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🔵 Liberal Wins
Citizen Frank
April 02, 2025
Good morning. It’s Wednesday, April 2.
Susan Crawford, a candidate backed by in-state Democrats and supported by millions in out-of-state donations, has won the most expensive Supreme Court seat in state history.
Crawford defeated Brad Schimel, a former Republican attorney general who had President Donald Trump’s endorsement, though her straw opponent was tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Despite benefiting from millions in out-of-state donations, Crawford was able to portray the race as a battle to keep Musk from buying a seat on the state’s high court through donations in support of Schimel.
Wisconsin’s decade-old requirement that voters show a photo ID is now permanently part of the state constitution after voters approved the referendum question at the bottom of the April 1 ballot.
Decision Desk HQ projected the referendum question passed about 20 minutes after polls closed. With 84% of the vote reported as of 9:30 p.m., about 63% of voters approved the question, while around 37% voted against it.
Republicans placed the question on the ballot in hopes of protecting the law from being overturned by a liberal-controlled state Supreme Court. While the court does not currently have a case challenging voter ID, it will now be much harder for justices to declare the law unconstitutional in the future.
US President Donald Trump is poised to unveil sweeping new “Liberation Day” tariffs on Wednesday, but kept the world guessing until the last minute about the scope of an onslaught that could spark a global trade war.
Trump will roll out the measures flanked by cabinet members in the Rose Garden of the White House at 4:00 pm (2000 GMT) — after Wall Street markets close — promising that they will stop America being “ripped off” and will deliver a new “golden age” of US industry.
But while Trump insisted he had decided on the reciprocal tariffs hitting countries that have targeted the United States, the White House admitted he was still ironing out the details with less than 24 hours to go.
Val Kilmer, who played Bruce Wayne in “Batman Forever,” channeled Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone‘s “The Doors” and starred as a tubercular Doc Holliday in “Tombstone,” died Tuesday in Los Angeles. His daughter Mercedes told The New York Times the cause was pneumonia. He was 65. He had been battling throat cancer for several years.
The baby-faced blonde actor had a solid run as a leading man with a volatile reputation in the ’80s and ’90s, starring in “Top Gun,” “Real Genius,” “Willow,” “Heat,” and “The Saint.” He returned briefly to screens in 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” although he could no longer speak due to his cancer.
In 2021, a documentary on his life, “Val,” was released. His son provided the actor’s voice and the film utilized hundreds of hours of video he had recorded over the years, giving a revealing look at the sets he worked on and showing the actor to be an introspective thinker with an artist’s soul.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said he is canceling the week’s voting agenda after several Republicans joined Democrats in a vote to change the rules to allow new parents in Congress to vote by proxy.
The announcement came after nine Republicans joined all Democrats in a 206-222 vote against Johnson’s attempt to block plans that would allow lawmakers who become parents to vote remotely for up to three months. Johnson told reporters it was a “very disappointing result” and means “we can’t have any further action on the floor this week.”
The GOP rebellion, led by Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, was Johnson’s biggest legislative blow of the year so far. The backlash adds pressure on the House speaker, who is already trying to pass bills with the GOP’s thin majority while facing criticism from hardline Republican lawmakers.
NBC News’ Steve Kornacki will not return to MSNBC after 12 years following the network’s spinoff arrangement.
Kornacki, the popular political data sensation, has agreed to remain with NBC News in his renewed contract and expand his appearances across the network’s news and sports divisions, The Los Angeles Times reported.
The contract does not include his employment at MSNBC, which has turned into a new corporate entity by its parent company, Comcast.
In 2024, an FBI official admitted to House investigators that an FBI employee had inadvertently confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop to Twitter on a conference call the morning of October 14, 2020, the day the New York Post published a story about it.
“I recall that when the question came up, an intelligence analyst assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division said something to the effect of, ‘Yes, the laptop is real’,” testified the then-Russia Unit Chief of the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force in a closed door transcribed interview.
“I believe it was an (Office of General Counsel) attorney assigned to the (Foreign Influence Task Force) stepped in and said, ‘We will not comment further on this topic.’”
Shares of conservative cable channel Newsmax soared nearly 180% Tuesday, a day after the stock’s dizzying debut on the New York Stock Exchange.
Newsmax shares have risen more than 1,500% since its Monday debut, when it opened at $14 per share. It closed at $233 per share on Tuesday.
The skyrocketing stock not only brought the company’s market capitalization to nearly $30 billion — surpassing the market cap of legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp — it also propped up the returns of its investors.
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