UNBIASED - August 6, 2024: Harris Taps Gov. Tim Walz as Running Mate. Here's What You Need to Know About HiM. Plus Google Loses Antitrust Lawsuit, SCOTUS Rejects Bid to Delay Trump's Sentencing, and More.

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

1. Supreme Court Rejects Missouri's Bid to Delay Trump's Hush Money Sentencing (0:28)2. Judge Finds Google Violated Antitrust Laws With Search Engine Feature (6:12)3. Pakistani National Arrested Over Iran-Linked Assassination Plot (10:26)4. Kamala Harris Taps MN Gov. Tim Walz as Running Mate. Here's What You Need to Know About Him and His Policies (11:48)Support ‘UNBIASED’ on Patreon.Watch this episode on YouTube.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Tuesday, August 6th, and this is your daily news rundown. As a reminder, if you love the unbiased approach that this episode provides and you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen, share the show with your friends, and if you're watching on YouTube, please go ahead and hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to the channel if you're not already. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories, starting with a story from late

yesterday afternoon that came out after my episode was already out. The Supreme Court rejected an attempt by the state of Missouri to block the sentencing of former President Trump in his hush money case. As we know, Trump was convicted back in May on 34 felony charges related to the recordings of payments made to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election. Following that conviction, Judge Mershon set an initial sentencing date in July. But when the Supreme Court released their presidential immunity ruling, Judge Mershon actually delayed the sentencing date in July. But when the Supreme Court released their presidential immunity ruling, Judge Marchand actually delayed the sentencing and it was ultimately rescheduled for September. When that sentencing was rescheduled for September, Missouri's Attorney General filed

two different motions with the Supreme Court. One of the motions was a motion for leave to file a complaint. The other was a motion for preliminary relief or a stay. So the motion for leave to file a complaint was basically just a formal request to be able to file a lawsuit or a complaint with the Supreme Court against the state of New York. And the request for preliminary relief or a stay was a request for the justices to put Trump's sentencing and gag order on hold until after the election. Missouri's argument was essentially that the gag order and impending sentence are unlawfully impeding the election and violate the First Amendment rights of Missouri citizens to hear Trump's speech on topics related to his case. But yesterday, in a one-page order, the justices denied both of Missouri's requests.

Now stick with me here because I'm going to explain two different legal terms that are relevant to this story. It'll all make sense by the time the story is done, but I just need to kind of give this information so that the story does make sense and you know why the Supreme Court denied these requests. So the court's decision to deny Missouri's requests center around standing and jurisdiction. These are things we've talked about before, but standing is your ability to sue. So in order to sue, you have to have a genuine stake in the outcome of a case, otherwise known as a judicially cognizable interest, and you have to have suffered some sort of injury or are in imminent danger of injury that was caused by the defendant's actions. If you don't have those things, you do not

have standing and you cannot sue. Jurisdiction, on the other hand, is a court's ability to hear the case. So the Supreme Court under the Constitution has what's called original jurisdiction and appellate jurisdiction. Appellate jurisdiction is what we're used to seeing, which is when the Supreme Court hears an appeal in a case that involves the Constitution or federal law. Original jurisdiction, though, is limited to cases that involve disputes between the states or disputes that arise between ambassadors and high-ranking ministers. With original jurisdiction, the Supreme Court is the first and only court to hear the case. So Missouri's case

against New York would fall under original jurisdiction because it's a dispute between the states and therefore can go straight to the Supreme Court. But regardless of whether the court has appellate jurisdiction or original jurisdiction, Missouri still has to show that it has standing to sue. And what we can infer from yesterday's order, although the order did not go into much detail, is that Missouri failed to establish standing. And here's why. In 2020, we saw a similar situation. Some Republican states went directly to the Supreme Court to challenge election procedures in Democratic states. In that lawsuit, the Republican states styled it just like Missouri did against New York,

as a lawsuit between states. And the Supreme Court denied it, despite having original jurisdiction over the case. And in their ruling, the justices wrote, quote, the state of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article 3 of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections. End quote. What that tells us, even though we didn't get a full explanation in the dismissal order that was released yesterday, is that the justices may very well have seen Missouri's challenge just as they saw this 2020 case. In other words, that Missouri didn't demonstrate a judicially cognizable interest in the way that New York is

either, you know, quote unquote, impeding with elections as Missouri stated, or the way that they're handling Trump's case. Missouri just doesn't have the requisite standing and therefore they dismissed it. Notably, Justices Alito and Thomas wrote in yesterday's order that they actually would have granted Missouri's request to file a complaint but wouldn't have taken any other action. And actually, they both did the same exact thing in that 2020 case we just talked about. In 2020, Thomas wrote, quote, in my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction. I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint, but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue, end quote. So what we can infer from that 2020 case

is that in Missouri's case, Thomas and Alito likely carry that same rationale, that the court doesn't have discretion to deny the filing of a complaint in a case within their original jurisdiction, even if standing is an issue. So to wrap it all up, basically the Supreme Court will not pause Trump's impending sentencing or lift the gag order on the basis that Missouri has no standing to challenge either issue. As of now, Trump's sentencing date will remain scheduled for September 18th. In some other news and another story from late yesterday, late Monday, a judge ruled that Google violated an antitrust law with its search engine feature. So what does it all mean? I will tell you. Here

in the United States, we have something called the Sherman Act, and specifically section two of the Sherman Act says that it's illegal for anyone to monopolize or attempt to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the states or with foreign nations. In other words, and as it's relevant to this story, you cannot dominate any part of business in the United States through a monopoly. And a monopoly requires two things. First, monopoly power, right? Dominance over a market. Second, the willful acquisition and maintenance of that power. And this requires an element of anti-competitive conduct. So the Sherman Act says that a company cannot have monopoly power that was acquired and maintained through anti-competitive conduct. If a business, private individual, or even the DOJ, as is the case here, thinks that any one company has monopoly power that was willfully acquired and maintained through

anti-competitive conduct, they can sue the company for violating the Sherman Act. And by the way, the Sherman Act isn't the only antitrust law, but it's the one at issue in this case, so that's what we're sticking with. Basically what happened here, the DOJ in the state of Colorado said, hey, Google, you are very dominant specifically within the search engine space, and this dominance was acquired unlawfully. And to illustrate Google's dominance, in 2020, 90% of all search queries went through Google. The second place search engine, Microsoft's Bing, saw only 6% of all searches. That's 84% fewer than Google's in the same year. So okay, whatever, Google has risen in the ranks,

what's the issue? Well, according to the DOJ Colorado and the judge overseeing the case, the issue lies in Google's distribution contracts. And these are contracts that Google has entered into with browser developers, cell phone manufacturers, and cell phone carriers to be the default search engine provided to users from the get-go. In other words, Google is pre-installed as the default search engine on these devices. And this activity, the judge says, is an attempt to thwart competition and maintain its monopoly, which is illegal under the Sherman Act. Now, Google has already said they're going to appeal this decision. This decision was out of a district court, which is the lowest court. So Google definitely has the opportunity to appeal

specifically to the appellate court for the District of Columbia, which is the appellate court that has jurisdiction over the district court that issued this decision. And then from there, the losing party at the appellate level, whether it be the United States or Google, can then take the case to the Supreme Court. A couple of other notes about this case in particular. One, if any penalties are ultimately issued against Google, we're not going to see them for at least, you know, at least six months, but probably even longer. This isn't a next week thing. It's not even a next month thing. Pending the appeal, this could take months and months, maybe even years to finalize. But if penalties are ultimately

issued, we could see a few different things. Just to give you some examples, maybe Google has to change the way it makes these distribution agreements. Maybe Google has to prompt users with a choice between Google's search engine and other search engines. And then, of course, Google would probably face a monetary fine just given the size of the company and the profitability of the company. The other note I wanted to make, and this is the last thing I'll say about this case, is that this case and this ruling is specific to Google's search engine.

There's currently another pending antitrust lawsuit against Google, which is set to Google's search engine. There's currently another pending antitrust lawsuit against Google, which is set to go to trial in September, but that case is specific to Google's advertising technology business. So there's a few different antitrust lawsuits at play here, but they're all for different aspects of Google's business. So just note that last night's ruling was specific to Google's search engine. Okay, now let's switch gears to a completely unrelated story. The Justice Department announced an arrest from last month of a Pakistani man who has alleged ties to the Iranian government

and sought to carry out political assassinations here in the United States. You may remember following the assassination attempt on former President Trump, I spoke about the fact that Trump's security had actually been heightened because of this potential assassination threat that the government had identified stemming from Iran. And we didn't know many details about it then. We still don't know many details, honestly, but we at least found out today that one man was arrested on July 12th, just two days before Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump at that Butler, Pennsylvania rally. The 46-year-old Pakistani national is accused of traveling to New York City last year and working with a hitman to carry out

these assassinations. His arrest came after he met with purported hitmen who were actually undercover officers. And FBI investigators say that his intent was to hire hitmen not only to assassinate Trump, but also other current and former government officials here in the United States. We may find out more about the story in the days to come, but that is what we know. As of this point, the story had just come out about an hour before I sat down to record. Finally, Kamala Harris has selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. Here's what you need to know about him. We'll start with a brief biography, and then we'll get into some of his policies.

So Walz is a 60-year-old born in rural Nebraska, a very small town, and after high school, he enlisted in the Army National Guard, where he served for a total of 24 years. While enlisted, he attended college at Shadrun State College, graduated with a social science degree in 1989, and thereafter spent a year teaching abroad in China. In 1995, he got a DWI but quit drinking thereafter. And when he had returned home from teaching abroad, he started serving full-time in the Army National Guard. He even got deployed overseas after 9-11. Eventually, he became a high school social studies teacher as well as a football coach before seeking a position in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006. He was re-elected for another five terms

in the House before successfully running for governor of Minnesota in 2018, and he's currently serving his second term as Minnesota's governor. Now for some of the things that he's done as governor and some of his policies, and we'll go topic by topic on this. On immigration, Walls supported efforts to give Minnesota sanctuary state status, which means the state would prevent state law enforcement from enforcing immigration laws. However, Minnesota is not currently a sanctuary state with the exception of two counties within the state, which are sanctuary communities. But this is just to say he supported sanctuary state status. In 2018, Walls said, quote, my position on Minnesota becoming a sanctuary state boils down

to who has the responsibility for enforcing immigration laws, end quote. As we know, enforcement of immigration matters is a federal matter, so his statement implies that he does not believe Minnesota state law enforcement should be enforcing immigration laws, thus showing his support for sanctuary state status. Walls said recently on CNN in talking about Trump's border policies and Trump wanting to build a wall, he said, quote, our border could work better. There's no reason someone seeking asylum, which we will always be a guiding light for, should have to wait seven years to have that adjudicated. He, meaning Trump, talks about this wall. And I always say, let me know how high it is. If it's

25 feet, then I'll invest in a 30-foot ladder factory. That's not how you stop this. You stop this by using electronics, you stop it by using more border control agents, and you stop it by having a legal system that allows for the tradition that allows folks to come here just like my relatives did. requirement of proof of residency to apply for a license, which meant that under the new version of the law, all those who live in Minnesota can apply for a state-issued ID regardless of immigration status. There's also a claim going around that Walls made college free for illegal immigrants, and this kind of segues us into his stance on education. But what that claim is referring to is the Minnesota Dream Act. And what the Minnesota Dream Act says is that undocumented students can apply for the state's tuition-free college program if their families make $80,000 or less annually or apply for in-state resident tuition rates and state financial aid if they attended a Minnesota high school for at least three years, graduated from a Minnesota high school or have a GED,

and if a male between the ages of 18 and 25 register with the United States Selective Service to establish residency. Currently, there is no proof of citizenship application required because under the law, proof of application for lawful immigration status is only required if a federal process exists for a student to do so, and no such process exists at this point, nor is DACA a requirement for this financial aid program. It is worth noting though that even before the Minnesota Dream Act, Minnesota was one of a handful of states that allowed students to apply for in-state tuition, scholarships, and other financial aid regardless of their immigration status.

Continuing on the topic of education, Walls implemented free breakfast and lunch at public schools regardless of household income. He approved programs covering college tuition for low-income students, and he signed into law a $2.3 billion education budget. On personal freedoms, Walls enacted the Protect Reproductive Actions Act, which established the right to abortion under state law. No limitations there when it comes to the stage of pregnancy. He extended funding for abortion services and eliminated restrictions on abortion procedures, such as the informed consent requirements and the 24-hour waiting period. He also banned convergent therapy and signed an executive order protecting

access to gender-affirming care, including for minors. On gun control, Walls himself is a hunter. And previously, while in Congress, he actually secured an endorsement and an A rating from the NRA because of his more conservative views on gun control. And in 2016, he was actually featured in a magazine called Guns and Ammo as one of the top 20 politicians for gun owners. However, since becoming governor, he's become a bit more liberal on the gun control front. He enacted Minnesota public safety laws that expanded background checks, increased penalties for straw purchasing guns, banned certain guns, and included a red flag law, which allows law enforcement and family members to petition for a protective order if someone with a firearm is believed to be a danger to either themselves or others. For employees, he established

paid leave, insured paid sick days, banned non-compete agreements, increased on-the-job protections for certain workers, and pushed for pro-labor legislation. On taxes, he enacted the largest tax cut in Minnesota history that gave single-tax filers who made up to $75,000 annually a refundable tax credit of $260 and married joint filers who made up to $150,000 annually a credit of $520. Those individuals are couples with children and dependents received more credits, and many seniors are fully exempt from state taxes on Social Security, and that same bill raised taxes on certain corporations. On voting, Walls signed into law the Minnesota Voting Rights Act, which prohibits limiting any citizen's right to vote based on race, color, or language. He

restored voting rights for formerly incarcerated people, established automatic voter registration, and created a permanent absentee voting status. On the environment, he signed a bill leading Minnesota to 100% clean electricity by 2040, banned PFAs, which are otherwise known as forever chemicals, expanded Minnesota's electric car infrastructure, provided a tax credit for electric car purchases, and cut red tape to speed up energy permitting projects. On drugs, he legalized adult use of cannabis, expunged nonviolent cannabis convictions, and although tobacco isn't a drug, we'll throw it in here anyway, he raised the age to purchase tobacco to 21. For consumers, he banned medical debt from impacting

credit scores, banned medical providers from withholding medically necessary care due to unpaid debt, and eliminated automatic transfers of medical debt to a patient's spouse. On the economy, this is the last one we'll do. Since he took office in January 2019, Minnesota's gross domestic product has grown about 28% before accounting for inflation as compared to 35% growth for the country as a whole. Personal income per capita has increased 28% versus 30% for the rest of the country. However, while in office, Minnesota's budget had a multi-billion dollar surplus. So hopefully that gave you a little bit of insight, a little more insight into Governor Tim Walz and his policies, but obviously that's not everything you could know. So as always, do your own research, look into him yourself,

see what you can find, read some things, you know, just be informed before you head out to the polls. That goes for any candidate. I am a big advocate of researching any and all candidates before you cast your ballot. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great night and I will be back with you tomorrow.