By Tyler Losier
The Sunday Breakdown is an ongoing series that recaps a few popular news stories from the previous week, giving you just enough information to sound vaguely informed when talking to your family, friends and coworkers. It features witty, razor-sharp commentary from a moderately qualified fourth-year journalism student, who spent an adequate amount of time reading about the topics on actual news sites beforehand.
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All Charges Against Actor Jussie Smollett Dropped, Despite Apparent Mountain of Evidence Indicating His Guilt
On this week’s episode of rich and/or famous people using their wealth and power to avoid consequences, we have “Empire” actor Jussie Smollett miraculously weaseling out of sixteen felony charges that investigators seemed to think were a slam dunk, at least based on the evidence against him.
According to The New York Times, the whole thing started on January 29, when Smolett, an openly gay black man, filed a report with Chicago police. He claimed that two masked men had attacked him, yelled a bunch of homophobic and racist slurs, and then put a rope around his neck and doused him with bleach.
Initially, much of the public was outraged by the attack and fully supported Smollett. But as time went on, the narrative Smollett was trying to weave slowly came unraveled, and it started to look like he was, well, completely full of shit.
For starters, his two supposed “attackers” turned out to be Smollett’s co-stars on “Empire.” They also admitted, when pressed by police, that they had been bribed $3,500 to set the whole thing up, and that Smollett had orchestrated the phony hate crime to try to boost his popularity and get a pay bump from Fox.
On March 8, a grand jury indicted Smollett on sixteen counts of felony disorderly conduct after concluding there was sufficient evidence that the attack was a hoax. This included surveillance footage of the two co-stars buying the supplies for the attack, walking to and from the scene of the crime, and records of them cashing a check from Smollett for $3,500, backed up by an interview with the manager of the bank.
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I’m no legal expert, but this one seemed pretty open-and-shut to me. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, however, didn’t seem to share that sentiment.
This Tuesday, prosecutors mysteriously dropped all charges against Smollett and immediately sealed the case. In exchange, Smollett quietly agreed to forfeit 10 percent of his $100,000 bond and do two days of community service, all while maintaining his innocence publicly.
According to The New York Times, Joe Magats, the prosecutor who made the decision, claimed there were no issues with the evidence of the case, but rather, Chicago simply had bigger fish to fry. He also noted that Smollett had no prior criminal record, and that the State’s Attorney’s office was more focused on violent crime.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, backed by the infamously shady Chicago Police Department, condemned the prosecutors’ actions. He called their decision “a whitewash of justice,” and pointed out the obvious fact that this whole thing reeks of corruption.
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On Thursday, the city issued a letter demanding that Smollett pay $130,000 for all of Chicago’s time and resources that he wasted. Smollett’s legal team subsequently told them to pound sand, citing the fact that Smollett was completely innocent, regardless of the fact that the prosecutors office made it abundantly clear that he was not exonerated of any wrongdoing.
Trump also unsurprisingly got involved as well, promising to launch a full investigation into the matter on Twitter. But Mayor Emanuel didn’t take too kindly to Trump’s message, saying on a radio show that he should “just sit this one out.”
Just another average week in literally the most corrupt city in America, I guess.
Hopefully in the end Smollett sees his day in court for what he did, because as a lot of people are rightfully pointing out, faking a hate crime harms actual victims in a lot of pretty significant ways. And you shouldn’t be able to avoid facing the normal process of justice for that just because you’re a reoccurring character on a fairly average network TV drama.
Read the Actual Story: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/other-cases-are-dismissed-chicago-not-jussie-smollett-s-was-n988591
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Donald Trump Throws Betsy DeVos Under a Bus After She Tries to Take $18 Million From Disabled Children
Ok, admittedly that’s a little bit of a misleading headline, but it’s not as much of a stretch as you might think.
Metaphorically speaking, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was thrown under a bus this Thursday by President Trump, who proudly announced that he was overruling her proposal to cut $17.6 million in federal funding for the Special Olympics.
See? Makes a lot more sense now doesn’t it?
Trump’s announcement came after DeVos spent much of the week defending the move to Congress during a series of hearings. She said she had to make some tough choices when it came to deciding which programs to axe, and that she wanted to keep funding for the ones that had the potential to help the most people.
According to USA Today, a few programs that didn’t end up on the chopping block included initiatives to increase funding for charter schools and give tax credits to entities that donated to private school scholarships.
DeVos also maintained that despite the fact the she is the highest-ranking appointee within the Department of Education, she had no personal involvement whatsoever in what is now the department’s third recommendation to defund the Special Olympics. Rather, it must have been someone else’s idea.
According to CNN, Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat with probably the sweetest fuckin’ name of all time, fired back:
“Well I want to tell ya, whoever came up with that idea gets a Special Olympic gold medal for insensitivity.”
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Seeking to avoid a PR nightmare over what amounts to a relatively small chunk of the Department of Education’s $60 billion budget, Trump addressed reporters on the White House front lawn Thursday to clear the air. He promised that despite DeVos’s apparent hatred of special needs children, he would still authorize funding of the Special Olympics, making sure to make it very clear that he thinks the program is “incredible”.
Shorty thereafter, DeVos doubled back, releasing a statement claiming that she had actually been working behind the scenes to re-fund the Special Olympics the entire time, and that she was happy the President was finally seeing things from her perspective.
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It’s important to note that neither Trump nor the Department of Education have any authority to fund or defund anything. They can make recommendations to Congress on how to appropriate funding, but ultimately, the power of the purse lies solely with the legislative branch.
This is a concept that has historically been rather difficult for Trump to grasp, as we saw with the whole emergency declaration situation in Volume 1. At least he made the right move on this one, though, even if it was probably all for the cameras.
Read the Actual Story: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-reverses-course-special-olympics-funding-cut-after-betsy-devos-n988576
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Trump Vows to End Foreign Aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, All of Which Fox News Thinks Are Mexico
Well, the graphics guy over at Fox News is definitely getting shit-canned for this one.
According to NBC, this Saturday, President Trump directed the State Department to end all financial assistance to the three CENTRAL AMERICAN countries that make up a region known as “The Northern Triangle.” The move would cut a total of around $700 million in federal aid, however the State Department has acknowledged that they would likely need Congressional approval before taking any action.
Trump’s rationale for stopping the flow of cash is that it is the collective fault of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador that migrant caravans are coming up from these countries and seeking asylum in the United States. Consequently, he doesn’t understand why we continue to pay them if the problem isn’t getting any better.
Many lawmakers and politicians are raising the very valid point that if we stop foreign aid to these countries all together, conditions will only get worse, prompting more people to flee northward for greener pastures instead of less.
White House officials responded with something along the lines of we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Trump placed a large share of the blame on Mexico as well, announcing that he’d close the southern border all together if they didn’t do something about the migrant caravan problem. He made no mention of what would happen to the northern border, however, so it seems as though Canadians can breathe a collective sigh of relief, at least for now.
Although I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he starts trying to pin the blame on them, too.
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As for the logistics of a border shutdown, many experts warn that it’s pretty much just as stupid as it sounds.
Dee Margo, Mayor of El Paso, Texas told NPR that over 23,000 legal pedestrians cross the border every day. In addition to tourists coming to spend money in America, this also includes people transporting over $1.7 billion in commercial goods.
Closing the border entirely, even for a short period of time, would undoubtedly have a considerable financial impact on the United States, at least according to the US Chamber of Commerce.
Nevertheless, White House officials warn that Donny isn’t playing around on this one. This weekend, counselor Kellyanne Conway told “Fox News Sunday:”
“It certainly isn’t a bluff. You can take the president seriously.”
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see where this one goes in the coming days. If you’re planning a vacation to Mexico within the next couple of weeks though, I’d maybe consider planning out an alternate travel route, just in case.
Read the Actual Story: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/trump-administration-says-it-will-cut-foreign-aid-guatemala-honduras-n989246
The Sunday Breakdown 