What A Day Crooked Media

New York holds a special election today to fill a seat vacated by Democratic Congressman Brian Higgins. The Democrat in the race, state Sen. Tim Kennedy, is expected to win. If he does, it would leave Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson’s majority as slim as possible: a single vote. Todd Zwillich, a longtime Washington journalist and friend of the show, explains how it will make Johnson’s job even more complicated.

And in headlines: Columbia University began suspending students at the Gaza solidarity encampment, a federal appeals court ruled that certain state insurance plans must provide coverage for gender-affirming care, and the Supreme Court refused to hear billionaire and Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk’s bid to challenge the SEC’s restrictions on what he can post on social media.

President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss developments in the latest round of cease-fire talks. The White House says Biden also “reiterated his clear position” against Israel’s planned invasion of Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have taken refuge since the start of the war in Gaza. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed back to the Middle East on Sunday ahead of meetings with Arab leaders this week.

Employees of a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee just voted to form the FIRST autoworkers union in the Southern US. It’s no small feat in a part of the country that has been notoriously anti-union. How has the South managed to scare away organized labor since the Civil War? Are labor unions finally finding a foothold there now? And why have unions been in decline across the whole US in recent years? Max and Erin dive into the politics, racism and foreign influence behind it all to uncover why it’s taken so long for collective bargaining to catch on down south.

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Thursday in former President Donald Trump’s presidential immunity case. Trump’s lawyer tried to assert that there’s almost no situation under which a sitting president can face criminal charges, not even ordering a military coup or sharing nuclear secrets. It is a landmark case with big implications for both this year’s election as well as some of the other criminal cases Trump faces. Leah Litman, co-host of Crooked’s “Strict Scrutiny,” says Trump’s team is trying to normalize conduct that is inconsistent with democracy and the rule of law.

And in headlines: Pro-Palestinian protests spread to more college campuses, Manhattan’s DA vowed to retry Harvey Weinstein after the producer’s New York rape conviction was overturned, and Apple forecasted a bleak outlook for its Vision Pro headsets.

The Supreme Court hears arguments today in a landmark case that could determine whether former President Donald Trump can be tried for his role in the January 6th insurrection. The case concerns whether presidents have “immunity” from prosecution for their conduct while in office. The court has never had to consider this issue until now, and it also has big implications for the 2024 election. Jay Willis, editor-in-chief of the progressive legal site Balls and Strikes, explains what’s at stake.

On Wednesday, the court also heard its second abortion case of the term. It’s over whether an Idaho law that bans nearly all abortions can supersede a federal law that guarantees patients emergency care at hospitals. At least some of the court’s conservative justices expressed skepticism about the Idaho law.

Police arrested hundreds of college students in the last week amid intensifying campus protests over the Israel-Gaza war. While demonstrations have been ongoing at some universities since the start of the war, they reached new levels after Columbia University’s president called in the New York Police Department to clear an encampment on campus shortly after testifying in front of Congress. We talk to two student journalists about what’s happening on their campuses: Esha Karam, a junior at Columbia University and managing editor of the Columbia Daily Spectator, and Aarya Mukherjee, a freshman news reporter at University of California, Berkeley’s The Daily Californian.

And in headlines: Former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker detailed the tabloid’s ‘catch and kill’ strategy during former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush-money trial, the Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that could decide whether states have to provide emergency abortion care to pregnant patients, and Pennsylvania Congresswoman Summer Lee edged out a more moderate challenger in the state’s Democratic primary.