Navy vet mocked by Dem rival may help California GOP capture Katie Hill's former House seat

A special election in California next Tuesday may give Republicans the chance to win back a House seat lost to a Democrat during 2018’s so-called "blue wave."
Former Rep. Katie Hill, a Democrat, won the seat north of Los Angeles in the state's 25th Congressional District, which had been a GOP stronghold for more than two decades. But last October, Hill resigned amid a nude photo scandal and accusations by her estranged husband of an inappropriate relationship with a staffer. Hill denied a relationship.
On May 12, voters will decide who will serve out the remainder of Hill's term in the House. The candidates are Democrat Christy Smith and Republican Mike Garcia. Then in November -- against the backdrop of the presidential election -- they'll decide whether to elect Smith or Garcia for a full term.
Smith received a high-profile endorsement from former President Obama this week, but she also got into a bit of hot water when a leaked video showed her mocking Garcia’s focus on his military experience, according to The Hill. Garcia is a former Navy pilot.
She later tried to undo the damage.
“Without question, I have the deepest respect for Mike Garcia’s service to our country and I’m sorry for comments that I made that might suggest otherwise,” she later said in a statement.

“Without question, I have the deepest respect for Mike Garcia’s service to our country and I’m sorry for comments that I made that might suggest otherwise.”
— Democrat Christy Smith

President Trump has endorsed Garcia and slammed Smith on Twitter: “Vote @MikeGarcia2020 by May 12th! His opponent @ChristyforCA25 . . . Now she’s mocking our Great Vets! We need Navy Fighter Pilot Mike Garcia in #CA25!” he wrote.
The seat of was one 39 Democrats flipped in 2018 but early mail-in ballot returns seem to be favoring Republicans.
So far, 32 percent of registered Republicans have voted in the special election, compared to 20 percent of Democrats and 15 percent of independents, according to The Washington Post.
Complicating the election is the coronavirus pandemic, which makes both campaigning and voting more difficult.
Only a small number of polling locations will be open, which means most voters will need to cast absentee ballots.
Democrats say they will likely do better in November when turnout for the presidential election is expected to be higher.
“We’re trying to run a campaign at the height of the crisis when it is hard to get people’s attention because people are so distracted by the crisis,” Smith said, according to The Post. “We’re hopeful for the best and that the turnout breaks in our favor.”
Hill’s high unfavorability in the district also hasn’t helped Smith, who is a California assemblywoman and former school board member, according to The New York Times.
While Smith calls herself a moderate with public service experience, Garcia has pledged to “to cut taxes, grow jobs, and keep Sacramento policies from spreading to DC” if elected, according to The Post.

Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther speaks out after release from jail: 'I couldn't bring myself to apologize'

Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther, who was ordered jailed for seven days Tuesday after she violated a local coronavirus-related business closure order, joined "Hannity" for an interview Thursday, hours after her release.
Luther said she is feeling much better after being allowed to go back home, and told host Sean Hannity she stands by her decision not to apologize as instructed by state District Judge Eric Moye.
"That was the last thing I was going to do, honestly," she said. " ... I just couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to apologize."
Moye gave Luther the option of avoiding prison if she apologized for what he described as her "selfish" behavior, paid a fine and kept her doors closed until Friday, when hair salons across Texas can open with restrictions.
"We were shut down March 22, so it had been several weeks that the government was kind of telling us the [small business] money was coming," Luther told Hannity. "The Dallas County Judge, Clay Jenkins, kept pushing back the date of when we would open weeks out in advance, before we would hear any new comings of what was going on with masks or whatever.
"When he finally pushed it back a final time I just woke up one day and I said, 'I have to open, my stylists are calling me, they're not making their mortgage,'" she continued. " ... I'm two months behind on my mortgage.
"My stylists were telling me that they wanted [to go] underground and go to people's houses," she said. "I just said, 'You know, that's not a good idea because we can't control the environment there. We don't know if it's been disinfected or anything like that,' and I just decided I would open."
Luther added that during the time she was open in defiance of the order, the salon instituted strict sanitation and social distancing measures.
'We tried to use gloves at first," she said, adding that the hairstylists couldn't work with them. "But we made sure that I had no clients waiting inside the salon at all. I had chairs six feet apart outside of the salon ... and when the stylist was ready and wearing a mask -- we didn't let any clients come in without a mask -- they instantly sanitized their hands, the hairstylist sanitized their hands. They came in, they did the cut and that person left."
Luther said her brief stay in jail was "not pleasant," though she did have a cell to herself.
"The worst thing was that I didn't get to call anybody when I got there, the whole first night," she said. "And that's kind of scary, because I have a daughter that just turned 17 at home, and if my boyfriend wasn't there to tell, you know, to talk to her or anything, I would not have come home and she would not have known where I was."
Fox News' Tyler Olson contributed to this story.

Ted Cruz slams San Antonio plan declaring 'Chinese virus' to be hate speech: 'This is NUTS'

Hate speech directed against certain ethnic groups in connection with the coronavirus outbreak will not be tolerated, the city council of San Antonio, Texas, decided Thursday.
Council members unanimously passed a resolution that specifically addresses anti-Chinese COVID-19 references, including terms such as “Chinese virus” or “kung fu virus,” claiming such language encourages hate crimes and other incidents against Asian-Americans and Asian immigrants.
"Unfortunately, during times of crisis we do see the best of humanity and sometimes we also see the worst," said Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who initiated the resolution, according to San Antonio's WOAI-TV. "There has been a rise of hate speech throughout the course of this pandemic."
But prior to the vote, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, blasted the plan as political correctness run amok.
"This is NUTS," Cruz wrote on Twitter on Thursday. "SA City Council behaving like a lefty college faculty lounge, triggered by Chick-fil-A & the words 'Wuhan virus.' If they want to investigate someone, start with NYT & CNN who both repeatedly (and rightly) referred to it as "the Chinese coronavirus."
The resolution asserts the coronavirus was not created or caused by any race, nationality or ethnicity.
It also refers to World Health Organization guidance against using geographic descriptors for the virus that could fuel acts of ethnic or racial discrimination.
"Our efforts must meet the indiscriminate nature of COVID-19 with empathy and compassion for all our neighbors," Nirenberg said.
Businesses and individuals in San Antonio have been victimized due to the coronavirus -- including Golden Star, a Chinese restaurant near the city's downtown, officials said.
"It’s been in operation for almost 90 years," Councilwoman Shirley Gonzales said, according to the station. "They’re a Chinese restaurant family and they have been threatened. They have been the victims of hate speech and hate crimes, with vandalism and that sort of thing on their property."
President Trump said in March he might stop referring to coronavirus as a “Chinese virus” if it bothered the Chinese community. Although he said that he would consider ending the term, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with it -- arguing it referred to geography, not race or ethnicity.

A waiter serves a group dining at a restaurant that reopened at the River Walk in San Antonio, Friday, May 1, 2020. (Associated Press)

“If you look at Ebola, right, if you look at Lyme in Connecticut, you look at all these different horrible diseases, they seem to come with a name with a location,” he said. “I don’t have to say it if they feel so strongly about it, we’ll see.”
Meanwhile, Asian-Americans reported more than 650 racist acts over one week in March in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, according to data from online reporting forum Stop AAPI Hate.
The forum said incidents varied from attackers spitting or coughing on victims, to victims being told to leave stores or having Uber and Lyft drivers refuse to pick them up.
China has been accused of possibly covering up the coronavirus pandemic, although hate speech against its people differs from possible outrage over actions taken by its government.

Visitors wearing face masks to protect against the new coronavirus walk through the Forbidden City in Beijing, Friday, May 1, 2020. (Associated Press)

Nirenberg said he was aware of several examples of hate speech and subsequent actions taken against people in the city. He added the resolution wasn't directed at constitutionally protected free speech, as guaranteed by the First Amendment.
"Oh no, not at all. What this is, is a statement of values, as we say we’re a compassionate community," the mayor said, according to WOAI-TV.
The resolution also includes speech directed at the Jewish community, which it says have been targeted with "blame, hate, antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories about their creating, spreading and profiting from COVID-19."
City council members voted in favor of the resolution 11 to 0.
Texas has seen more than 36,036 confirmed coronavirus cases and at least 985 deaths from the virus as of late Thursday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Fox News' Morgan Phillips and Peter Aitken contributed to this report.

Trump calls Flynn 'innocent man' after DOJ drops case against former national security adviser

President Trump praised his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and tore into the administration of former President Barack Obama on Thursday after learning that the Justice Department had dropped its case against Flynn.
“He was an innocent man,” Trump said of Flynn during a meeting at the White House with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. “Now in my book he’s an even greater warrior.”
The Justice Department’s move to drop its case comes shortly after internal memos were released that raised serious questions about the nature of the investigation that led to the retired Army lieutenant general’s 2017 guilty plea for lying to the FBI.
Those documents showed how agents discussed their motivations for interviewing him in the Russia probe—questioning whether they wanted to “get him to lie” so he'd be fired or prosecuted, or get him to admit wrongdoing. Flynn allies howled over the revelations, arguing that he was essentially set up in a perjury trap.
Flynn in January moved to withdraw his guilty plea for lying to the FBI in the Russia probe, citing "bad faith" by the government. That court filing came just days after the Justice Department reversed course to recommend up to six months of prison time in his case, alleging he was not fully cooperating or accepting responsibility for his actions.
The case had been plodding through the court system with no resolution ever since his original plea, even amid speculation about whether Trump himself could extend a pardon.
Trump on Thursday claimed Flynn was a target of the Obama administration and called the investigation into his former national security adviser treasonous.
“They’re human scum,” Trump said. “It’s treason.”
The president also targeted the news media for its coverage on Flynn, and called on the New York Times and the Washington Post to return their Pulitzer prizes for coverage on the investigations into Russian interference during the 2016 election.
“Those writers... are thieves,” Trump said. “They should be forced to give back Pulitzer prizes.”
Flynn's case stemmed from a 2017 FBI interview, in which he was asked about his conversations with former Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak. Flynn ultimately pleaded guilty to making false statements regarding those conversations during his interview, as part of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
Flynn resigned from his White House post in February 2017. The resignation came as he was accused of misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other senior White House officials about his communications with Kislyak. Pence, after being briefed by Flynn, had said in television interviews that Flynn did not discuss sanctions with the ambassador.
Following Flynn's resignation, Trump quickly tweeted a defense of Flynn’s exit from the White House in 2017 – arguing that despite Flynn pleading guilty to lying to the FBI, his actions were lawful.
"I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI,” Trump tweeted. “He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!"
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.

NPR Cartoons

SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK: Chatty Thomas breaks with precedent

 

FILE - In this Feb. 11, 2020, file photo, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas delivers a keynote speech during a dedication of Georgia new Nathan Deal Judicial Center in Atlanta. A Supreme Court justice gets it in his mind to ask a question, and pretty soon, he's got questions for everyone. And so the next question: Will Clarence Thomas ever stop talking? Before this week, the intervals between Thomas' questions during high court arguments were measured in years. He once went 10 years, from 2006 to 2016, without asking even one. (AP Photo/John Amis, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Supreme Court justice gets it in his mind to ask a question, and pretty soon, he’s got questions for everyone. And so the next question: Will Clarence Thomas ever stop talking?

Before this week, the intervals between Thomas’ questions during high court arguments were measured in years. He once went 10 years, from 2006 to 2016, without asking even one.

Now he’s been an active questioner for three straight days. He’ll have the chance to continue his streak next week in six arguments over three days.

ADVERTISEMENT

It might be the setting, the court’s first arguments by telephone, because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I must say, as a former clerk, I’m delighted that a silver lining of the new format in this difficult time is that the public can see the extraordinary combination of preparation, thoughtfulness, and grace the Justice brings to every case,” Elizabeth Papez, partner in a big Washington, D.C., law firm said in an email.

The new arrangement has made for more structured proceedings, with justices taking turns instead of jumping in whenever they wanted. Only Chief Justice John Roberts goes before Thomas, the longest-serving justice. He joined the court in 1991.

One reason Thomas, 71, has given over the years for his reticence is that he thinks his colleagues talk too much and don’t give the lawyers before them the courtesy of presenting arguments they have sweated over for weeks and months.

“It confirms in one sense what Justice Thomas has said about the excessive interruptions,” said Nicole Stelle Garnett, a University of Notre Dame law professor who once worked for Thomas.

The contrast between Thomas on the phone and in person is stark.

In the courtroom, the justice often reclines in his chair, his gaze toward the decorative ceiling, not on the lawyer who is arguing. Occasionally, he will lean forward, approaching his microphone and putting reporters on alert that he might break his silence.

Almost always, it’s just a feint.

But on the phone, he’s had questions for every lawyer, although he went out of order Wednesday because of temporary technical difficulties.

___

In another time, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arranged her medical care around the court’s schedule so she wouldn’t miss arguments.

ADVERTISEMENT

On Wednesday, the 87-year-old Ginsburg was able to participate from a Baltimore hospital, where she was being treated for an infection caused by a gallstone. It’s an unforeseen option after the court’s virus-driven decision to hold remote arguments. Ginsburg was back home Wednesday night.

When Ginsburg was receiving treatment following surgery for colorectal cancer in 1999, she followed advice from the first woman on the court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who was back in court nine days after breast cancer surgery.

“Ruth, you schedule your chemotherapy for a Friday. Then you can get over it on Saturday and Sunday and be back in court on Monday,” Ginsburg said last year, quoting O’Connor, at a Clinton Foundation event in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Illness does sometimes keep justices from the courtroom. Ginsburg herself missed arguments for the first time since joining the court in 1993 as she recovered from surgery to remove cancerous growths on her lung in 2018.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist missed 44 arguments when he was dealing with the thyroid cancer to which he eventually succumbed in 2005. Justice William Douglas didn’t return to the bench for nearly six months after he broke 14 ribs and punctured a lung in a horseback riding accident on the day before the Supreme Court term began in October 1949.

___

Follow AP’s Supreme Court Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/AP_Courtside. And Supreme Court reporters Mark Sherman at https://twitter.com/shermancourt and Jessica Gresko at https://twitter.com/jessicagresko.

A new liberal refrain: So what if Biden did it?

The defense of Joe Biden on the allegations that have disrupted his campaign has gone through some fascinating twists and turns.
At first, in the wake of Tara Reade’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her in 1993, the reaction in media and political circles was largely silence. Reade seemed to come out of nowhere, so there was little need to acknowledge her story.
Many media outlets stuck with silence after the New York Times and Washington Post published their accounts 19 days later. In other outlets, the second reaction was that she was probably not telling the truth -- after all, no Biden Senate staffer could recall her making the charge and no one could find the complaint she says she filed.
As journalists tracked down more people who say Reade told them of the alleged attack -- there are now at least four corroborating witnesses -- the third reaction was that yes, she has more evidence than Christine Blasey Ford, and yes she should be heard, but it’s still a muddle, and besides, Biden went on television and denied it.
But now, in certain quarters, comes the fourth reaction: So what if it’s true?
That is, so what if Biden did it as long as he can help us get rid of Donald Trump?
This is striking because it’s often a media indictment against the president and his supporters, that they’ll deny an allegation, then modify their stance as more evidence emerges, then retreat to “who cares, everybody does it, look at all he’s accomplishing.”
But now some on the left are twisting themselves into pretzel-like shapes to absolve the former vice president.
First, the usual disclaimer: We don’t know what happened 27 years ago, there are holes and contradictions in Reade’s account, and Biden’s denial has been absolute.
But that’s not the case that Linda Hirshman makes in a New York Times op-ed.
A longtime feminist author who’s written a book on sexual harassment, she writes: “I believe Tara Reade. So what’s a girl to do now?”
Rather than engaging in the “nonsense” of denigrating her accusation and witnesses, Hirshman says, “I’ll take one for the team. I believe Ms. Reade, and I’ll vote for Mr. Biden this fall.”
I mean, this is a woman who describes herself as one of the few establishment feminists to argue on behalf of Monica Lewinsky in 1998. Still, “I hate, hate, hate to say the following. Suck it up and make the utilitarian bargain.”
And here comes the rationale:  Biden is “likely to do more good for women and the nation than his competition, the worst president in the history of the Republic.”
In other words, we’d take anyone to dump Trump, even if that person once digitally penetrated a young staffer.
Wouldn’t a Biden presidency, she asks, “count for more than the harm done to the victims of abuse?”
Isn’t this, for all the intellectual agonizing, what Bill Clinton’s supporters did in trying to justify his treatment of Lewinsky and other women--to say he was a good, pro-choice president for women?
I get that you have to weigh the totality of any candidate, and that more than a dozen women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. But this seems like an especially raw calculation.
To be fair, some of the most prominent female liberals in the media, including Maureen Dowd, Ruth Marcus and Michelle Goldberg, have written that they’re troubled by the Reade allegations.
But the politics-trumps-integrity argument is also being made by Martin Tolchin, a former Times correspondent and a founder of the Hill newspaper. In a letter to the editor run by the Times, Tolchin says:
“I don’t want an investigation. I want a coronation of Joe Biden. Would he make a great president? Unlikely. Would he make a good president? Good enough. Would he make a better president than the present occupant? Absolutely.
“I don’t want justice, whatever that may be. I want a win, the removal of Donald Trump from office.”
Marty is obviously entitled to speak his mind, but this is what many Trump supporters think this is what journalists believe -- that they just detest the president and don’t even care whether the Biden accusations are true.
NPR is one of the major news organizations that waited nearly a month to air the allegations, a full week after they were covered by the Times and Washington Post.
Now its public editor, Kelly McBride, is chastising the network for its “lack of urgency”:
“That it took nearly a month to get to air hurts. NPR's silence on the story feeds at least three critical narratives, or perhaps suspicions: 1) NPR preferred Biden over Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination (the story broke before Sanders had dropped out, but barely); 2) NPR is reluctant to tell stories that may help President Donald J. Trump's re-election effort; 3) NPR is hypocritical, covering claims of sexual assault leveled against Republicans, but burying similar accusations against Democrats.”
That demonstrates the value of having an ombudsman. And given the media’s hesitant and ambivalent coverage of the allegations, could anyone be blamed for thinking Kelly McBride is right?

Graham says Mueller probe 'scope memo' shows investigation 'was illegitimate to begin with'

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., joined "Hannity" Wednesday moments after the Justice Department released an August 2017 memo from former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein which detailed the scope of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
"The legal foundation for Mueller’s appointment is crumbling," Graham said.
"The memo to Mueller from Rosenstein was given to me fully by [Attorney General] Barr virtually unredacted. So now we know that the scope of the investigation was to look at Carter Page, [former National Security Adviser Michael] Flynn, [George] Papadopoulos and [former Trump campaign chairman Paul] Manafort as to whether or not they were working with the Russians. Now, this is in August of 2017."
"In January of 2017," Graham continued, "the subsource disavowed the [Christopher Steele] dossier. And without the dossier, there is no [FISA] warrant. So they knew that the Carter Page thing was a fraud. They wanted to close the case against Flynn. We have Papadopoulos on record denying working with the Russians, saying to do so would be treason. So the foundation for the Mueller investigation is crumbling."
When Mueller was first appointed special counsel in May 2017, Rosenstein authorized him to probe "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump ... any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation; [and] ... any other matters within the scope of [obstruction of justice laws]."
The August 2017 scope memo had remained largely redacted. The newly released version of the document makes clear that Rosenstein didn't hesitate to explicitly authorize a deep-dive criminal probe into the Trump team that extended well beyond Russian interference efforts.
Additionally, the scope memo stated that Mueller was charged specifically with investigating whether several former Trump officials had "committed a crime or crimes by colluding with Russian government officials with respect to the Russian government's efforts to interfere with the 2016 election for President of the United States."
"The legal foundation to justify Mueller's appointment in my view does not exist," Graham said. "That’s why this memo is so important. They name four people. Rosenstein tells Mueller to look at four people [on] August 2nd, 2017. Carter Page is one of the four. In January, eight months before the subsource disavowed the dossier, there was no legal justification to suspect Carter Page of being a Russian agent because it all depended on the dossier. And that crumbled in January."
" Flynn’s case was looked at by the [FBI] field office in Washington, January the 4th of 2017," Graham continued.
"They said there’s no reason to believe he is doing anything wrong ... so there is no legitimate reason to believe any of these four were working with the Russians on August 2nd, 2017. Therefore, the entire Mueller investigation was illegitimate to begin with. That’s very important."
Fox News' Gregg Re contributed to this report.