allows users and publishers in Australia to again share links to news articles.

The social network had blocked news links in Australia last week as new legislation neared passage that would have limited Facebook’s negotiating options. The legislation includes a code of conduct that would allow media companies to bargain individually or collectively with digital platforms over the value of their news content.

Facebook had vigorously objected to the code, which would curb its power and drive up its spending for content, as well as setting a precedent for other governments to follow. The company had argued that news would not be worth the hassle in Australia if the bill became law.

But yesterday, Facebook returned to the negotiating table after the Australian government granted a few minor concessions. Under several amendments to the code, Facebook would get more time to cut deals with publishers so it would not be immediately forced into making payments. The amendments also suggested that if digital platforms had significantly contributed to the Australian news industry, the companies could avoid the code entirely, at least for now.

In exchange, Facebook agreed to restore news links and articles for Australian users “in the coming days,” according to a statement from Josh Frydenberg, Australia’s treasurer, and Paul Fletcher, the minister for communications, infrastructure, cities and the arts.  Below is an excerept from a New York Times article covering this story.

“Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president of global news partnerships, said in a statement that the social network was restoring news in Australia as “the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation.”

The amendments offer a reprieve for both Facebook and the Australian government, which have been in a standoff over the proposed law for months. Those tensions came to a head last week when Facebook cut off news sharing in the country, causing disruption and confusion for millions of Australians.

Links to news articles were blocked, along with the Facebook pages for Australian state agencies, health departments and emergency services. Users became upset when a flood of false or misleading pages filled the information void, spreading bogus theories on the perils of 5G wireless technology and false claims about Covid-19 vaccinations.

“In just a few days, we saw the damage that taking news out can cause,” said Sree Sreenivasan, a professor at the Stony Brook School of Communication and Journalism. “Misinformation and disinformation, already a problem on the platform, rushed to fill the vacuum.”

The dispute between Australia and Facebook dates to when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the country’s top competition authority, began drafting a bill last year. Australian officials have said the bill’s main goal was to create the conditions for deals between platforms and publishers, which have been at odds for years over the value of journalism and whether either side should be paid by the other.

Google and Facebook, which have been accustomed to largely not paying for news content, both balked at the proposed legislation. In August, Facebook said it would block users and news organizations in Australia from sharing local and international news stories on its social network and Instagram if the bill were to move forward. Last month, Google also threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government approved the legislation.

But in recent weeks, Google began striking deals with media companies such as Reuters, The Financial Times and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Facebook, by contrast, held firm against the proposed legislation. That was because the code contained terms such as “final arbitration,” which would give an independent arbiter the power to set the price for news content if a publisher and the digital platform could not agree on a payment.

Facebook has repeatedly argued that the law gets the value proposition backward because it has said it is the one that provides value to news publishers by sending traffic to media websites, which can then be monetized with advertising.

But supporters of the law have said that final arbitration — which is used for contract disputes between players and Major League Baseball in the United States — provides needed leverage when one side is powerful enough to otherwise avoid negotiation if it chooses.

“The key is, and remains, the mandatory arbitration clause,” said Johan Lidberg, a media professor at Monash University. “That has to be maintained; without it the code would be toothless.”

The proposed law also opens up the potential for a long line of publishers to demand payouts. Any news publisher with more than 150,000 Australian dollars in annual revenue could seek to register as a party to the code, giving it the ability to force a company like Facebook into a negotiation.

The law would also grant enormous discretion to the federal treasurer. Mr. Frydenberg would have the power to designate which companies must negotiate under the code’s provisions, while also deciding which media companies were able to register. Facebook and Google have been aiming to avoid that designation.

With the new amendments, Australian officials appeared to give Facebook more time to produce the kinds of deals that Google has already delivered, while continuing to hold the hammer of final arbitration over the company’s head. Facebook maintains it can still eliminate news from its platform to potentially avoid a negotiation.

In its statement, the government argued that the amendments would strengthen the hand of regional and small publishers in obtaining appropriate remuneration for the use of their content by the digital platforms.

But if the government agrees not to make Facebook subject to the code because it completes enough deals with major media companies, smaller publishers may be left out.

“For small publishers and freelance journalists that have become reliant on Facebook to distribute their news, it will be a huge relief that the news tap has been turned back on,” said Marcus Strom, president of Australian’s union for journalists. “But they will remain at the mercy of Facebook and Google, which are both seeking to avoid mandatory regulation and will instead choose which media companies they come to agreements with.”

Good move by Facebook and glad this was resolved!

Tony

U.S. Supreme Court Deals Blow to Trump – Allows Release of His Tax Returns!

 Dear Commons Community,

In a significant defeat for Donald Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court this morning declined to step in to halt the turnover of his tax records to a New York  prosecutor.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“The court’s action is the apparent culmination of a lengthy legal battle that had already reached the high court once before.

Trump’s tax records are not supposed to become public as part of prosecutors’ criminal investigation, but the high court’s action is a blow to Trump because he has long fought on so many fronts to keep his tax records shielded from view. The ongoing investigation that the records are part of could also become an issue for Trump in his life after the presidency. Trump has called it “a fishing expedition” and “a continuation of the witch hunt — the greatest witch hunt in history.”

The Supreme Court waited months to act in the case. The last of the written briefs in the case was filed Oct. 19. But a court that includes three Trump appointees waited through the election, Trump’s challenge to his defeat and a month after Trump left office before issuing its order.

The court offered no explanation for the delay, and the legal issue before the justices did not involve whether Trump was due any special

The court’s order is a win for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who has been seeking Trump’s tax records since 2019 as part of an investigation. Vance, a Democrat, had subpoenaed the records from the Mazars accounting firm that has long done work for Trump and his businesses. Mazars has said it would comply with the subpoena, but Trump, a Republican, sued to block the records’ release.

Vance’s office had said it would be free to enforce the subpoena and obtain the records in the event the Supreme Court declined to step in and halt the records’ turnover, but it was unclear when that might happen. In a three-word statement, Vance on Monday said only: “The work continues.”

Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The case the high court ruled in involves a grand jury subpoena for more than eight years of Trump’s personal and corporate tax records. Vance has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records. In one court filing last year, however, prosecutors said they were justified in demanding the records because of public reports of “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”

Part of the probe involves payments to two women — porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal — to keep them quiet during the 2016 presidential campaign about alleged extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.

In July, the justices in a 7-2 ruling rejected Trump’s argument that the president is immune from investigation while he holds office or that a prosecutor must show a greater need than normal to obtain the tax records.

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump nominated to the high court, joined that decision. It was issued before Trump’s third nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court.

As part of its July decision, the high court returned the Vance case and a similar case involving records sought by Congress to lower courts. And the court prevented the records from being turned over while the cases proceeded.

Since the high court’s ruling, in the Vance case, Trump’s attorneys made additional arguments that his tax records should not be turned over, but they lost again in federal court in New York and on appeal. It was those rulings that Trump had sought to put on hold.”

Chalk this one up for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr.

Tony