UNBIASED - House Proposes New TikTok Ban, Google Fires Employees After Israel-Linked Protest, Two Trump Jurors Dismissed, Sanctions Imposed on Iran/Venezuela, and More.

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Starting point is 00:00:50 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. It is Thursday, April 18th, and this is your daily news rundown brought to you by Lex Summit, which I have the absolute pleasure of speaking at this coming September. Lex Summit in Salt Lake City is this multi-day conference for those in the legal profession to learn from some of the brightest minds in the legal profession to learn from some of the brightest minds in the legal industry. And it's not just for lawyers, it's for anyone in the legal profession. At Lex Summit, you'll immerse yourself in cutting-edge AI solutions

Starting point is 00:01:34 tailored to your firm so that you return to work after the summit and you are absolutely ready to take your practice to the next level. And one of the best parts, and if you're a lawyer, you'll agree with me on this, you can earn CLE credits while you're there. So I do have a specialized link for you in this episode description. Definitely take advantage of that, but also be sure to use the code JordanIsMyLawyer, all one word at checkout. You'll get an extra 15% off the already discounted early bird pricing. So it'll save you over $400 on your ticket. Again, that is code JordanIsMyLawyer for 15% off the already discounted ticket. But make sure you use the special link in this episode description.

Starting point is 00:02:19 You are not going to want to miss this event. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. In an update to last night's episode, and just to make sure we sort of hit all the bases and also, you know, touch home plate, the Senate voted to dismiss both impeachment charges against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, officially marking the end of the impeachment process. So I reported last night that the Senate had dismissed one of the two charges at the time that I had recorded the episode, but that the Senate would soon be voting on the second motion to dismiss put forth by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. And I also said that by the time

Starting point is 00:03:01 the episode went live, we may have a vote on that second motion. And sure enough, we did. News, it's just constant. It never stops. So again, the House had charged Mayorkas with willful and systemic refusal to enforce immigration laws, as well as breach of trust. The House sent those articles over to the Senate earlier this week so that the Senate would hold a trial on whether to convict Mayorkas. But instead, the Democrat majority voted to dismiss both charges because that is an option to avoid a trial. The vote on the first dismissal was 51 to 48 to 1, with Republican Representative Lisa Murkowski voting present, and the vote on the second dismissal was 51 to 49,

Starting point is 00:03:45 with Murkowski that time voting no. So again, that does mark the end of Mayorkas' impeachment, and Congress will now move on. And actually, while we're on the topic of Congress, I did want to note something about the TikTok bill that I read today. So we've all heard a lot about this TikTok bill, and last month the House passed this bill that would require ByteDance, which is the parent company of TikTok, to divest itself of its ownership in the app within six months. Following that passage, it wasn't really clear how things would play out in the Senate, whether the Senate would be on the same page as the House and ultimately pass it. it's just we weren't sure. So now the House has actually included a new version of the TikTok bill in this new foreign aid package that I talked about yesterday. This new version of the bill

Starting point is 00:04:36 actually gives ByteDance a full year to divest itself as compared to the six months required in the previous bill. So my guess is that the House is thinking that the Senate will be more likely to accept those terms if, you know, this does ultimately pass the House and make its way to the Senate. But I did just want to give you a quick update on that. And now we can move on to some sanctions news. So earlier today, the United States announced new sanctions on 16 individuals and two entities that are associated with Iran's drone program in the wake of its attack on Israel. Now, these sanctions specifically target executives of an engine manufacturer, which is the supplier

Starting point is 00:05:19 of a particular type of drone for Iran. It also sanctioned the companies that service the engines and individuals associated with providing these drones to Iranian proxy forces. And basically, the purpose of these sanctions is to try to disrupt the drone aspects of Iran's military activity by interfering with the economical side of things and sort of attempting to cut off the supplies they need in order to function properly. And speaking of sanctions, the United States reimposed oil sanctions against Venezuela today because Venezuela has failed to abide by agreed upon terms ahead of the country's elections in July. If you've been here a while, I did report on this in October, but in October, President Biden

Starting point is 00:06:06 came to an agreement with Venezuela's president where the United States would ease up on its sanctions if Venezuela agreed that it or Venezuela's president would agree to host a free and fair election. So that was the agreement they came to because Venezuela's president has a history of corruption. And last night, the United States Treasury Department said that they're concerned about the president and how he has prevented democratic opposition from registering the candidate of their choice. He has harassed and intimidated political opponents. He has detained numerous political actors and members of civil society. So the United States made the decision to not renew the agreement that expired at 12.01 a.m. this morning, which was in place easing those

Starting point is 00:07:00 sanctions. So by not renewing it, essentially the United States is reimposing those sanctions. And the reimposition of the sanctions is expected to not only result in Venezuela's fuel sales taking a hit, but it could also impact oil prices domestically as well. In other news, two of the seven jurors who were sworn in as jurors in Trump's hush money case were dismissed today. They were actually impaneled, so it meant that they were going to sit on the jury, but they were dismissed. One of the jurors was concerned about her identity being public because despite their names not being public, they have to answer this questionnaire and their answers are made public. So that makes it very easy to identify these people if you know

Starting point is 00:07:46 enough about them. Because think about it, you're answering questions about, you know, what neighborhood in New York do you live in? Who's your employer? Who's your previous employer? So it's definitely possible to track people down with these answers. So this particular juror had said that she had actually received messages from people she knows yesterday questioning her identity as one of the jurors. And she said it just has left her feeling uneasy. She has concerns over it. So Judge Merchant ultimately excused that juror and proceeded to reprimand the media for reporting on jurors' answers to the questionnaire. They're allowed to do it, but it was more of a moral reprimand. So Merchant asked the press to not report on the answers going forward and also issued an official ruling as to question three specifically, which says that the press cannot publish the

Starting point is 00:08:35 jurors' answers to question three, which asks about their current and previous employers. Merchant also ordered that the jurors' answers to question three be redacted from the court record as well and told the press, quote, there is a reason this is an anonymous jury, end quote. So that happened, and then later in the day, a second juror was dismissed because prosecutors found an arrest record from 1990 of a person with the same name who had been arrested for tearing down political advertisements. Now, it's not clear what kind of political advertisements the person tore down, but he was called up for additional questioning. And presumably, it was determined that he was the one with the arrest record because he was ultimately released. And the reason given was that there was some doubt as to the juror's truthfulness. So my guess is that he answered no to question 19, which is, have you

Starting point is 00:09:32 ever been accused or convicted of committing a crime? But again, not 100% positive there. There weren't many details provided on this particular situation. So what we know at this point, there are five jurors sworn in. That's down from seven when the trial resumed this morning, and they will need to lock in 13 more. So seven more seated jurors and six alternates. And like I said, when I originally reported on this on Monday, it'll likely go into next week. It could even go beyond that. In other news, family members of independent presidential candidate RFK Jr. endorsed President Biden today at a campaign event in Philadelphia. Kerry Kennedy, RFK Jr.'s sister, introduced President Biden at this campaign event, but beforehand announced her support as well as the support of 14 of her extended family members,

Starting point is 00:10:23 who are also in attendance. Kerry Kennedy said, quote, well as the support of 14 of her extended family members who are also in attendance. Kerry Kennedy said, quote, we want to make crystal clear our feeling that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for another four more years, end quote. Earlier in the day when the news surfaced, RFK Jr. took to X to write in part, quote, I hear some of my family will be endorsing President Biden today. I am pleased they are politically active. It's a family tradition. We are divided in our opinions, but united in our love for one another. I hold this as a possibility for America too. Can we disagree without hating our opponents? Can we restore civility and respect to public

Starting point is 00:11:01 discourse? I think we can, end quote. And this isn't really too much of a surprise. We've known from the very beginning that some of his extended family members don't support him in the presidential campaign. He does have a few family members working for him. The Kennedy family is massive. Late last night, law enforcement agencies in four different states reported 911 outages in multiple cities. At this point, service has been restored, but authorities in South Dakota, Texas, Nebraska, and Nevada were asking residents to either text 911 or call using a landline. The Federal Communications Commission this morning did say it was investigating the issue, but currently we don't really have a detailed cause. And honestly,

Starting point is 00:11:41 we're kind of getting a lot of different causes at the moment. So the Del Rio Police Department in Texas attributed the outage to a major cell carrier. Chase County in Nebraska said emergency services were down across the state for all cell carriers except T-Mobile, kind of implying this was a cell phone tower issue maybe. The county did say landlines were fine initially, but then later said landlines were not able to get through either. And then just a few hours ago, Lumen, which is an emergency call system service provider, came out and said that the outages in Nebraska, South Dakota, and Nevada were actually caused by a light pole installation done by a third party. Lumen, though, does not service Texas, so maybe Texas's outage really was due to a major cell carrier. The other states were because of the light pole

Starting point is 00:12:31 install. Either way, the FCC is still investigating, so maybe we'll have some more answers in the days to come, but that is what we know as of now. Google fired 28 employees today following an investigation into a sit-in protest earlier this month, which was meant to protest a cloud services contract between Google and Israel. So Google has this contract with Israel through which it provides cloud computing services to both the Israeli government as well as the Israeli military. This contract was formed in 2021. It's known as Project Nimbus. Well, earlier this month, Time magazine released this report titled Google Contract Shows Deal with Israel Defense Military. And this report stated that Israel's Ministry of Defense is a Google Cloud customer. Part of the report read, quote, Google provides cloud computing

Starting point is 00:13:26 services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and the tech giant has negotiated deepening its partnership during Israel's war in Gaza, end quote. The report then continues, quote, the ministry sought consulting assistance from Google to expand its Google Cloud access, seeking to allow multiple units to access automation technologies, according to a draft contract dated March 27, 2024. The contract shows Google billing the Israeli Ministry of Defense over $1 million for the consulting service. The version of the contract viewed by Time was not signed by Google or the Ministry of Defense. But a March 27th comment on the document by a Google employee requesting an executable copy of the contract said the signatures would be completed offline as it's an Israel Nimbus deal. Google also gave

Starting point is 00:14:19 the ministry a 15% discount on the original price of consulting fees as a result of the Nimbus framework, the document says, end quote. So following that release or the release of that report, a group called No Tech for Apartheid held a protest inside Google offices in both New York and Sunnyvale, California. They held up banners which read, no more genocide for profit, as well as we stand with Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Googlers. Importantly, not every protester that was there was a Google employee, but an investigation did find that at least 28 were, and those 28 have now been fired. A Google spokesperson said today, quote, physically impeding other employees' work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies and completely unacceptable behavior. After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove

Starting point is 00:15:15 them to ensure office safety. We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and we will continue to investigate and take action as needed, end quote. And finally, we're finishing this episode with some good news, as I like to do at the end of the week, because this is my last episode of the week. So the first one is a real-life castaway moment. It happened on the remote island of Piccalot, which, if you can believe it, it wasn't the first. A similar story happened on the same island in 2020. But let's first take out our mental map of the globe because I'm going to try to describe where Piccolat is. It's technically, or not technically, it is a part of Micronesia, but if you don't know where that is, think of the region that is Australia, Fiji, Philippines,

Starting point is 00:16:03 Guam, that area of the world. It's a tiny island north of Australia, east of the Philippines, and south of Guam. It's 0.049 square miles. It doesn't have any permanent residence. It is incredibly small. And these three men attempted to go to Piccola to go fishing. But as they approached the island, their boat was damaged. And that's kind of when they knew that they weren't going to be able to make it back home, which was about 100 miles away. So they ended up stranded on this little island. But the men, they apparently knew what they needed to do if they had any shot at being rescued, which was to lay out palm fronds in the sand and spell help. So they're there for eight days. And finally, on the eighth day, on April 7th, a U.S. Navy plane

Starting point is 00:16:55 saw their call for help, and they had been reported missing. Their family members reported them missing, and there was this very large search party. But a U.S. Navy plane saw their call for help, dropped them survival packages, and then the next day, on April 8th, a Hawaii-based aircraft was actually able to drop them a radio. And doing this granted the crew the ability to let the men know that the U.S. Coast Guard would be there the next day to bring them home. Sure enough, the U.S. Coast Guard showed up on April 9th, gathered the men and their belongings, and brought them home. Sure enough, the U.S. Coast Guard showed up on April 9th, gathered the men and their belongings, and brought them home. So they are now reunited with their family. Eight days, well, technically 10 days stranded on an island, but the good news is that they are home. The second one is

Starting point is 00:17:36 great. Not that the first story wasn't, but this is just a really nice heartwarming story. Back in 1978, Patrick Moriarty started teaching ninth grade earth science. He promised his students at the time that they would reunite for the next eclipse that passed through their town of Rochester, New York. And as he says, he told the students, you see that one on April 8th, 2024, circle that one. We're going to meet that day. And he did the same thing for 16 years with every class. He told his students we're going to meet on April 8th, 2024. Last year, Moriarty reached out to his former students. He started a group online, letting them know that he would in fact be keeping his promise of 46 years. On April 8th, when the eclipse passed through New York, Moriarty sat with more than 100 people and watched the eclipse. Some of his former students even brought their

Starting point is 00:18:25 children and grandchildren. Some former students traveled from cities like Boston, Detroit, and Minneapolis, and one woman even postponed her knee surgery to be there. So Moriarty talked to all of the attendees. He gave this little speech, and he said at that point, it wasn't really about the eclipse anymore. It was about all of them being there to share time with him, his family, and each other. And when asked about the moment by reporters, Moriarty said, quote, this was just an, oh my gosh, I guess I did okay. I had an impact on these kids type of moment, end quote. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great Friday and a great weekend, And I will talk to you on Monday.

UNBIASED - House Proposes New TikTok Ban, Google Fires Employees After Israel-Linked Protest, Two Trump Jurors Dismissed, Sanctions Imposed on Iran/Venezuela, and More.

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