Thursday, April 18, 2024 BY JULIA CLAIRE & CROOKED MEDIA

- A dismissed juror on her impression of seeing Donald Trump in person

Let’s check in with our party nominees! Oh God!

Twelve jurors have now been selected to hear disgraced former president Donald Trump’s Manhattan hush money trial, making it the most exclusive club in New York City that no one wants to join. During voir dire, defense lawyers and prosecutors combed through the social media accounts of potential jurors, and if they were found to have expressed opinions suggestive of bias for or against Trump, they were eliminated. Weirdly, Donald Trump was seated and present for all of these exchanges, like when the defense read a potential juror’s tweet from 2016 in which she called him a “racist, sexist narcissist,” before dismissing her. Couldn’t have said it better myself, quite frankly.

Lawyers for the defense and the prosecution still must select alternate jurors for the trial, and opening statements could take place as soon as Monday according to Judge Juan Merchan. Jury selection started this past Monday, but because Trump is arguably America’s most famous and most polarizing person, the process has been particularly thorny. Due to Trump’s penchant for harassing witnesses, prosecutors, et al., Judge Merchan imposed a partial gag order against the former president. All of this being said, it’s difficult to believe that anyone in America could be truly “unbiased” against Trump one way or another, but I guess there are some people who don’t follow politics at all and maybe live in an alternate dimension. Must be nice!

About a hundred miles away, President Biden was in Philadelphia on Thursday, his third campaign stop in all-important Pennsylvania this week. He was joined at a North Philadelphia recreation center by over a dozen members of the Kennedy family, who made a pointed appearance to endorse Biden over their crackpot relative, RFK Jr. Imagine, your own sister saying: “The Kennedy family endorses Joe Biden for president.” Damn, that’s gotta hurt!

Just two guys having very different weeks!

This week marks the national holiday 4/20 so we KNOW you'll be looking for a good laugh. Tune in to Terminally Online to hear your dream blunt rotation of Crooked hosts and staffer, including What A Day’s Tre’vell Anderson, Jon Favreau, and producers Caroline Reston & Caroline Dunphy. This week, the roundtable is covering all things BeyHive, JoJoSiwa, and the now Tiktok famous guy that ghosted his own wife. To get access to this exclusive series AND get unexpectedly sore abs, head to crooked.com/friends to sign up.

More than 100 students at Columbia University were arrested on Thursday after the administration called in the police to empty an encampment of pro-ceasefire/pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the campus’s West lawn. The decision by the school’s president, Dr. Nemat Shafik, to call in the cops immediately brought tensions on campus to a rolling boil. New York City police officers wearing riot gear marched through the encampment with zip ties to arrest the students protesting peacefully. New York City Mayor Eric Adams said on Thursday evening that Columbia has “a proud history of protest” but that students do not “have a right to violate university policies and disrupt learning.”

At least two buses were filled with arrested protesters, including—according to police—Irsa Hirsi, the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Hirsi also said she was suspended from Columbia’s sister school, Barnard College, over participation in pro-Palestinian protests on the Columbia University campus, just one day after Omar questioned the president of the Columbia about the treatment of pro-ceasefire student groups. Echoes of the infamous 1968 incident in which the school authorized a brutal police crackdown on student protesters reverberated on Thursday. Since the Israel-Hamas war erupted in October, Columbia has cracked down on pro-Palestinian student organizations using vague university rules and citing fears of antisemitism. In November, the university even suspended the school’s chapter of a majority-Jewish organization, Jewish Voice for Peace, along with another group called Students for Justice in Palestine. The New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the University over the suspensions in March.

The United States on Thursday was the only country to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution to recognize a Palestinian state through membership in the body, effectively killing it. The United Kingdom abstained, as did Switzerland (likely story), while the council’s other twelve members voted yes.

A new study found that as major Chinese cities grow, they are also sinking below sea level from development and groundwater pumping.

The United States and United Kingdom are moving to impose new sanctions on Iran to punish the country for its counterattack on Israel last weekend, although such sanctions have not proven particularly effective in the past.

Sunland Park, NM has had a yearslong crisis of arsenic in its water supply, according to an EPA assessment and subsequent investigation. Like many communities affected by environmental toxicity, Sunland Park is predominantly low-income and non-White.

The Colorado Senate failed to pass a state constitutional amendment on Wednesday that would have removed the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases due to opposition from Republicans. Man, they really don’t care about optics, do they?

House Republicans added a proposed TikTok ban or force of sale to the foreign aid package of Ukraine and Israel.

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A far-reaching new rule from the Department of the Interior puts conservation, recreation, and renewable energy development as priorities on par with resource extraction on public lands. The rule would be a seismic shift in how the U.S. handles one-tenth of its land, or 245 million acres.

After being knocked out of its nest during a severe storm in the Austin, TX area last week, a baby bald eagle was reunited with its parents through a joint effort by Austin Wildlife Rescue and Texas Parks and Wildlife. You can’t read this story without hearing the National Anthem start to play in the background.

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