Month: December 2023

Former President Donald Trump announced that he is no longer planning to testify in his civil fraud trial in New York on Monday. Trump was expected to take the witness stand to testify in his own defense against allegations that his family and his business engaged in fraud, but he reversed course Sunday, writing on his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday in an all-caps message that he “WILL NOT BE TESTIFYING ON MONDAY. MAGA!”  Trump said that he’s already testified and has nothing more to say on the matter — and that the entire trial is an attempt at election interference.

Trump’s attorney Chris Kise said in a statement: “President Trump has already testified. There is really nothing more to say to a Judge who has imposed an unconstitutional gag order and thus far appears to have ignored President Trump’s testimony and that of everyone else involved in the complex financial transactions at issue in the case. The Attorney General continues her rabid and unreasonable pursuit of President Trump, obviously intent on driving profitable businesses out of New York. Under such circumstances, there is no valid reason for President Trump to testify further in this case.”

Trump and his two eldest sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, are defendants in the lawsuit. Trump testified earlier in the trial under questions from the New York attorney general’s office, and his lawyers had been expected to question him as part of his defense on Monday.

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University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) president Elizabeth Magill has voluntarily resigned from her post, amid backlash in the wake of her testimony during a congressional hearing on anti-Semitic harassment on campus.

UPenn Board of Trustees Chairman Scott Bok said in a letter to the school community on Saturday announcing Magill’s resignation as president that Magill has “voluntarily tendered her resignation” as president of the University of Pennsylvania but will remain a tenured faculty member at the university’s law school. Said Bok: “On behalf of the entire Penn community, I want to thank President Magill for her service to the University as President and wish her well.”

Magill said in a statement shared by the board: “It has been my privilege to serve as President of this remarkable institution. It has been an honor to work with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community members to advance Penn’s vital missions.”  The board’s executive committee also announced that Bok has stepped down as chairman of the University of Pennsylvania’s Board of Trustees.

Magill’s resignation comes as pressure mounted on her, as well as Harvard President Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth, due to their testimony last Tuesday in front of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce at a hearing entitled “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Anti-Semitism.”  After Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., asked all three university presidents if they considered rallies calling for genocide against Jewish people to be harassment worthy of action, Gay said the answer wasn’t cut-and-dried and depended on context, such as if the speech is “targeted at an individual.” Magill said it could be a violation of school policy if it was followed up by certain conduct, while Kornbluth such calls for genocide would be “investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe.

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On Thursday, a Texas judge granted permission for a woman to terminate her pregnancy due to her fetus being diagnosed with what doctors describe as a ‘fatal disorder’ – despite the state’s strict abortion ban. Travis County District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble handed down the temporary restraining order on Thursday.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed the historic, emergency lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from the Dallas-area, who found out last week that her baby suffered from the chromosomal disorder trisomy 18, which usually results in either stillbirth or an early death of an infant. Cox’s doctors said continuing the nonviable pregnancy posed a risk to her health and future fertility.  Cox, who is 20 weeks pregnant, has been to three different emergency rooms in the past month, and her doctors have told her that early screening and ultrasound tests suggested her pregnancy is “unlikely to end with a healthy baby.” Due to Texas’ strict abortion bans, doctors told Cox their “hands are tied” and she would have to wait until the fetus dies inside her or carry the pregnancy to term.

The Texas Office of the Attorney General, which challenged Cox’s claims at Thursday’s hearing, may try to ask a higher court to intervene, issuing a statement saying the temporary restraining order “will not insulate hospitals, doctors, or anyone else, from civil and criminal liability for violating Texas’ abortion laws.” Paxton’s office also included a letter sent to several medical centers outlining action it will take against doctors who perform an abortion.

According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, Gamble’s decision – which only applies to Cox’s case – is believed to be the first time a judge has allowed a woman to legally get an abortion since the decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973. Texas has some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, and in 2021, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law SB8, which bans abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy. A “trigger ban” also went into effect following the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that made it a felony for doctors in the state to perform an abortion unless the life of the patient is in danger.

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The victims of the mass shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Wednesday were comprised of three faculty members who were killed, and one faculty member who was injured.

According to the Clark County coroner’s office, one of the victims was identified as Cha Jan Chang, 64, – known as “Jerry” – a UNLV business professor who lived in Henderson, Nevada. Chang was an assistant professor at UNLV from 2001 to 2007 and had been an associate professor since 2007, receiving both his masters and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. UNLV President Keith Whitfield said in a statement on X: “Dr. Chang was a longtime educator of management information systems, spending more than 20 years of his academic career teaching a generation of UNLV Lee Business School students.”

A second victim, Patricia Navarro Velez, 39, was an assistant professor in accounting at UNLV and lived in Las Vegas, according to the coroner. Velez had a Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida, with her UNLV biography stating: “Navarro’s current research focuses on cybersecurity disclosures and assurance, internal control weakness disclosure, and data analytics”. Whitfield said on X: “Dr. Navarro-Velez, an assistant professor of accounting, had devoted her career to educating the next generation of accountants. She joined UNLV nearly 5 years ago as a professor of accounting, where she focused on teaching accounting information systems.”

Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill identified the suspect as Anthony Polito. The suspect — who had applied for a college professorship at UNLV, but was not hired, according to sources — was killed in a shootout with responding officers about 10 minutes after shots were first reported at UNLV’s Beam Hall.

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