Jordan Neely is placed in a choke hold by a Daniel Penny on a subway train in New York City, May 1, 2023. (Juan Alberto Vazquez/Reuters)

Dear Commons Community,

Manhattan prosecutors announced yesterday they would bring a manslaughter charge against Daniel Penny, 24, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, in the May 1 death of 30-year-old Jordan Neely. Penny kept a chokehold around the neck of Neely, a fellow passenger on a New York City subway, leading to Neely’s death.  Penny  is expected to turn himself in to authorities today on a manslaughter charge that could send him to prison for 15 years.

Neely’s death, captured on video by a freelance journalist, has raised an uproar over many issues, including how those with mental illness are treated by the transit system and the city, as well as crime and vigilantism.

Penny’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment after the prosecutors made their announcement. They have previously said Penny acted in self-defense.

According to an onlooker, Neely, who is Black, had been screaming and begging for money aboard the train, but had not gotten physical with anyone.

Penny, who is white, was questioned by police in the aftermath, but was released without charges.

Friends of Neely said the former subway performer had been dealing with homelessness and mental illness in recent years. He had several arrests to his name, including a 2021 assault of a 67-year-old woman leaving a subway station.

A second-degree manslaughter charge in New York will require the jury to find that a person has engaged in reckless conduct that creates an unjustifiable risk of death, and then consciously disregards that risk.

The law also requires that conduct to be a gross deviation from how a reasonable person would act in a similar situation.

This will be a case of manslaughter versus self-defense reminiscent of  the 1984 Bernhard Goetz Case when Goetz shot four teenagers who he feared were going to rob him on a NYC subway train.  Goetz was acquitted on attempted murder, fined $5,000, and sentenced to six months in prison for illegal weapons possession and community service. 

Tony

Todd Young

Dear Commons Community,

Senator Todd Young (R-Ind.) announced yesterday he won’t support Donald Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential race, a day after a controversial CNN town hall where the former president repeated election lies, mocked a woman who accused him of sexual assault and refused to call Russian President Vladimir Putin a war criminal.

“You want a nominee to win the general election. As President Trump says, I prefer winners,” Young told HuffPost when asked about Trump’s performance at the CNN event in New Hampshire. “He consistently loses. In fact, he has a habit of losing not just his own elections, but losing elections for others.”

“I can’t think of someone worse equipped to bring people together to pass legislation and advance our collective values than the former president,” the senator added. “I don’t think conservatives would be well served by electing someone whose core competency seems to be owning someone on Twitter.”

Young, a former U.S. Marine known for working across the aisle, won a second term in 2022 despite not having Trump’s endorsement, after he said the former president bore responsibility for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. He won’t be facing voters again until 2028, giving him a degree of insulation from Trump supporters who may not like his comments.\

Still, it’s notable to see a GOP senator come out forcefully against Trump at a time when many of his colleagues, including members of Senate GOP leadership, aren’t willing to do more than avert their eyes in response to the latest controversy involving the twice-impeached former president. Trump is leading polls of the 2024 GOP race by a wide margin, and is currently on track to win the nomination despite his many legal troubles.

Young served in GOP leadership as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2018 cycle. He has been openly critical of Trump, arguing that the former president is the reason his party lost the Senate in 2020 and lost ground in 2022.

He also flatly rejected the notion of running for president himself.

No Republicans followed Young’s lead on Thursday, for the most part ignoring questions about the CNN town hall. Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, told reporters it “looked like a lot of Democrat campaign ads being written last night,” suggesting that Trump hurt his odds of becoming president again.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a vocal Trump critic, also said the town hall “probably provided a service to the country, to see him untethered.”

“I think it’s helpful for people to see exactly what they would get with another Trump presidency,” Romney said. “I think the fact that he didn’t hew [to] the center of the country, but instead appealed to his base, is exactly what you’re going to get.”

More Republicans need to get on board with Todd Young!

Tony

Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson

Dear Commons Community,

In the wake of Tuesday’s verdict in the civil trial of former President Donald Trump that found he had sexually abused and defamed writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-1990s, seven prominent Republicans voiced their dismay that he could once again represent the party in the 2024 presidential election.

While many Republicans — like former Vice President Mike Pence — defended Trump following the verdict, a notable number did not.

Below is a rundown (courtesy of Yahoo News) of those in the GOP who were comfortable expressing their belief that the jury’s decision to side with Carroll and award her $5 million is yet another sign that the party should nominate someone else to take on President Biden.

We need more Republican leaders to come forward to denounce Trump and what he stands for!

Tony

——————————————–

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie

In a Wednesday interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Trump confidant turned outspoken critic, took aim at Trump’s claim that he had “no idea who this woman is.”

“And look, you know, his response, to me, was ridiculous, that he didn’t even know the woman. I mean, you know, how many coincidences are we going to have here with Donald Trump, Brian? I mean, he must be the unluckiest SOB in the world,” said Christie, who is exploring a possible campaign against Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination.

“He just has random people who he has never met before who are able to convince a jury that he sexually abused them? I mean, this guy. It is one person after another, one woman after another. The stories just continue to pile up. And I think we all know he’s not unlucky and that he engaged in this kind of conduct.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a candidate against Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, called the former president’s actions “indefensible.”

“Over the course of my over 25 years of experience in the courtroom, I have seen firsthand how a cavalier and arrogant contempt for the rule of law can backfire,” he said, according to The Hill.

“The jury verdict should be treated with seriousness and is another example of the indefensible behavior of Donald Trump,” said Hutchinson, who, like Christie, is also a former U.S. attorney.

Sen. Mitt Romney

Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah has been among Trump’s staunchest GOP critics, and he saw Tuesday’s verdict as one more example of a pattern of behavior that justifies that stance.

“I hope the American people, the jury of the American people, reach the same conclusion as the jury of his peers, which is that Donald Trump should not be our nominee and he certainly shouldn’t be president of the United States,” Romney told reporters Tuesday on Capitol Hill. “We have other people who are highly qualified that could lead our party to victory, and someone who’s been found to have committed sexual assault should not be the face of the Republican Party.

“I think that there will be some people, surely, who say, ‘You know, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have someone who’s been convicted of sexual assault to be the face for my children and my grandchildren and the world,'” Romney added.

Sen. Bill Cassidy

Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana told reporters that the verdict was another red flag about nominating Trump in 2024.

“Of course it creates a concern. How could it not create a concern? If what the woman says … he’s been found to be civilly liable, how could it do anything else but create a concern?” Cassidy said.

Sen. John Thune

An ally of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota said the verdict against Trump was part of a “cumulative effect to just the constant drama and chaos that always seems to surround him.”

Sen. Mike Rounds

“You never liked to hear that a former president has been found — in a civil court — guilty of those types of actions,” Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota told reporters Tuesday. “It focuses a lot of us on what we’ve been saying for some time now, which is we are looking for an individual to lead this party forward in a united method and we’re looking forward to those individuals coming forward.”

Sen. John Cornyn

Setting aside the testimony given by multiple women about Trump’s sexual abuse, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas saw the verdict as confirmation that the former president would not be able to win a second term.

“The fact is, I do not think he could win the presidency,” Cornyn told reporters on Capitol Hill. “Regardless of what you think about him as an individual, to me, electability is … the sole criterion.”

Trump and Collins

Dear Commons Community,

I watched CNN’s Town Hall with  Donald Trump last night and it was a ridiculous throwback to all of the lies that he has been spewing since losing the election in 2020.  Trump had long, twisting, truth-challenged answers; the interviewer, Kaitlan Collins continually had to fact-check him or return his focus to the question at hand; and then, eventually, both talking over each other as Trump called her a “nasty person.”   

Wednesday’s town hall in New Hampshire was the first time in years that Trump faced prolonged questioning from an outlet outside the friendly confines of conservative media outlets of his choosing.

He had branded CNN “fake news” and never granted any of its journalists an interview while president. Trump’s campaign said he was appearing on the network now to step outside a GOP comfort zone as he already starts to turn his focus to a potential 2024 general election rematch with Democrat Joe Biden.

What was especially disheartening was the fact that the townhall audience, made up of only Republicans or independents who voted for him, applauded his evil charisma, and laughed at his snide remarks.  

Below is a recap courtesy of the Associated Press.

Tony

————————————————————— 

QUESTIONS ON SEXUAL ABUSE CASE

Trump’s appearance came a day after a New York jury found him liable for sexually abusing a woman nearly 30 years ago and defaming her when she spoke about it publicly.

Jurors awarded columnist E. Jean Carroll $5 million in damages. The jury rejected her claim of rape and instead found Trump responsible for a lesser degree of sexual abuse. Trump denied it, saying he never encountered Carroll at a 1996 department store and did not know her and has said he plans to appeal the verdict.

Trump skipped attending the trial and did not testify in his own defense during the proceedings, with jurors instead being shown video from a pretrial deposition, making Wednesday the first time he’s had to face a public questioning in the case.

Trump, when asked by CNN moderator Kaitlan Collins about the verdict, said his poll numbers went up and repeated his statements that he didn’t know Carroll, though at least one photograph has surfaced of them together.

“I don’t know her. I never met her. I had no idea who she is.” He dismissed a question from Collins about whether it would impact his standing with female voters and in response, he launched into a recounting of Carroll’s claims in a mocking voice, drawing laughs and claps from the live audience. Collins tried to interrupt but Trump continued and called it “a fake story” and referred to Carroll as “a wack job.”

TRUMP’S TREATMENT OF WOMEN

Collins asked Trump about his comments in the infamous “Access Hollywood” video in which he bragged about grabbing women’s genitals without asking permission. The video was played in the trial and Collins asked him Wednesday if he stood by his remarks.

Trump defended his comments, saying he had said women let him grab their genitals without permission because he was a star.

“I can’t take that back because it happens to be true,” Trump said.

REPEATING ELECTION LIES

Trump, with his first question from Collins about why he should be elected again, started almost immediately by repeating his lies about the 2020 presidential election and repeating his unfounded claims of election fraud.

Striking a more muted tone than he usually uses onstage before his cheering supporters, Trump called it a “rigged election” and a “shame” before Collins cut him off, correcting his statements and asking him to publicly acknowledge his loss to Biden.

Trump did not, immediately returning to his false claims. As Collins continued to try to fact-check Trump, he interrupted again, calling for honest elections and then pivoting to other subjects like immigration.

He came back to his claims at other points in the town hall, sprinkling the lie into answers on unrelated subjects and prompting Collins to interrupt him and correct him.

DEFENSE OF JAN. 6 INSURRECTION

For more than two years, Trump had largely avoided sitting for any tough questioning about the lies he spread about his 2020 election loss that spurred the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But the issue came up early Wednesday, when Collins asked Trump if he regretted his actions on that day.

The former president quickly began boasting about the size of the crowd he spoke to before some began marching on the Capitol and said the attendees believed the election was “rigged.”

“They were there proud. They were there with love in their heart. That was unbelievable and it was a beautiful day,” Trump said.

Collins pressed Trump on why he didn’t ask his supporters to leave the Capitol or send help to disperse the protesters, and he deflected, trying to cast blame on then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He at one point pulled out printed copies of his Twitter posts that day in which he finally, hours after the attack on the Capitol began, asked his supporters to leave the Capitol.

He said he was inclined, if elected president again, to pardon many of those convicted for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack. More than 1,000 people have been charged and more than 600 have been convicted so far.

FALSE ABORTION CLAIMS

Trump, responding to a question about the U.S. Supreme Court overturning abortion rights last year, took credit for appointing three of the justices who joined in the majority ruling, saying “it was such a great victory and people are starting to understand it now.”

He repeatedly falsely claimed that abortion rights supporters wanted to “kill a baby” in the ninth month of pregnancy or even after a birth. The claim is based on a misleading interpretation of a Senate vote. Trump also dodged questions about whether, if elected president again, he would sign a national abortion ban. Trump instead spoke about the court ruling as having given anti-abortion activists “negotiating ability.”

“What I will do is negotiate so people are happy,” he said, when asked if he would sign a federal abortion ban. He repeatedly said he would “do what’s right,” without specifying what that was.

NO ANSWERS ON UKRAINE

Trump repeated his praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him “a smart guy,” but said “he made a bad mistake” to invade Ukraine. Trump claimed, without evidence or explanation, that if he was still president Putin would never have invaded Ukraine. He said he had “a great relationship” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, referencing his 2019 impeachment after pressuring Zelenskyy for “a favor” while withholding military aid.

Trump wouldn’t answer a question about whether he’d continue to send U.S. aid to Ukraine to keep fighting against Russia’s invasion, and he wouldn’t answer a question about who he wanted to win the war, only saying, “I want everybody to stop dying.”

KEEPING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS

Trump defended his keeping of top-secret and confidential government documents at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, which is now the subject of a Justice Department probe.

“I had every right to do it. I didn’t make a secret of it,” Trump said.

Trump gave a vague answer when Collins asked if he ever showed the classified documents to anyone.

“Not really. I would have the right to,” the former president said.

“What do you mean ‘Not really?’” Collins asked.

“Not that I can think of,” Trump said.

Trump noted that other presidents and vice presidents had kept documents after leaving but didn’t mention that he refused to turn over documents even after receiving a subpoena.

SPARRING WITH COLLINS

Early on in the town hall, Collins gave Trump more leeway to respond to questions, allowing the president to steamroll through his answers and jump from topic to topic, sprinkling in false claims as she sometimes tried to interrupt. As the town hall went on and Collins jumped in earlier and more often to correct him or get him back on track, Trump got frustrated.

At one point, he repeated an insult he hurled at Hillary Clinton during their 2016 presidential debate, calling Collins “nasty.”

In a back-and-forth about the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, Trump and Collins were talking over each other and Trump at one point declared: “You’re so wrong. You don’t know the subject.”

“I do know the subject,” she retorted.

The audience, made up of Republicans and independents, was largely favorable to Trump and laughed and cheered as he made his points.

“I like you guys,” Trump told the crowd at the end.

Dear Commons Community,

Disgraced first-term congressman, George Santos, was slapped yesterday with a 13-count federal indictment charging him with wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and making false statements to Congress.

Santos, facing the list of allegations, was in custody in the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Central Islip, L.I., where he was to appear to face the charges for the first time this afternoon.

The allegations include a 2020 scheme to collect COVID-19-related unemployment funds while working as an investment firm director, a campaign finance fraud operation where he used donor money to buy designer clothes and pay his personal debts — and a string of untruths about his assets and income to the House of Representatives.

“This indictment seeks to hold Santos accountable for various alleged fraudulent schemes and brazen misrepresentations,” stated Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.

“Taken together, the allegations in the indictment charge Santos with relying on repeated dishonesty and deception to ascend to the halls of Congress and enrich himself.”

Santos won his race for Congress in 2022 on a wave of deception, lying about his education, religion, family history, professional experience and property ownership. The house of cards collapsed soon after his victory, with his fictional claims exposed bit by bit as the first-term politician turned into a punch line.

But Santos refused to step down despite mounting outrage, admitting to some of the lies and exaggerations but insisting he had never done anything illegal.

Federal prosecutors, in court papers, sought the forfeiture of any property involved in the cited offenses.

“He used political contributions to line his pockets, unlawfully applied for unemployment benefits that should have gone to New Yorkers who lost their job due to the pandemic, and lied to the House of Representatives,” said Peace.

His 2022 donor fraud scheme netted him $50,000, prosecutors said. Santos enlisted a Queens-based political consultant to help create what he told donors was a Super PAC and a “social welfare organization” to help fund his 2022 Congressional campaign, claiming the operation wasn’t subject to contribution limits, prosecutors said.

The consultant told donors the money would help fund television ads and campaign expenditures while expanding how they could wire those funds into the so-called Super PAC’s bank accounts.

Text messages and e-mails said the company existed “just to help this race,” to “raise another $700,000 to reach our goal of $1.5 million to invest in (Santos’) race” and to “purchase ads supporting George Santos,” according to the indictment.

Except Santos never registered his company with the IRS as a Super PAC or as a “social welfare organization.” And the $50,000 collected from two donors was used for luxury designer clothing, credit card payments, a car payment, Santos’ personal debts, cash in Santos’ pockets and bank transfers to his associates, prosecutors allege.

The COVID scheme started after the federal government set up its pandemic unemployment program in March 2020. Santos applied that June, claiming he had been out of work since March 22, according to the feds.

He collected nearly $25,000 in unemployment funds through April 15, 2021. Records showed that Santos was still collecting his $120,000 annual salary as regional director of a Florida-based investment firm, the feds allege.

What a loathsome leech and to think he was elected to the U.S. Congress!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Kouri Richins, the author of Are You With Me?, said her husband, Eric Richins, died unexpectedly after drinking a cocktail. Authorities now believe he was poisoned and Kouri Richins,  who wrote the children’s book on grief following her husband’s death last year, is now accused of his murder.

Kouri Richins, 33, was charged Monday in Summit County, Utah, with aggravated murder and three counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute.

The mother of three claimed to have found her husband, Eric, lying unresponsive in their bedroom on March 4, 2022, after he consumed a drink she made, according to court documents cited by local stations KSLTV and KUTV.

“She felt Eric, and he was cold to the touch. That is when the defendant called 911,” the documents state.

According to prosecutors, Kouri Richins said she had served her husband a Moscow mule to celebrate the closing of a house for her real estate business in Kamas, just east of Salt Lake City. She then went to care for one of their children in a separate room and ended up falling asleep there. When she returned to her own room at roughly 3 a.m., Eric Richins was unresponsive and she called 911.

Kouri Richins told investigators that her husband died at their home last year after she made him a Moscow mule (like the one pictured).

An autopsy later determined that Eric Richins died from orally consuming about five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl, according to court documents.

Kouri Richins’ electronic devices were later searched with a warrant. According to prosecutors, this revealed that she had been on her phone in her child’s room at the time of Eric Richins’ death — contradicting her claim that she had left it in their shared bedroom. She is also accused of deleting text messages that she had sent and received during those hours.

The search further showed that she had allegedly been in contact with an acquaintance who had prior drug charges. That unidentified individual, in a later interview with detectives, said that they sold prescription pain medication to Kouri Richins several times in the weeks before her husband’s death.

The person said that two weeks after an initial purchase, Kouri Richins reached out again to request something stronger. She asked for “some of the Michael Jackson stuff,” specifically fentanyl, according to court documents.

The person said they supplied her with 15 to 30 fentanyl pills in February 2022. That same month, Eric Richins fell ill after a Valentine’s Day dinner at their home. He told a friend that he thought his wife had poisoned him, authorities said.

Kouri Richins’ acquaintance told detectives that she later reached out again to request more fentanyl pills. Her husband would end up dead a few days after she allegedly purchased them.

Last month, the widow described her husband’s death as totally unexpected.

“It completely took us all by shock,” she said at the time during a TV interview promoting her self-published book. “Are You With Me?” — written with her sons — features a cover drawing of an angel resembling Eric Richins who appears to cheer on a little boy.

“It’s just comforting to them to know that they’re not living this life alone,” she said of her children. “Dad is still here. It’s just in a different way.”

Unbelievable that there are such people in this world!

Tony

Kouri Richins. KPCW.org via AP

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times columnist, Michelle Goldberg, has a piece this morning entitled, “The Fury of #MeToo Finally Comes for the Man Who Inspired It!”  Her message is that with the $5 million verdict against Donald Trump handed down yesterday for sexual abuse and defamation in the E. Jean Carroll trial, the #MeToo movement has come full circle.  Below is an excerpt.

“Trump’s election in 2016, after he’d been heard boasting of sexual assault on the “Access Hollywood” tape and accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women, set off a tsunami of female fury. That fury powered the Women’s March. It inspired countless women — some of them previously apolitical suburbanites — to put their lives on hold and throw themselves into activism or to run for office themselves. And that fury, that intolerable sense of incredulous disgust and civic violation, was the spark that set off the #MeToo movement, as women, unable to do anything about the abuser running the country, turned their energy toward those in their own institutions, including the entertainment industry. I’ve long been convinced that Trump was the reason revelations about Harvey Weinstein led to a nationwide paroxysm.

The #MeToo movement is why E. Jean Carroll wrote the memoir in which she revealed that Trump violated her in a Bergdorf Goodman changing room in the mid-1990s. “As the riotous, sickening stories of #MeToo surged across the country, I, like many women, could not help but be reminded of certain men in my own life,” she wrote. The movement is the reason that in 2022, New York passed the Adult Survivors Act, which created a window during which sexual assault survivors could sue their attackers even beyond the statute of limitations. (The movement is also the reason the bill was signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul, not a disgraced Andrew Cuomo.)

Carroll’s lawsuit was one of the first filed under the Adult Survivors Act. And because of her perseverance, Trump will, for the first time, face legal accountability for his treatment of women. Because of the #MeToo movement, the man who started it all gets some measure of comeuppance.

The trial itself was a test of how much #MeToo has changed the culture. Carroll’s lawyers asked a jury of six men and three women to understand why someone who’d suffered sexual abuse might keep quiet for decades, why she might not remember the date the assault happened and why her trauma might not manifest in predictable, easily legible ways.

……I spent a few days in the courtroom, and honestly, I worried that this retro tack might work with a couple of the jurors. One of them, a 31-year-old security guard, had said he got his information mainly from podcasts like the one hosted by far-right figure Tim Pool, whom Trump invited to the White House in 2019. But clearly, the jurors did not find the Trump team’s defense, such as it was, persuasive, since it took them only a few hours to decide against him.

Yes, it’s odd that the jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse but not rape, which is what Carroll accused him of, and Trump’s defenders may cling to that as a fig leaf of exoneration. But what matters is that for the first time, a court has affirmed what the women who reacted with stunned horror to Trump’s election have always understood. He’s not just a misogynist. He’s a predator.”

Trump  is indeed a predator.  On women, on business associates, and the MAGA Republicans who dutifully followed him to an  insurrection on January 6^th, and continue to do so as he seeks to become president of our country.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A jury found Donald Trump liable today  for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million in a judgment that could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House.  As reported by the Associated Press.

The verdict was announced in a federal courtroom in New York City on the first day of jury deliberations. Jurors rejected Carroll’s claims that she was raped, but found Trump liable for sexual abuse and for defaming Carroll after she made her allegations public.

Trump chose not to attend the civil trial and was absent when the verdict was read.

Carroll nodded as the verdict was read. Afterward, her lawyers put their arms around her, and she hugged supporters in the gallery, smiling through tears.

Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, shook hands with Carroll and hugged her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan. As the courtroom cleared, Carroll could be heard laughing and crying.

Trump immediately lashed out with a statement on his social media site, claiming again that he does not know Carroll and referring to the verdict as “a disgrace” and “a continuation of the greatest witch hunt of all time.”

The trial’s outcome was a validation for Carroll, one of more than a dozen women who accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. She went public in 2019 with her allegation that the Republican raped her in the dressing room of a posh Manhattan department store.

Trump, 76, denied it, saying he never encountered Carroll at the store and didn’t know her. He has called her a “nut job” who invented “a fraudulent and false story” to sell a memoir.

Carroll, 79, had sought unspecified damages, plus a retraction of what she said were Trump’s defamatory denials of her claims.

The trial revisited the lightning-rod topic of Trump’s conduct toward women.

Carroll gave multiple days of frank, occasionally emotional testimony, buttressed by two friends who told jurors she reported the alleged attack to them in the moments and day afterward.

Jurors also heard from Jessica Leeds, a former stockbroker who testified that Trump abruptly groped her against her will on an airplane in the 1970s, and from Natasha Stoynoff, a writer who said Trump forcibly kissed her against her will while she was interviewing him for a 2005 article.

The six-man, three-woman jury also saw the well-known 2005 “Access Hollywood” hot mic recording of Trump talking about kissing and grabbing women without asking.

The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll, Leeds and Stoynoff have done.

Tacopina told the jury in closing arguments Monday that Carroll’s account is too far fetched to be believed. He said she made it up to fuel sales of a 2019 memoir in which she first publicly revealed her claims and to disparage Trump for political reasons.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, cited excerpts from Trump’s October deposition and his notorious comments on a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which he said celebrities can grab women between the legs without asking.

She urged jurors to believe her client.

“He didn’t even bother to show up here in person,” Kaplan said. She said much of what he said in his deposition and in public statements “actually supports our side of the case.”

“In a very real sense, Donald Trump is a witness against himself,” she said. “He knows what he did. He knows that he sexually assaulted E. Jean Carroll.”

Justice served!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Wall Street Journal editorial board yesterday echoed stinging comments that former Attorney General William Barr made about Donald Trump.

The editorial board of the conservative, Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal urged its readers to take heed of William Barr’s recent warning about Donald Trump, and the former attorney general’s caution about what would happen if the former president won a second term in the White House.

Barr last week described Trump’s first term as a “horror show. He predicted Trump would fail to deliver on conservative policies, even if he did win the 2024 election.

The Journal wholeheartedly agreed.

“The rebuttal from the Trump establishment will be to cite his first term, but that record supports Mr. Barr’s point,” it wrote. “We also agree with many of Mr. Trump’s policies, and we backed them during his Presidency. But his most important policy victories were conventional GOP priorities delivered by people he now denounces as “RINOs.”

“A fuller account of Mr. Trump’s Presidency can wait for other days, but Mr. Barr’s warning is one that GOP voters deserve to hear,” it added. Republicans “have to decide if they want to let Democrats make their nominating choice for them, while ignoring Mr. Barr’s warning about the policy risks of a second Trump term.”

I think it is very beneficial that William Barr is telling it like it is about Donald Trump.  Too bad he not do it while he was Trump’s Attorney General.

Read the full editorial here (Pay Site).

Tony

Executive Summary

Artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm, with new AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT opening up new opportunities in higher education for content creation, communication, and learning, while also raising new concerns about the misuses and overreach of technology. Our shared humanity has also become a key focal point within higher education, as faculty and leaders continue to wrestle with understanding and meeting the diverse needs of students and to find ways of cultivating institutional communities that support student well-being and belonging.

For this year’s teaching and learning Horizon Report, then, our panelists’ discussions oscillated between these seemingly polar ideas: the supplanting of human activity with powerful new technological capabilities, and the need for more humanity at the center of everything we do.

This report summarizes the results of those discussions and serves as one vantage point on where our future may be headed. This project was grounded in a modified Delphi methodology that seeks to elevate the collective perspectives and knowledge of a diverse group of experts, and the panelists’ activities were facilitated using tools adapted from the Institute for the Future.

Trends

As a first activity, we asked the Horizon panelists to provide input on the macro trends they believe are going to shape the future of postsecondary teaching and learning and to provide observable evidence for those trends. To ensure an expansive view of the larger trends serving as context for institutions of higher education, panelists provided input across five trend categories: social, technological, economic, environmental, and political. After several rounds of voting, the panelists selected the following trends as the most important:

Social
• Student demand for flexible and convenient learning modalities is increasing.
• The focus on equitable and inclusive teaching and learning has expanded and intensified.
• Microcredentials programs are gaining momentum and maturity.

Technological
• The potential for AI to become mainstream is growing.
• The online versus face-to-face dichotomy is being disrupted.
• Low- and no-code technologies that simplify complex processes are enabling more people to create digital content.

Economic
• Affordability and ROI are impacting potential students’ decisions to enroll in postsecondary education.
• As funding for public higher education declines, institutions are expected to do more with less.
• The need and demand for lifelong, workplace learning are increasing.

Environmental
• Climate change is increasingly impacting our daily lives.
• Environmental issues are being integrated into academic programs and institutional operations.
• Technology is behind the curve on reducing its environmental impact.

Political
• Governments are leveraging disinformation and propaganda.
• Nationalism is rising across the world.
• Political party conflict is increasingly blocking decision-making and action in the U.S. political system.

Key Technologies and Practices

Horizon panelists were asked to describe the key technologies and practices they believe will have a significant impact on the future of postsecondary teaching and learning, with a focus on those that are new or for which there appear to be substantial new developments. After several rounds of voting, the following six items rose to the top of a long list of potential technologies and practices:

• AI-Enabled Applications for Predictive, Personal Learning
• Generative AI
• Blurring the Boundaries between Learning Modalities
• HyFlex (i.e., students enrolled in a course can participate on site, synchronously online, or asynchronously online as preferred)
• Microcredentials
• Supporting Students’ Sense of Belonging and Connectedness