Donald Trump barred from Maine presidential ballot under insurrection clause

Published

5 months ago

December 29, 2023

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Maine’s top election official has disqualified Donald Trump from the state ballot in next year’s US presidential primary election – becoming the second state to bar the former president over the Capitol riots.

Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows ruled that Mr Trump incited an insurrection when he spread false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election and then urged his supporters to march on the Capitol on 6 January 2021.

“I do not reach this conclusion lightly,” Ms Bellows wrote in her 34-page decision.

“I am mindful that no secretary of state has ever deprived a presidential candidate of ballot access based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. I am also mindful, however, that no presidential candidate has ever before engaged in insurrection.”

The ruling, which can be appealed to a state court, applies only to the March primary election, but it could affect Mr Trump’s status for the November general election.

It will likely add to pressure on the US Supreme Court to resolve questions about Mr Trump’s eligibility nationwide under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which prohibits anyone who swore an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection” against it from holding office.

The Maine case, just like the Colorado case, will almost certainly wind its way up to the Supreme Court

This is an indicator of what the coming year will look like. Court cases across the land with Donald Trump at their heart.

It’s a hint of chaotic twists and turns in America’s political journey which are impossible to predict. But don’t read too much into it, yet.

Maine is the second state to bar him from their state ballot, following Colorado. They are, for the moment at least, outliers though.

Most courts have sided with Mr Trump in citizen-led cases brought to try to disqualify him. Recent cases in Michigan, Arizona and Minnesota all went in the former president’s favour.

The Maine case, just like the Colorado case, will almost certainly wind its way up to the Supreme Court of the land in Washington DC which already looks set to determine so many aspects of the 2024 race.

Even before that, Mr Trump’s team can appeal the Maine secretary of state’s decision at an appeals court in Maine. So there is a long way to go here.

Despite that though – these decisions and the headlines they generate only serve to rile Mr Trump’s supporters, and many Republicans more widely, underlining the view that the so-called establishment is out to get Mr Trump.

For the Democratic Party, there is huge jeopardy here. The optics of trying to take their opponent out through the courts, however valid the case may or may not be, doesn’t look good. The political atmosphere in America is just too febrile.

Mr Trump has been indicted in both a federal case and in Georgia for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election but he has not been charged with insurrection related to the 6 January attack.

His lawyers have disputed that he engaged in insurrection and argued that his remarks to supporters on the day of the 2021 riot were protected by his right to free speech.

The Trump campaign said it would file an objection to the “atrocious” decision made by Maine’s secretary of state.

“We are witnessing, in real-time, the attempted theft of an election and the disenfranchisement of the American voter,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung added in a statement.

On 19 December, Colorado became the first state to disqualify Mr Trump from its primary ballot, making him the first candidate in US history to be deemed ineligible for the presidency for engaging in insurrection.

Mr Trump has vowed to appeal the Colorado ruling to the Supreme Court.

Similar attempts to disqualify Mr Trump in other states have been rejected.

The top court in Michigan, a pivotal battleground state in the general election, declined on Wednesday to hear a case seeking to disqualify Mr Trump from the state’s presidential primary ballot.

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Maine is rated as likely Democratic by non-partisan election forecasters, meaning that President Joe Biden is expected to win the state.

But Mr Trump captured one electoral vote from Maine in both the 2016 and 2020 elections due to an unusual set-up that allows the state to split its four Electoral College votes.

Candidates must win 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.

US

First victim in Jaws has died aged 77

Published

9 hours ago

May 13, 2024

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The swimmer who was the first victim in the 1975 blockbuster Jaws has died.

Susan Backlinie died in her home in California at the age of 77, according to her agent. Her death was first reported by The Daily Jaws website.

The opening scene of Steven Spielberg‘s classic features Ms Backlinie running along the beach and before diving into the water and skinny dipping.

Her character Chrissie Watkins is then suddenly pulled under the water and she screams as she is violently attacked by an unseen great white shark.

Ms Backlinie had been a champion swimmer when cast in the film. She told The Palm Beach Post in 2015 that Spielberg told her: “When your scene is done, I want everyone under the seats with the popcorn and bubblegum.

“I think we did that,” she said.

In the documentary, Jaws: The Inside Story, Spielberg called Ms Backlinie’s sequence “one of the most dangerous” stunts he’s ever directed.

“She was actually being tugged left and right by 10 men on one rope and 10 men on the other back to the shore, and that’s what caused her to move like that.”

Ms Backlinie worked with Mr Spielberg again in the 1979 parody war film 1941, in which she spoofed her Jaws character.

US

Patient who had first ever pig kidney transplant dies two months after procedure

Published

1 day ago

May 12, 2024

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Patient who had first ever pig kidney transplant dies two months after procedure

The first person to have a pig kidney transplant has died nearly two months after the procedure.

Richard “Rick” Slayman, 62, underwent the four-hour transplant at a hospital in Boston in March.

It marked the first time a genetically modified pig kidney was transplanted into a living patient. Surgeons said they believed the organ would last for at least two years.

Slayman’s family announced his death yesterday, thanking the doctors who carried out the world-first surgery for their “enormous efforts”.

They said the animal-to-human transplant – known as a xenotransplant – gave them “seven more weeks with Rick, and our memories made during that time will remain in our minds and hearts”.

The transplant team at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) said they did not have any indication he died as a result of the transplant.

Slayman, from Weymouth, Massachusetts, previously had a kidney transplant at MGH in 2018, but had to go back on dialysis last year after it showed signs of failure.

As he needed frequent procedures as a result of dialysis complications, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant.

His family said Slayman wanted to undergo the procedure to give hope to those on waiting lists for transplants, adding: “Rick accomplished that goal and his hope and optimism will endure forever.”

Pig kidneys had previously been transplanted into brain-dead donors, but only temporarily. Two men have also received hearts from pigs, with both dying within months of their prodecures.

A month after Slayman’s transplant, New Jersey’s Lisa Pisano became the second person in the world to undergo a pig kidney transplant, and the first to have surgery while also having a mechanical heart pump surgically implanted.

The 54-year-old said she “took a chance” after suffering heart and kidney failure, which left her too ill to qualify for a traditional transplant.

More than 100,000 people are on the transplant waiting list in the US – most need a kidney, but thousands die waiting.

In the UK, the NHS said that in the year to March last year, there were 6,959 patients waiting for an organ transplant.

It said 439 patients died while on the active list waiting for it and a further 732 were removed from the transplant list, “mostly as a result of deteriorating health and ineligibility for transplant”.

US

Oprah Winfrey speaks of ‘biggest regret’ as she opens up about weight loss struggles

Published

1 day ago

May 12, 2024

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Oprah Winfrey speaks of 'biggest regret' as she opens up about weight loss struggles

Oprah Winfrey has admitted playing a role in perpetuating diet culture during her career and said a dieting item from a 1980s show was one of her “biggest regrets”.

The 70-year-old star – who has been ranked among the most influential women in the world – has been open about her struggles to maintain a healthy weight and attempts to lose weight.

In March she said “making fun of my weight was a national sport” for more than two decades.

In comments reported by NBC, Sky’s US partner, the talk show host told a livestream and live audience: “I want to acknowledge that I have been a steadfast participant in this diet culture through my platforms, through the magazine, through the talk show for 25 years.

“I’ve been a major contributor to it. I cannot tell you how many weight loss shows and makeovers I have done and they have been a staple since I’ve been working in television.”

But she admitted an item on a 1988 edition of The Oprah Winfrey Show was one of her “biggest regrets” when she rolled a wagon of fat on to the stage to represent the weight she had recently lost thanks to a liquid diet and exercise.

She had starved herself for months, she said, admitting that it “sent a message that starving yourself with a liquid diet and set a standard for people watching that I, nor anybody else, could uphold. The very next day, I began to gain the weight back.

“I own what I’ve done, and now I want to do better.”

Winfrey was speaking on Thursday at an event organised by WeightWatchers, whose board of directors she joined in 2015, before saying in February she was leaving.

In 2016, she used an interview in the magazine O to reveal she had lost 12kg, sharing the cover with nine other woman to celebrate their “best body”.

In the issue, Winfrey said, “It was my idea to share the cover with other women who are on the same journey that I am. My own struggles with the scale are well known. I’ve never believed in hiding them.”

In December, she told People she had started taking a weight loss drug, saying she used it “as I feel I need it, as a tool to manage not yo-yoing.

“The fact that there’s a medically approved prescription for managing weight and staying healthier, in my lifetime, feels like relief, like redemption, like a gift, and not something to hide behind and once again be ridiculed for.”