Donald Trump Becomes First Former President to Face Criminal Charges

Donald Trump has become the first former president to ever be criminally charged.

A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Trump on Thursday, though the charges are not yet known, The New York Times and CNN have confirmed.

The grand jury has been investigating Trump for his connection to his lawyer Michael Cohen paying hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels.

Cohen had admitted to paying Daniels $130,000 on behalf of Trump during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election. Cohen was aiming to silence the actress from making public that she had shared a sexual encounter in 2006 with Trump, who was married to his current spouse, Melania, by then.

Cohen had paid Daniels through a shell company; he was then reimbursed by Trump, whose company subsequently filed the reimbursements as legal expenses. The Trump lawyer also coordinated former Playboy model Karen McDougal to be paid $150,000 by the National Enquirer tabloid magazine, in order to silence her own story about an alleged affair with Trump. The Trump organization shelled out $420,000 to Michael Cohen in 2018 after he finished his tasks as a good lackey.

Through a recording Cohen took of some of the conversations surrounding the payments, Trump can be heard asking how much will be needed for “the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David,” in reference to David Pecker, the executive of the Enquirer’s parent company.

“What do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?” he asked.

Trump has previously denied wrongdoing, and doubled down immediately after the indictment’s announcement.

Trump, who is the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination for president, still faces numerous other criminal investigations, including into efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and whether he and his family lied to lenders and insurers by overvaluing their assets.

This post has been updated.

On Monday, Tennessee Republican Representative Tim Burchett said, “We’re not gonna fix” school shootings, in the aftermath of three children and three adults being shot dead at a school in Nashville, Tennessee.

And appearing on Fox on Thursday, Burchett doubled down on his appalling disinterest in doing even the barest minimum of his job. When asked why his initial comments somehow made people mad, the representative was incredulous.

“They come back to me and say, ‘Burchett, look what your prayers have done for us.’ The people doing the praying aren’t the ones doing the shooting, ma’am, and it’s just a very unfortunate situation,” Burchett said.

“And, and um, I don’t—there’s no easy answers,” he continued, as if he was interested in any answer whatsoever. “Um, I don’t know, I—I—, you know, repenting of your sins and um, and having some sort of um, reform in this country seems to me to be the way we’re going to have to turn this thing around because we have some very sick, evil people doing some very vile things, and um, and revival seems to be the way to go for me.

“But I realize their hatred toward me and my beliefs, and that’s—that’s fine,” Burchett finished.

What must be dispelled once and for all is the notion that there are “no easy answers.” There is a whole catalog of policies the government could be pursuing to confront gun violence—policies that Republicans have not only fought tooth and nail to oppose but countered by making it even easier for people to get death machines. The astoundingly lazy assertion of “Bah, there’s no easy fix” has enabled Republicans to instead do nothing to fix anything.

Republicans have long insisted that gun ownership is a “God-given right,” while also insisting that the cause of gun violence is anything but guns. But if it takes hate to become a mass shooter, Republicans have been on the front lines of fomenting it. If it takes social alienation to become a mass shooter, Republicans have done everything in their power to erode public life and solidarity in favor of individualism. If it takes compounded mental distress to become a mass shooter, Republicans have time and again opposed strengthening mental health care in this country.

And if it takes easy access to guns to become a mass shooter, well, you already know where Republicans stand on that.

The Kansas House of Representatives has passed a bill that would require doctors to tell patients it is possible to reverse the effects of the abortion pill, a claim that is not scientifically supported.

The bill, which passed by a vote of 85–39 on Wednesday, is the latest instance of state Republicans seeking to overturn the will of the people, as Kansans already voted last year to keep abortion protections in the state constitution.

Planned Parenthood Great Plains Votes slammed the bill as “medically inaccurate, political propaganda.”

The measure would require health care providers to bombard patients with the false claim that they can reverse the effect of a medication abortion. Medication abortions make up more than half of all abortions in the United States and are conducted by having a patient take two medications: mifepristone and misoprostol.

Health care facilities would have to hang a sign saying mifepristone “alone is not always effective in ending a pregnancy. It may be possible to reverse its intended effect if the second pill or tablet has not been taken or administered.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says abortion reversal claims are “unproven and unethical,” and attempts to reverse a medication abortion could put a patient’s health at risk. But under the Kansas bill, any facility that does not hang an abortion reversal sign could face a $10,000 fine.

Doctors would not be able to provide a medication abortion without telling the patient at least 24 hours ahead of time that the procedure is reversible. They would also have to repeat the claim in between administering the mifepristone and the misoprostol. Health care providers who fail to do so can be sued by their patient, the person who impregnated the patient, or the patient’s parents if they were a minor.

Democratic Representative Lindsay Vaugh described the bill as “state-mandated deception.”

“We’re requiring doctors to lie to their patients, and we’re putting the lives of women at risk,” she said.

The measure is all the worse because last summer, Kansas residents voted overwhelmingly to keep abortion protections in the state constitution. Since the August referendum, state Republicans have done nothing but try to find new ways to circumvent that vote.

“The voters have made their choices,” Democratic Representative Brad Boyd said. “They have made their voices loud. This body would be wise to listen to them. They were loud, they were clear, they were bold. They do not want government in the room with them and their doctor.”

Democratic Governor Laura Kelly is likely to veto the bill, having already rejected a similar one in 2019. But the measure passed the House by a veto-proof majority. If the Senate, which is held by a Republican supermajority, shows similar support, the legislature could force the measure into law.

On Thursday, a Texas judge struck down a crucial feature of the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance companies to cover preventative health care services for free.

Judge Reed O’Connor, who was nominated by President George W. Bush and has been described as the “go-to judge” for conservatives looking to erode health care and nondiscrimination precedents, made the ruling in response to a case brought by Christian-owned businesses in Texas that argued they should not be required to cover birth control and PrEP services.

The successful plaintiffs’ lawyer is Jonathan Mitchell—the same lawyer representing a man who sued three women for helping his ex-wife get an abortion, and the same lawyer who engineered Texas’s restrictive abortion bounty law.

His new ruling will harm an estimated 150 million people on employer-sponsored health care plans, as well as approximately 20 million Medicaid-expansion enrollees and 61 million Medicare beneficiaries, who can receive preventative care under the measure.

Here’s a list of just some of the services O’Connor has now stopped from being guaranteed free:

• Breast cancer screenings for women aged 50 to 74
• Cervical cancer screenings for women aged 21 to 65 years
• An array of recommended pregnancy procedures—including infection testing, pre- and postpartum depression screening, and recommended medication regimens
• PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) treatment to reduce HIV risks
• Screenings for sexually transmitted infections
• Anxiety screenings for children and adolescents
• Vision screenings for children aged 3 to 5 years
• Diabetes screenings
• Osteoporosis screenings
• Comprehensive and holistic interventions for obese children and adolescents
• Lung cancer screenings
• Tuberculosis screenings
• Screenings for women of reproductive age who may be suffering from intimate partner violence
• Screenings for major depressive disorders that could lead to heightened suicide risks in adolescents aged 12 to 18 years old

And that’s just a sampling of what O’Connor has now taken away as a guaranteed health service. Here’s a list of other services now deemed invalid by the ruling.

Thousands of people rallied Thursday morning at the Tennessee state Capitol building to demand stronger gun control laws, as Nashville still reels from a school shooting earlier in the week.

A shooter opened fire at the Covenant School on Monday, killing at least three children and three adults and wounding several others. State Republicans have insisted that there is nothing they could have done or could do differently to prevent such a tragedy.

Protesters gathered at the Capitol and marched inside ahead of the House and Senate regular floor sessions. People called for gun control and for lawmakers to “protect our kids!”

Inside, demonstrators were packed so tightly that highway patrol officers had to clear a path for lawmakers to enter the gallery.

Protesters continued to call for gun control and began singing songs they had adapted into protest anthems.

Lawmakers, however, appeared to stick to their preset agenda. When Democratic Representative Justin Pearson tried to bring up gun reform while discussing an unrelated bill, Republican Speaker Cameron Sexton told him to keep to the measure at hand.

Republicans hold a supermajority in the Tennessee legislature as well as the governor’s office. Governor Bill Lee and other Republicans have skated around the fact that they are directly responsible for helping create the circumstances that allowed Monday’s shooting to occur.

Lawmakers failed two years ago to pass a red flag law that would have prevented Monday’s shooter from legally acquiring seven guns, three of which were used in the attack. In the past few years, they also loosened gun restrictions and focused their energy instead on attacking LGBTQ rights.