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www.cnn.com – By Ariane de Vogue – The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for the Internal Revenue Service to release former President Donald Trump’s tax returns to a Democratic-led House committee.

The court’s move is a major loss for Trump, who has sought to shield the release of his tax returns for years and is currently under multiple investigations.

There were no noted dissents.

Trump’s legal team has continuously sought to keep his returns secret, and turned to the Supreme Court – composed of three of his nominees – after he lost at the lower court level. Chief Justice John Roberts, who supervises the lower court that issued the order in the Trump case, had placed a temporary hold on the subpoena on November 1, presumably to give the justices more time to consider the issue.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat, first sought the tax returns from the IRS in 2019, and the agency, under the Trump administration, initially resisted turning them over. The case moved slowly until 2021, when, under the Biden administration, the Justice Department changed its legal posture and concluded the IRS was obligated to comply with the committee’s request.

A Trump-appointed judge ruled in the House’s favor late last year and the US DC Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reverse that ruling, most recently with the full appeals court declining to take up the case. The court held that the request for the documents served a legitimate legislative purpose to look at tax laws as they apply to a sitting president and rejected Trump’s argument that the stated purpose was mere pretext to hide a political calculation.

more… https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/22/politics/supreme-court-clears-way-for-house-to-get-trumps-taxes/index.html 

independent.co.uk – By Abe Asher – Donald Trump, declaring his candidacy for president on Tuesday night at Mar-a-Lago, claimed that he went “decades without a war” despite the fact that he only served as president for four years.

“I’ve gone decades, decades without a war, the first president to do it for a long period,” Mr Trump, who lost his re-election to president Joe Biden two years ago, said in his announcement speech.

Mr Trump hit out at Mr Biden and also criticised Republicans not aligned with his far right, election-denying movement despite the party’s underperformance in the recent midterm elections in which Trump-aligned Republicans accounted for a number of high-profile losses. Mr Trump is attempting to become just the second-ever person to serve two non-consecutive terms as president and the first since the 1800s. He is apparently seeking a democratic return to power while still under investigation for his attempt to overturn the result of the election.

The New York Times reported that Mr Trump’s decision to launch his campaign so soon after the midterms and nearly two full years before the presidential election was in part influenced by his hope that his status as a candidate will shield him from legal trouble stemming from his conduct during his first term as president.

More… https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-speech-tonight-war-decades-b2226040.html 

latimes.com – By Felicia Alvarez – Jack Laflin likes to recall the time he wriggled into a 9-foot-long, 30-pound blue mermaid tail. He’d spotted similar pieces behind the scenes of the acting gigs he was trying to land, but this was his first attempt to maneuver his way into a silicon tube.

He wondered if using a bit of water would help ease the process — and it did, until the water dried, further constraining his legs and torso. Alone in his apartment and lying on his living room floor, Laflin considered his lack of mobility and thought, “If there’s a fire alarm, I won’t be able to get out of here.”

Laflin had purchased the custom-made piece from Mertailor around the time he was thinking about a career change. “When I first moved to L.A., I was modeling and acting, and I figured out pretty quickly that I didn’t like the way the industry viewed me,” said Laflin, who is mixed race. “I was cast either as a thug, a gangster or I was a piece of meat at the nightclub.”

More… https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-06/mermaiding-is-making-waves-and-changing-lives 

latimes.com – By Jack Dolan – A police chase in Whittier on Saturday went a bit slower than normal: The intoxicated suspect was galloping through town on a horse. The “driver” initially refused to pull over, leading to the unusual pursuit.

“That was our afternoon,” Whittier police posted on their official Instagram account.

The pursuit ended with the DUI suspect in custody and the horse getting lots of love from the cops. The horse was taken into the department’s care after the incident.

Turns out, almost all of the usual traffic rules apply when you’re on city streets, even if your ride is a horse.

More… https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-10-16/dui-suspect-on-horse-leads-cops-on-chase 

theomeback.com – By Sean Keeley – We live in strange times when scandals have rocked the world of chess, fishing, and Irish dancing. As for the cheating scandal that has rocked chess to its core, we’ve officially reached the point where players’ bodies are being scanned for potential devices, which includes scans of their backside.

To catch you up, all of this stems from Hans Niemann’s Sept. 4 chess win over Magnus Carlsen at The Sinquefield Cup tournament in St. Louis, which was organized by the Saint Louis Chess Club. After the 19-year-old Niemann won, Carlsen withdrew from the tournament and accused Niemann of cheating, potentially by using a device. That led to a lot of speculation about where that device might have been located and Elon Musk himself got involved by speculating about the usage of vibrating anal beads.

More… https://thecomeback.com/weird-news/chess-cheating-scandal-body-scanning-hans-niemann.html 

thewrap.com – By Dessi Gomez – MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and podcaster Keith Olbermann called out a since-deleted tweet from The Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) about President Biden’s financial aid and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, with Scarborough calling it “unfiltered Russian propaganda.”

The tweet specifically referenced financial processes, comparing Biden’s aid to Ukraine with the migration issue at the United States’ southern border.

“Vladimir Putin announces the annexation of 4 Ukranian-occupied territories. Biden and the Dems continue to send Ukraine billions of taxpayer dollars,” CPAC’s original tweet — which was subsequently deleted with no explanation — reads. “Meanwhile, we are under attack at our southern border. When will Democrats put #AmericaFirst and end the gift-giving to Ukraine?”

More… https://www.thewrap.com/cpac-reference-to-ukraine-occupied-territories-outrage-scarborough-reiner/ 

wglt.org – By Ryan Denham – The young electric automaker Rivian has had a lot of firsts. The first truck to drive off the assembly line. The first accident out on the road. And now – the first vasectomy powered by a Rivian.

It happened Thursday in Texas, when a power outage hit Dr. Christopher Yang’s clinic. The Austin urologist had to cancel and reschedule several planned procedures. The vasectomy would have been one of them – until one of the staffers jokingly suggested doing the procedure using Yang’s 4-month-old Rivian R1T pickup truck as a backup power source.

More… https://www.wglt.org/local-news/2022-09-02/texas-doctor-uses-his-rivian-truck-to-power-a-vasectomy