Live Breaking News & Updates on Aylorville illinois obituaries
Stay updated with breaking news from Aylorville illinois obituaries. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
By Brendan Pierson (Reuters) – Iowa’s highest court did not revive a 2018 ban on most abortions on Friday, meaning that abortion will remain legal in the state up to 20 weeks of pregnancy for now. One of the court’s seven justices did not take part in the ruling for an unspecified reason, and the remaining justices deadlocked 3-3. That automatically left in place a 2019 court order blocking the law. Governor Kim Reynolds, a Republican, had asked the court to dissolve the order, which stemmed from a lawsuit by Planned Parenthood, arguing the law violated the right to privacy and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022. “With this ruling, thousands of patients seeking care in the state and beyond can continue to receive the necessary, life-saving care that they need,” Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement. Chris Schandevel, a lawyer for the governor, said that “Iowans will surely be disappointed by today’s result” and urged the state’s legislature to pass a new abortion ban. Iowa passed a law banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks, in 2018. The law was blocked because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s longstanding 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed abortion rights nationwide. The Supreme Court overturned Roe last year, and Reynolds immediately sought to revive the 2018 law. The trial court judge said there was no legal mechanism for doing that, and three Supreme Court justices agreed. “In our view, it is legislating from the bench to take a statute that was moribund when it was enacted and has been enjoined for four years and then to put it into effect,” Justice Thomas Waterman wrote Friday. Justice Christopher McDonald wrote for the other side that it was “inequitable to continue to enjoin the state from enforcing a law that is now presumptively constitutional.” Waterman, McDonald and the non-participating judge, Dana Leanne Oxley, were all appointed by Republican governors.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Aurora Ellis) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jarrett Renshaw WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A collection of the nation’s leading and biggest spending environmental groups endorsed President Joe Biden’s re-election bid on Wednesday, an early sign that he has consolidated their support despite some recent policy moves that angered climate activists. The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Action Fund, billionaire Tom Steyer’s NextGen PAC, NRDC Action Fund and the Sierra Club endorsed Biden during an LCV dinner in Washington. This is the first time the four groups have ever jointly announced a presidential endorsement, according to the Biden campaign. “Together, we’ve made a lot of progress so far. We have to finish the job,” Biden told the crowd climate activists. He added that the world poses many threats, but climate change “is the only truly existential threat.” While the endorsements are not surprising, they are a sign that the environmental groups are not letting a series of recently disappointing administration decisions on oil drilling in Alaska and backing a gas pipeline in West Virginia to dampen their enthusiasm. “The stakes could not be more high and the choice could not be more clear,” said Eva Hernandez, Managing Director of the Sierra Club. The groups represent the mainstream part of the environmental movement and tend to reflect older voices. Younger activists, such as the ones that sought to disrupt the annual White House Correspondents Dinner earlier this year, may be less enthusiastic to back Biden. The four organizations combined represent millions of members and activists in every state across the country who can help mobilize voters in 2024. They also represent big money. Steyer’s NextGen PAC spent $56.7 million in 2020, campaign finance records show. Biden is traveling to California next week to raise campaign cash from tech and climate donors as he races to raise over a billion dollars for his re-election fight, Reuters reported.
(Reporting By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Mary Milliken and Lisa Shumaker) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
The Christian County Fair kicks off July 18th through the 22nd at the Christian County Fair Grounds, and the community is in for another great year of events and activities. Angela Ohl-Marsters, the ...
The Taylorville Kiwanis Club heard from the new head librarian at the Taylorville Public Library, at the club’s weekly meeting on Tuesday at the Taylorville Moose Lodge.
By Andrew Goudsward (Reuters) – Evan Corcoran, a lawyer hired by Donald Trump to fend off a federal investigation into his handling of sensitive documents, is now a central figure in the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal case against the former president. The shift from lawyer to potential witness in the case is a sharp turn for Corcoran. The former Republican congressman’s son is described by former colleagues as soft-spoken and diligent, known for his steady presence in the courtroom and an affinity for fly fishing. Corcoran, 58, was not charged in the indictment unsealed on Friday. It presents him as a key Trump confidant who was deceived by the former president as he allegedly sought to stymie Justice Department efforts to recover classified documents he kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida after leaving the White House in January 2021. The 37-count indictment said Trump suggested to Corcoran that he falsely tell the Justice Department that he did not have any sensitive documents to turn over after a May 2022 subpoena. “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?” Trump asked, according to an account by “Trump Attorney 1” detailed in the indictment. The indictment does not identify Corcoran by name, but a source familiar with the situation told Reuters that he is the lawyer listed as “Trump Attorney 1” in the document. In an unusual move, Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor, was forced to testify and turn over detailed notes to a grand jury weighing evidence in the Trump documents probe after a U.S. judge ruled he could not shield his communications with Trump. Communications between lawyers and clients are normally protected under the legal doctrine of attorney-client privilege. However, a U.S. judge in March ruled that U.S. Special Counsel Jack Smith could overcome that privilege, determining that Corcoran’s advice may have been used to further or cover up a crime, media reports said. Trump has denied wrongdoing and claims, without offering evidence, that all documents at the resort had been declassified. He has accused prosecutors of being biased against him. An attorney for Corcoran declined to comment. CORCORAN ‘UNFLAPPABLE AND EVEN-KEELED’ “Unflappable and even-keeled are the words that come to mind,” said Douglas Gansler, a former Democratic Maryland attorney general who worked with Corcoran early in his legal career. He described Corcoran as someone who “holds his cards close to the vest.” A former assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Corcoran moved to private practice in 2000. He handled business cases and kept a relatively low profile until former Trump White House adviser and conservative firebrand Steve Bannon hired him in 2021 to defend against contempt of Congress charges. Bannon was found guilty last year for defying a subpoena from the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He is appealing that conviction. Trump, who has a history of cycling through attorneys, turned to Corcoran in 2022 after the FBI began investigating boxes containing classified information that Trump’s aides had turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration. Corcoran helped Trump respond to a May 2022 subpoena for all remaining classified documents in his possession. He greeted a Justice Department official at Mar-a-Lago the next month to hand over a folder containing 38 documents with classified markings, prosecutors said in court filings. The indictment against Trump said the former president directed his personal aide Walt Nauta to remove documents from a Mar-a-Lago storage room to prevent Corcoran from finding them during his search. Nauta was also charged in the indictment with helping to conceal documents. Corcoran drafted a certification, signed by another Trump lawyer, attesting that all records with classified markings had been returned to the government – a claim later proven false when the FBI seized about 100 additional classified records during an August 2022 search. Prosecutors, quoting Corcoran’s account, allege that during a meeting with Trump after Corcoran collected the 38 documents to turn over to the government, Trump made a “plucking motion,” implying that “if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out.”
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by David Bario, Howard Goller and Deepa Babington) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
Summer events are in full swing at the Shelbyville Public Library and with activities in and out of the library, local citizens will not want to miss any of the opportunities available. Monica Camero...
By Nathan Layne (Reuters) -Former President Donald Trump used the first public appearance since his federal indictment to ratchet up attacks on the Justice Department, accusing prosecutors, without evidence, of a politically motivated campaign to keep him from the White House. Speaking on Saturday at Georgia’s state Republican convention, Trump alleged that President Joe Biden, a Democrat, orchestrated the criminal charges in order to undermine his main political rival’s presidential campaign, as well as to distract from federal and congressional investigations into Biden’s son. There is no evidence to support Trump’s allegations. The Justice Department maintains that all its investigative decisions are made without regard to partisan politics, and Biden has said he would not get involved in the Trump probe. “The ridiculous and baseless indictment of me by the Biden administration’s weaponized department of injustice will go down as among the most horrific abuses of power in the history of our country,” Trump told the crowd of local party officials. “This vicious persecution is a travesty of justice.” His remarks came one day after prosecutors unsealed a 37-count indictment against him, alleging he mishandled classified documents that included some of the country’s most sensitive security secrets after leaving the White House in 2021. Prosecutors allege the former president held on to materials, including documents about the U.S. nuclear program and domestic vulnerabilities to a potential attack, that he knew he should not have retained. The 49-page indictment also detailed two instances in which Trump allegedly shared classified information with people not authorized to receive it, as well as efforts to obstruct government investigators seeking to retrieve the materials. The indictment of a former U.S. president on federal charges is unprecedented in American history and came as Trump is the clear front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination next year. Trump told Politico on Saturday that he will continue running for president even if he were convicted. The charges ensure the case will be a focal point of the party’s nomination contest. Most of Trump’s rivals responded by accusing the Justice Department of political bias, reflecting their fears of upsetting Trump’s core supporters, a group thought to be 30% of the Republican electorate. He is due to make a first appearance in the case in a Miami court on Tuesday, a day before his 77th birthday. In a wide-ranging and at times dark and conspiratorial speech, Trump portrayed his campaign to return to the White House as part of an “epic struggle” to defeat the “sinister forces” that he said were a bigger threat to the country than foreign adversaries like Russia, North Korea and Iran. “Think of that: from within is worse than without,” he said. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed two different special counsels to independently investigate the handling of classified records by Trump and Biden, who discovered documents at his home and one-time office at a think tank. Trump sought to equate the investigation into his conduct with that of Biden, even as legal experts say there are stark differences. For more than a year, Trump rebuffed efforts by the National Archives to retrieve all of the records he retained and, according to the indictment, worked to hide documents from his lawyers and investigators. In Biden’s case, his attorneys informed the National Archives and the Justice Department of the discovery of classified files, according to Garland. The Justice Department has not said whether it would indict Biden. “Biden was not indicted. And what he did is terrible,” Trump said. He referred to Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted him, as a “thug” and called for the removal of officials investigating him. “This is a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately. Get ’em out,” he added to applause. Trump told the audience in Georgia that the “joke of an indictment” would further bolster his support within the party, similar to how charges in New York in March over hush-money payments to a porn star elevated his ranking in primary polls. “The only good thing is it’s driven my poll numbers way up.” It was unclear to what poll numbers he was referring. (Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut; Editing by Daniel Wallis) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the U.S. auto safety agency’s defects investigation office said on Wednesday he has left the agency to join Amazon.com’s self-driving unit Zoox. Stephen Ridella, who had served as director of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Office of Defects Investigation since 2017, oversaw key investigations including a probe into Tesla Autopilot and whether 67 million ARC Automotive Inc air bag inflators were defective. He said on LinkedIn he had left NHTSA to join Zoox. Another NHTSA official, Anne Collins, who was associate administrator for enforcement, opted to retire on April 30. Last week, President Joe Biden withdrew the nomination of NHTSA’s chief counsel Ann Carlson to take the agency’s top job on a permanent basis. NHTSA declined to comment when asked about the specific personnel moves but said it “believes it is well positioned to continue to address safety and enforcement efforts. We have a highly professional team in place and believe our enforcement and investigative work will remain strong and effective.” Six safety groups on Tuesday including the Governors Highway Safety Association urged Biden to quickly name a new NHTSA administrator nominee, citing rising traffic deaths. Carlson had been named acting head of NHTSA in September and was formally nominated for the top position in March. The agency has ongoing safety probes into Tesla, air bag ruptures and is working on efforts to reduce traffic deaths and new regulations to boost vehicle fuel economy requirements. Carlson said it was her decision to withdraw her nomination. For much of the last six years, NHTSA has been without a Senate-confirmed administrator. A government audit report released last week said NHTSA routinely fails to meet its internal timelines for completing auto safety defect investigations, saying it hindering its ability to quickly respond to severe safety risks.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Tom Hogue and Chris Reese) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com
Trips to the Zoo are one of the many summertime activities that can be enjoyed by the whole family. Scovill Zoo in Decatur has up-coming holiday events, free admission days, and the members of the an...
The Taylorville Kiwanis Club reviewed committee activities in their ongoing efforts to benefit children and youth in the Taylorville community, at the club’s weekly meeting on Tuesday at the Ta...