19: US Supreme Court

Donald Trump Breaks Polling Record for Second Straight Day 52 percent of registered voters said they would choose Trump if the election were held today. Biden was supported by 47 percent

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How Elon Musk Chose Trump The world’s richest man, once deeply skeptical of Donald J. Trump, has now endorsed him and has emerged as a central character in the presidential race............ Mr. Musk was once allergic to Washington. He maintained a decent relationship with Mr. Obama and made several White House visits to build support for Tesla and SpaceX, his rocket manufacturer. But he generally disliked meeting with other politicians and saw political donations as a necessary evil .......... Days before the 2016 election, he told CNBC that Mr. Trump did not “seem to have the sort of character that reflects well on the United States.” After Mr. Trump won, Mr. Musk told some associates that the outcome was proof that they were living in a simulation, according to one person close to him. In 2020, Mr. Musk, in a private conversation with another associate, called Mr. Trump a “stone-cold loser.” .......... In 2022, the former president, for his part, used an expletive to describe the Tesla chief executive at a rally......... He had gotten to know Mr. McCarthy over the last decade thanks to the former speaker’s advocacy for SpaceX. They now text frequently, and Mr. Musk has often relied on Mr. McCarthy over the years for advice on politics and lobbying. .......... Within an hour of the shooting, Mr. Musk went on X and endorsed Mr. Trump. ......... In recent weeks, Mr. Musk privately lobbied Mr. Trump to choose Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate. He celebrated vociferously on Monday after Mr. Vance was announced as the pick.

The Supreme Court Is Gaslighting Us All In his majority opinion in the case about presidential immunity, Chief Justice John Roberts mocked the three liberal dissenters for striking “a tone of chilling doom that is wholly disproportionate to what the court actually does today.” (Reality check: The immunity ruling — which gave presidents carte blanche to break most criminal laws when carrying out their official duties — is not grounded in any clause of the Constitution. It went far beyond what even the most pessimistic court observers expected; the dissenters, if anything, responded with restraint.) ........... Behavior like this has a name: gaslighting, a form of psychological manipulation that involves making people doubt their own, accurate perception of reality. If the term has gotten a workout in recent years, that’s because a lot of people are engaging in it. The right-wing justices have become masters of the form, telling the American people again and again not to believe what they see with their own eyes. ........ The court’s power derives from its perceived legitimacy, which in turn depends on its public approval. The more it issues unpopular, unhinged decisions, the more that approval rating, already at record lows, continues to plummet. ....... But that would betray the long effort by right-wing activists and lawmakers to transform this court into the sword and the shield in their culture war. ............ this subterfuge is understandable: Who wants to be seen as allowing violent people to walk around armed, or forcing pregnant women to wait until they are on the verge of death before they can receive standard medical care? And yet that is the real-world dystopia the right-wing justices are creating right now................ “victim-claiming” — when privileged, powerful people take on the mantle of victimhood, displacing genuine victims, whether pregnant women without treatment or homeless people without a bed. The effect, she said, is to “replace actual victimhood with a fantasy of victimhood.” .......... Mr. Musk has transformed himself from an idealistic supporter of Democrats like Barack Obama into a fierce ally of Mr. Trump, whom he flirted with for months and endorsed last weekend roughly 30 minutes after the former president survived an assassination attempt.

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Bollywood Stars, Prime Ministers and the Kardashians Attend the Ambani Wedding After months of lavish prewedding festivities that have captured the attention of onlookers worldwide, Anant Ambani, the youngest son of India’s richest man, married Radhika Merchant in Mumbai.