Judge Delays Trump’s Sentencing Until Nov. 26, After Election Day

The decision by Justice Juan M. Merchan means voters will be left in the dark about whether the former president will face time behind bars.

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“This is not a decision this court makes lightly but it is the decision which in this court’s view, best advances the interests of justice,” Justice Merchan wrote in the four-page ruling, which noted that “this matter is one that stands alone, in a unique place in this nation’s history.”

The judge appeared eager to skirt a swirl of partisan second-guessing in the campaign’s final stretch. A delay, he wrote, “should dispel any suggestion that the court will have issued any decision or imposed sentence either to give an advantage to, or create a disadvantage for, any political party.”

Electing Judges in Mexico? It’s a Bad Idea.

But, consistent with his systematic attacks on checks and balances, his project to elect judges could lead to the death of democracy in Mexico.

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Ms. Singh is a professor at Stanford Law School and the executive director of the school’s Rule of Law Impact Lab. Ms. Garcia is an expert adviser to the lab.

https://law.stanford.edu/rule-of-law-impact-lab/#slsnav-our-focus :

Democracy is in decline around the world. Governments elected to power with populist agendas are increasingly adopting authoritarian tactics. There are striking similarities in the methods deployed to subvert democracy. These methods typically include compromising electoral integrity, undermining judicial independence, and quashing free expression and dissent. The Stanford Law School Rule of Law Impact Lab studies and uses legal tools to counter core threats to democracy and to promote democratic renewal worldwide.

Incredible

Excerpt

In his role as a founder and CEO of the new firm, Wohl uses the name “Jay Klein,” according to the former employees and emails obtained by POLITICO. Burkman uses the pseudonym “Bill Sanders,” the former employees said.

LobbyMatic, whose website does not list any company leadership, temporarily signed up at least three brand-name clients: Toyota, consulting firm Boundary Stone Partners and drug company Lantheus, according to two of the former employees.

Running their new firm under pseudonyms appears to be the latest instance of shady behavior by a pair of convicted fraudsters who’ve become infamous in Washington for various schemes. Now, they are seizing on public exuberance around the promise of AI to transform the workplace — in this case, on K Street.

Two of the former LobbyMatic employees resigned after learning of Klein and Sanders’ true identities, while the other two learned only after they had left the company. The first worked for LobbyMatic for only a month, and the other three worked for the company for several months.

“Jay/Jacob was out of touch with reality,” said one of them. “Working for them you knew you were never getting the full story and were often left trying to find the truth. If I had to sum up my work experience for them, I would describe them as living with their head in the clouds and in a false reality.”

Dies of phytohemagglutinin poisoning in every movie

From 2003, but everything in it has also happened this year.

https://theonion.com/yahweh-or-the-highway/

The film was a pretty great allegory of what it must have been like to be an Uncommitted delegate at the DNC.

Nearly 200 water faucets in Oakland public schools had levels of lead that exceeded district standards, sparking outrage among staff who criticized district officials this week for failing to immediately notify school communities about results found earlier this summer and spring. It’s unclear how long students were exposed to the tainted taps.

Out of the 1,083 faucets and fountains tested, nearly 83% fell below the district’s limit of 5 parts per billion, or ppb, meaning they were safe, but 17% were above the limit. Federal standards are more lenient than Oakland’s standards, at 15 parts per billion, but 70 taps in the districts also failed to meet that requirement, in some cases by a wide margin.

Worth another listen on this, the day of Harris's coronation.

One connection stood out: While Dr. Shuren regulated the booming medical device industry, his wife, Allison W. Shuren, represented the interests of device makers as the co-leader of a team of lawyers at Arnold & Porter, one of Washington’s most powerful law firms.

Dr. Shuren signed ethics agreements obtained by The Times that were meant to wall him off from matters involving Arnold & Porter’s business. But it's not clear how rigorously the ethics agreements were actually enforced. His wife’s law firm refused to provide a list of clients — and the agency had no legal authority to require it, said Michael Felberbaum, a spokesman for the F.D.A.

. . .

But safety issues multiplied on his watch. The most urgent F.D.A. recalls of devices that can cause serious injury or death have ticked up, to nearly 100 so far this year, from 29 in 2012, the first year such measures were tracked in an agency database. In March, a heart device was recalled after 49 deaths were linked to a specific concern.

Reports of device-related injuries soared to 900,000 in 2023, up from about 190,000 in 2012, according to Device Events, a company that makes F.D.A. data user-friendly for subscribers.

His wife represented Theranos, as well as a breast implant manufacturer whose products were linked to a "rare form of lymphoma."