Good morning!
On this date in 1919, the Supreme Court upheld labor organizer Eugene Debs’ conviction under the Espionage Act for publicly opposing America’s participation in World War I. In 1922, Mahatma Gandhi was arrested by British colonial authorities in India and charged with sedition. He would serve one-third of his six-year prison sentence before being released with appendicitis. And in 1969, James Earl Ray confessed to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
SCOTUS strikes again –> On Monday, the Supreme Court revived Notre Dame University’s challenge to Obamacare’s contraception mandate, sending it back to a lower court to reconsider in light of the Hobby Lobby decision despite the fact that its reach was supposedly limited to “closely held corporations.” Reuters’ Lawrence Hurley has more.
Fallout –> Jennifer Mann reports for the St. Louis Dispatch that a Missouri state court is taking over Ferguson’s cases after the DOJ’s blistering report about systemic racial discrimination in the town’s scheme to raise funds off of minor traffic violations. Ferguson municipal judge and prosecutor Ronald Brockmeyer also resigned on Monday. Last week, The Guardian reported that Brockmeyer, “who is accused of fixing traffic tickets for himself and colleagues while inflicting a punishing regime of fines and fees on the city’s residents, also owes more than $170,000 in unpaid taxes.”
Another police shooting –> On Friday, an unarmed black teenager named Tony Robinson was shot and killed by Madison, Wisconsin police, who followed him to an apartment and broke down the door after responding to calls about a man disturbing traffic. The shooting has led to large protests. German Lopez runs down what we know about the case so far at Vox.
iSpy –> Jeremy Scahill and Josh Begley report for The Intercept that “researchers working with the Central Intelligence Agency have conducted a multi-year, sustained effort to break the security of Apple’s iPhones and iPads” in order to “thwart the company’s attempts to provide mobile security to hundreds of millions of Apple customers across the globe.”
Messing with the press –> HuffPo’s Dana Liebelson says she was “intimidated” by Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette’s office, which served her two subpoenas demanding her handwritten notes “during a reporting trip on juvenile prison conditions.” reports for the Detroit News that the AG withdrew the subpoenas — as well as a third delivered to another journalist — after Liebelson’s complaints became “the center of a brief firestorm of criticism on social media.”
Sabotage –> We noted yesterday that 47 Republican senators had signed an open letter to the Iranian government warning — in what they called a lesson in our constitutional system — that any deal it struck with the Obama administration would likely be reversed after his term ends. Martin Matishak and Jordan Fabian report for The Hill that the move has outraged the White House and congressional Democrats, who blasted it as a dangerous political stunt that could lead to war. AND: Almanar News reports that Iran’s Foreign Minister, Dr. Javad Zarif, fired back with his own lesson, noting that the prospective deal would be a multilateral agreement Between Iran, the EU and all five of the UN Security Council’s permanent members. “I should bring one important point to the attention of the authors and that is,” he said, “the world is not the United States, and the conduct of inter-state relations is governed by international law, and not by US domestic law.”
Right-to-work-for-less –> After saying he has “no interest in pursuing right-to-work legislation in this state” during the 2012 campaign, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed the union-busting legislation into law on Monday. r have more at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
A little rationality — According to Politico, Sens. Cory Booker, Rand Paul and Kirsten Gillibrand will introduce a bill today that would legalize medical marijuana under federal law, resolving a longstanding conflict with 23 states and the District of Columbia.
Same old, same old –> According to a new ABC News/ WSJ poll, 59 percent of registered voters are looking for significant change in 2016, but 60 percent of them think Jeb Bush “represents a return to the policies of the past,” and 51 percent say the same of Hillary Clinton.
Creepy –> The Deseret News reports that four Utah police officers swear that when they approached an overturned car submerged in a river, they heard an adult voice clearly calling for help. But when they flipped the car over, they found only a dead woman and her 18-month old baby, who was in critical condition. “We’re not exactly sure where that voice came from,” said one of the officers. (Via: Raw Story.)
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