Shocker: Trump Is Chickening Out of the Republican Debate

Donald Trump has decided that he won’t participate in the first Republican presidential debate.

If Trump had decided to attend the debate, set for August 23, he would have faced off against Ron DeSantis, who is the closest behind Trump in the polls (although still by a big stretch). Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie, and Doug Burgum have also qualified.

However, Trump announced Monday that he has no plans to take part. “Let them debate so I can see who I MIGHT consider for Vice President!” he wrote on Truth Social.

Trump has been threatening for a while not to participate in the debate. He even asked the crowd at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, on Saturday if he should take part in the debate and was met with a chorus of “No”s.

Trump probably knows that he’ll be the front-runner regardless of whether he debates. Other candidates have tried to goad him into participating, particularly Christie, who predicted Sunday that by the time the debate rolls around, “the front-runner will be out on bail in four different jurisdictions—Florida, Washington, Georgia and New York.”

But the former president seems unfazed. “Why would I give [the other candidates] time to make statements?” he told Reuters last week. “Why would I do that when I’m leading them by 50 points and 60 points?”

While his lead isn’t quite that much, a New York Times/Siena poll published Monday found Trump is leading DeSantis by 37 percentage points.

Trump has called Fox News, which is broadcasting the debate, a “hostile network.” He also previously criticized his former favorite network for not covering his campaign events.

Trump is far and away the front-runner among Republican candidates, despite all of the indictments either already issued or pending against him. Last week, Trump promised to run even if he is convicted and imprisoned. And if anything, the multiple indictments against him have only made him more popular.

Twitter, which owner Elon Musk promised would become a bastion of free speech, has threatened legal action against a nonprofit that studies misinformation and hate speech for highlighting the social network’s flaws.

X Corp, the parent company of Twitter (newly and unsuccessfully renamed X.com), sent a letter on July 20 to the Center for Countering Digital Hate accusing the group of making “a series of troubling and baseless claims that appear calculated to harm Twitter generally, and its digital advertising business specifically.”

X Corp threatened to sue, alleging the nonprofit was funded by Twitter’s competitors or foreign governments “in support of an ulterior agenda.” The letter specifically cited research on hate speech on Twitter that the center published in June. One of the eight papers the organization published found that Twitter took no action against 99 of the 100 Twitter Blue accounts that the center had reported for “tweeting hate.”

The center’s chief executive, Imran Ahmed, slammed the legal threat. “Elon Musk’s actions represent a brazen attempt to silence honest criticism and independent research,” he told The New York Times. The organization also said it had not accepted funding from any other tech companies, foreign governments, or their affiliates.

Ahmed also accused Musk of wanting to “stem the tide of negative stories and rebuild his relationship with advertisers,” who have left Twitter in droves since Musk took over. The platform’s U.S. advertising revenue from April to May of this year was just $88 million, down 59 percent from the same time period last year. The platform is worth a third of what Musk originally paid for it.

Some of that may be due to the fact that Musk has allowed Nazis and the Taliban on Twitter—and even verified them. He also has done nothing to rein in antisemitic and transphobic speech on the platform. If anything, he’s one of the main sources of it.

So in that sense, Musk is actually upholding free speech. It’s just that his idea of free speech means saying the grossest things humanly possible and facing zero consequences for it.

A Georgia judge has rejected Donald Trump’s bid to block potential new indictment charges in the investigation into his efforts to overthrow the 2020 election.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney on Monday ruled that Trump cannot stop Georgia prosecutors from trying to investigate him.

“While being the subject (or even target) of a highly publicized criminal investigation is likely an unwelcome and unpleasant experience, no court ever has held that that status alone provides a basis for the courts to interfere with or halt the investigation,” wrote McBurney.

McBurney has overseen District Attorney Fani Willis’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. In his nine-page ruling, he rejected Trump’s motion and also went on to skewer him for fundraising off of the multiple investigations and indictments against him.

“For some, being the subject of a criminal investigation can, à la Rumpelstiltskin, be turned into golden political capital, making it seem more providential than problematic,” he wrote. “Regardless, simply being the subject (or target) of an investigation does not yield standing to bring a claim to halt that investigation in court.”

Trump had tried to argue that the case was unconstitutional and that Willis’s work for Democrats represents a conflict. But McBurney was not swayed by the arguments.

“While both sides have done enough talking, posting, tweeting (‘X’ing’?), and press conferencing to have hit (and perhaps stretched) the bounds of Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct … neither movant has pointed to any averments from the District Attorney or her team of lawyers expressing belief that Trump … is guilty or has committed this or that offense,” he wrote.

“Put differently, the District Attorney’s Office has been doing a fairly routine—and legally unobjectionable—job of public relations in a case that is anything but routine.”

Two weeks ago, Georgia’s Supreme Court also unanimously rejected Trump’s bid to stop the investigation.

On Saturday, Willis announced that her team is “ready to go” and she will announce a decision on new charges against Trump by September 1.

“The work is accomplished,” Willis told local outlet 11Alive. “We’ve been working for two and a half years.”

“Some people may not be happy with the decisions that I’m making,” she added.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to indict Donald Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election within the next few weeks.

“The work is accomplished,” Willis told local outlet 11Alive on Saturday. “We’ve been working for two and a half years. We’re ready to go.”

Willis has been investigating Trump for his role in efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. One of the charges could be for racketeering, which could in part refer to Trump’s phone calls begging Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes—the exact amount needed to flip the state’s election results to Trump.

Willis sent a letter to local law enforcement back in April asking them to be ready for “heightened security and preparedness” during the summer. The letter indicated she plans to announce “charging decisions resulting from the investigation my office has been conducting into possible criminal interference in the administration of Georgia’s 2020 General Election” between July 11 and September 1. Willis confirmed Saturday that she will still deliver a decision on charges by September.

She warned Saturday that “some people may not be happy with the decisions that I’m making. And sometimes, when people are unhappy, they act in a way that could create harm.”

Willis told 11Alive she has also reached out to the county sheriff to protect the courthouse. “I’m not willing to put any of the employees or the constituents that come to the courthouse in harm’s way,” she said.

Her requests for increased security are understandable. New York City police stepped up their presence around the Manhattan district court where Trump was arraigned in April. Only a handful of people actually answered Trump’s call for protests, but the last time he urged his supporters to take to the streets, the result was the January 6 insurrection.

If Willis indicts Trump, it would likely be his fourth indictment this year. Trump has been charged with 34 counts of business fraud in New York relating to hush-money payments made during the 2016 election and indicted for mishandling classified documents. Special counsel Jack Smith, who issued the documents indictment, is expected to indict Trump for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election any day now.

Separately, Trump has been found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, and has been sued for defamation yet again. But he has promised to keep running for president, even from prison.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has a warning for Congress: Stop trying to do anything about corruption on the court.

Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced a bill that would require the justices to adopt a code of ethics. According to Alito, Congress has no “authority” to do any such thing.

“Congress did not create the Supreme Court,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published Friday. “I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” he continued. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court—period.”

Asked whether the other justices agree, he said: “I don’t know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly, so I don’t think I should say. But I think it is something we have all thought about.”

Alito’s comments are particularly brazen for two reasons.

First, he is one of the justices recently caught in a major ethics scandal. Last month, ProPublica reported that he accepted a luxury vacation from Republican billionaire megadonor Paul Singer, which included flying on Singer’s private jet to Alaska and then staying for free in a fishing lodge that cost $1,000 a night. Alito didn’t disclose the vacation and later ruled on a case that Singer had before the court. Right-wing activist Leonard Leo helped organize the whole thing.

Second, Alito’s reading of the Constitution is particularly twisted. Here’s what Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution actually says:

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

An unelected, lifetime-appointed Supreme Court justice, caught in a major ethics scandal, believes that Congress has no authority to do anything about it. How convenient.