3 Things To Know Today

1 President Trump Facing Calls To Remove Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta is feeling the pressure from inside the Trump administration and others over his role in brokering a "sweetheart of a deal"with Jeffrey E. Epstein as a federal prosecutor in Miami more than a decade ago. Acosta said this week that the plea agreement, in which Mr. Epstein served 13 months in jail after being accused of sexually abusing dozens of young women and girls, was the toughest deal available in a complex and difficult case. The prosecution, he said, would have stood a far better chance of succeeding in the state courts.Meanwhile, much pressure is being put on President Donald Trump to dump Acosta from both sides of the aisle. Even one of his closet advisors, White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, isurging Trump to fire Acosta, reportedly telling the president that “the continuing drip of damaging information surrounding the 2008 agreement Acosta struck to keep billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein from a heavy jail sentence would hurt the administration.” Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have both called for Acosta's resignation as well. Meanwhile, President Trump said he feels sorry for Acosta and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says his fate is in the hands of the president.

2 Former Presidential Candidate Ross Perot Dead At 89

Ross Perot, a self-made billionaire, renowned patriot and two-time independent candidate for U.S. president, has died after a five-month battle with leukemia according to his family. He was 89. He was the pioneer of the computer services industry, who founded Electronic Data Systems Corp. in 1962 and became a multimillionaire when he took EDS public in 1968. He created Perot Systems Corporation 26 years later and sold that to Dell Incorporated for $3.9 billion. He was just 5-foot-6, but his presence filled a room. Perot's foray into presidential politics made him one of the more colorful political figures of the 1990s. He won 19-percent of the vote in the 1992 presidential election, which saw Bill Clinton beat George H.W. Bush. Many Republicans blamed Perot for the loss and chances are they were right.Perot was a champion for veterans’ rights and beyond business, Perot worked on behalf of American POWs and MIAs from the Vietnam War and their families. He also organized a rescue of two EDS employees held in an Iranian prison in 1979, in addition to many other philanthropic efforts. But maybe Perot’s place in history will mainly be that of a successful entrepreneur who thought he could parlay his success into the presidency by going around the main parties’ establishment and appealing directly to the American people. That example obviously didn’t go unnoticed.He is survived by his wife of more than 60 years, Margot, who provided that initial loan to form Electronic Data Systems.

3 Court Rules Trump Is Violating Constitution By Blocking People On Twitter

It appears that President Trump has been violating the Constitution by blocking people from following his Twitter account because they criticized or mocked him. This comes from a federal appeals court yesterday. “The First Amendment does not permit a public official who utilizes a social media account for all manner of official purposes to exclude persons from an otherwise-open dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees,” a panel of three Second Circuit judges wrote in a unanimous opinion. The ruling was one of the highest-profile court decisions yet in a growing constellation of cases addressing what the First Amendment means in a time when political expression increasingly takes place online.The First Amendment prohibits an official who uses a social media account for government purposes from excluding people from an “otherwise open online dialogue” because they say things that the official finds objectionable, Judge Parker wrote.The Justice Department expressed disappointment in the ruling but said officials had not yet decided whether to appeal to the full appeals court or the Supreme Court.


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