[What A Day]([link removed])

Friday, April 26, 2024
BY JULIA CLAIRE & CROOKED MEDIA

- Reporter [Ben Meiselas]([link removed]) relaying vital source notes from the Trump hush money trial

Editor’s note: Some bittersweet personal news: today is my last day writing the What A Day newsletter. I won’t be going far—I’ll still be writing here at Crooked, and you’ll even continue to see some of my horrid little jokes in this very newsletter. Our News Editor Greg Walters will be taking the helm in the meantime, so fear not! WAD will remain in your inbox five nights a week. 
 
Thanks for riding with me these past two years. It wasn’t always easy, but we sure did manage to call Mitch McConnell “a little bitch” a lot, and that’s what truly matters in my one wild and precious life. Take care. 
 
- Julia 
 
P.S. In a hilarious turn of events, today's digest did not save in the server and yesterday's was reprinted. So here's the correction. I always knew I would go out on top. 

As we head into the weekend, campus antiwar protests have not abated, they’ve expanded further across the country. 

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There have been antiwar and Palestinian solidarity protests at some 75 college campuses across the United States in the past week, according to [The Intercept’s Prem Thakkar]([link removed]). Student protesters have continued, undeterred and determined to push their universities to divest from companies with ties to Israel or who profit from its war with Hamas. At the University of Pennsylvania, the administration diverged from its peer institutions—choosing not to involve Philadelphia police—[and instead said they would not intervene so long as the protests remained peaceful]([link removed]) and did not violate University policy. 

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At Emory University, the scene turned violent—but only when police were called to the campus. Along with dozens of student arrests, two professors were detained by police on Thursday. One was [Philosophy Department Chair Noëlle McAfee]([link removed]), and the other was economics professor Carolina Fohlin, [who was captured on video]([link removed]) being violently thrown to the ground by police and then restrained by multiple officers, one of whom shoved her head into the concrete. [Fohlin was jailed for 11 hours]([link removed]) and charged with—get this—battery against a police officer, but was released on bond with the rest of the arrested protesters. In a vote that passed with overwhelming support on Friday afternoon, [the Emory Faculty Senate of the University’s College of Arts and Sciences called for a college-wide no-confidence vote in University President Gregory Fenves]([link removed]) for unleashing police on students and faculty.  

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Disgraced former president Donald Trump took a break from his courtroom shellacking on Friday to again weigh in on the ongoing campus protests, and again [he chose to simultaneously minimize the infamous 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA]([link removed]). “Charlottesville was a little peanut and was nothing,” he said, “and the hate wasn’t the kind of hate you have here. This is tremendous hate.” To recap: the former president is saying that the rally where white nationalists [marched through the streets with tiki torches shouting “Jews will not replace us,”]([link removed]) and “Blood and soil,” in which those white supremacists [ran over and killed counter-protester Heather Heyer]([link removed]) with a car, is “nothing” and less hateful than the overwhelmingly peaceful antiwar protests happening now. Subtle! I wonder which of his supporters he’s catering to with that messaging! 

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This rhetoric takes its most extreme form in right-wing officials like Trump [and GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson]([link removed]), but varying degrees of the central argument—that these antiwar/pro-Palestinian protests are inherently antisemitic ([despite the significant presence of antiwar Jewish protesters]([link removed]))—seem to have found a receptive audience on both sides of the aisle. Pro-Israel Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and Mike Lawler (R-NY)—neither of whom is Jewish—are introducing legislation called [“The Columbia Act”]([link removed]) that would allow the Department of Education to send a “third-party antisemitism monitor” to any college receiving federal funding. [Torres recently left the Congressional Progressive Caucus over the caucus’s criticism of Israel and pro-ceasefire stance]([link removed]) in the Israel-Hamas war, and [his top campaign contributor]([link removed]) is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). 

Nationwide antiwar campus protests are being met with police brutality, the Republican presidential candidate is a power-hungry fascist, AND the DNC is in Chicago? Damn, the "Make it 1968 again" lobby has finally gotten its way.

[What A Day]([link removed])

If you’ve ever dreamed of following a podcast around like the Grateful Dead, this is your year! Pod Save America has a ton of great shows coming up on their Democracy or Else tour, headed to Brooklyn, Boston, Madison, Phoenix, Philly, and Ann Arbor. They will also be at the LA Times festival of books on April 21st with appearances by Dan Pfeiffer, Tommy Vietor, Jon Favreau, and Hysteria’s own Erin Ryan! To get tickets, head to [crooked.com/events]([link removed]) now. 

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It was, apparently, another blustery day in the Manhattan courtroom holding Donald Trump’s hush money trial. ([He kept complaining that the court room was “freezing.”]([link removed])) Emil Bove, one of Trump’s innumerable lawyers, [cross-examined former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker in his third day of testimony]([link removed]). Pecker gave the prosecution exactly what it was looking for on Thursday and Friday when [he offered jurors a vivid explanation of two “catch and kill” arrangements he made with Trump about unflattering stories:]([link removed]) one with former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claimed she had a yearlong relationship with Trump, and the other now infamously related to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Pecker also detailed Trump’s personal involvement in getting the two women to sign non-disclosure agreements to prevent them from going public with their stories during the 2016 presidential campaign. Trump even hosted a “thank you” dinner for Pecker at the White House in 2017. Pecker admitted to having approved a forward-facing corporate lie—denying the existence of the agreements when the Wall Street Journal investigated—to “protect” his company, he said. 

[A campaign watchdog group filed a formal complaint to the Federal Elections Commission on Wednesday]([link removed]) accusing Trump’s presidential reelection campaign and its related PACS of concealing payment of Trump’s legal fees using campaign funds. The organizations paid $7.2 million for Trump’s legal fees covertly through an unrelated shell company, according to the filing. Neither the Trump campaign nor the company used as a conduit, [Red Curve]([link removed]), responded to requests for comment from the New York Times. 

Trust in the Supreme Court dropped to an historic low in the wake of the Dobbs decision in 2022. [Two years later, the Court hasn’t been able to rebuild trust]([link removed]), with the majority of Americans no longer having faith in the institution, and a plurality of those polled feeling that it is “too conservative.” That’s so weird… I wonder what could have given them that impression?

[The Alabama state House approved legislation that could lead to the prosecution of librarians under state obscenity laws for providing minors with materials the conservative legislature deems “harmful,”]([link removed]) as part of a larger nationwide crusade to ban books. The bill now moves to the state Senate.

In other terrifying news from red states, [Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN) announced on Thursday that he plans to sign a bill passed in the state legislature that would allow K-12 educators and staff members to carry concealed handguns]([link removed]) on school grounds. 

In her new autobiography, [Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD)—said to be on Trump’s short list for VP—detailed killing her own family dog]([link removed])…almost proudly(?) as some sort of bizarre conservative “I do what it takes,” bullshit narrative. This woman shot a 14-month-old puppy, and was so pleased with the job she did, that she then killed a goat she didn’t like on the family farm! And she volunteered all of this information! 

Elon Musk’s company [SpaceX has asked a Texas federal judge to block the National Labor Relations Board from pursuing claims that the rocket maker required workers to sign illegal severance agreements.]([link removed]) “On what grounds?” you may ask. Well, Elon teamed up with a bunch of other evil billionaires like Jeff Bezos [in February]([link removed]) and launched a legal campaign questioning the constitutionality of the NLRB. The group of corporate super villains asked the courts to effectively dismantle the New Deal-era agency in an effort to even further tip the scales away from workers and towards corporations. If any of them could grow facial hair I’m sure they would all be twisting their mustaches maniacally. 

[Britain’s King Charles will return to public duties next week for the first time since being diagnosed with cancer.]([link removed]) Buckingham Palace said on Friday that he is making encouraging progress with his treatment. [raising a plate of beans on toast] Cheers to his good health. 

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A staggering [53 individuals who aided in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election have now been criminally charged]([link removed]). Gotta catch em all!

[President Biden appeared on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show]([link removed]), where he said he would “be happy to” debate disgraced former president Donald Trump. Mercifully, Biden bucked guest tradition and did not end up telling Stern any weird octogenarian sex stories. 

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[You Survived Today. See You Thursday.]([link removed])

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