NATION IN BRIEF

For third straight day, Trump fails to persuade NY appeals court to halt upcoming hush money trial

NEW YORK — Donald Trump failed Wednesday — for the third day in a row — to persuade a New York appeals court to halt his hush money trial from beginning next week.

Associate Justice Ellen

Gesmer denied the former president’s latest emergency appeal less than an hour after hearing from his legal team and lawyers for the Manhattan district attorney in a makeshift courtroom in the basement of the 1st Department appeals court in the Flatiron District, the only space available to hear the last-minute request.

Trump’s appeal lawyer, Emil Bove, had asked Gesmer to stop the trial from going ahead next Monday until the defense attempts to get Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan off the case, fights a ruling preventing Trump from invoking presidential immunity to object to certain exhibits and challenges the trial court judge’s filing requirements.

“It’s an incredibly important trial,” Bove said. “This can only be done once, and it must be done right.”

Merchan recently denied Trump’s motion to delay the trial until the U.S. Supreme

Court rules on the presidential immunity claim he raised in his federal election subversion case, finding it was brought up far too long after the deadline. Trump’s lawyers say that if he succeeds, the high court ruling could slightly bear on the Manhattan case by potentially barring prosecutors from presenting certain tweets from his presidential account to the jury.

Georgia joins GOP states’ lawsuit over Biden’s college debt relief plan

ATLANTA — Georgia

Attorney General Chris Carr has signed onto a lawsuit with six other states in an attempt to stop another federal effort to provide student loan debt relief to millions of borrowers nationwide.

The lawsuit by Republican-led states seeks to block a second attempt by President Joe Biden to wipe out debts for lowerincome borrowers who have fallen behind on repayments and reduce debt for others.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision with conservative justices in the majority, ruled against the first effort last year. The latest lawsuit is similar to one filed last month by 11 states and follows the one that led to the high court’s ruling in Biden v. Nebraska.

Conservation, indigenous groups sue Texas Parks and Wildlife to block Spacex land swap

DALLAS — Conservation organizations and indigenous groups are suing Texas

Parks and Wildlife to block a controversial land swap with Spacex one month after commissioners approved the deal.

In a lawsuit filed this month in Travis County, three groups argued commissioners made the decision in bad faith and ignored the best interests of both the community and state parks. The coalition also argued the land swap is unlawful because the state failed to consider alternatives to giving away public land and failed to ensure that harm to public land would be minimized.

“This is just the latest example of our state officials failing to fulfill their obligations to Texans, whenever Spacex is involved,” said Marisa Perales, an attorney representing the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and Save RGV.

As part of the deal, the state agreed to turn over 43 acres of Boca Chica State Park to Spacex in exchange for 477 acres near the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, about 10 miles away. Some 40 people spoke before the vote in Austin, with most urging commissioners to reject the proposal.

But the parks department said repeatedly the swap will strengthen conservation efforts around the refuge, which is a coastal home to wintering and migratory birds. Acquiring the land will also provide additional recreational opportunities, such as hiking, camping and wildlife viewing, the department said.

David Yoskowitz, executive director of the parks department, previously said both the agency and conservation community have long been interested in acquiring this land.

Local Texas GOP groups lay groundwork to restrict IVF

DALLAS — At least two Texas county-level Republican Party organizations have passed a resolution to ban or regulate in vitro fertilization, according to local party officials.

It’s part of a small effort to push the issue into the front row of the fight over abortion and reproductive rights after the Supreme Court struck down nationwide abortion protections in 2022.

The resolutions will be considered by committees at the state GOP convention in May for possible adoption into the Texas Republican

Party platform. While the party platform is nonbinding on

GOP officials, it can influence legislation. These potential changes to state law could make discarding frozen embryos on the same level as performing an abortion, which is illegal in Texas and liable to civil and criminal penalties.

Republican Party leaders said they think it’s unlikely this position will be adopted.

A resolution to regulate IVF was adopted in Montgomery County outside of Houston, according to a local party member. The Liberty County Republican Party adopted a resolution to remove the exception for “assisted reproduction” from the state code on criminal homicide, according to an email from county party chairman Wes Thomas.

The future of IVF was recently called into question after the Alabama Supreme Court decided frozen embryos created through the process — each only a cluster of cells made from a fertilized egg stored outside the uterus — are legally children and that people can be held liable for their destruction.

Judge throws out Miami’s ‘unconstitutional’ voting map over racial gerrymandering

MIAMI — A federal judge has thrown out the city of Miami’s voting map after ruling that commissioners in 2022 approved unconstitutional, racially gerrymandered district boundaries that sorted city residents by race and ethnicity.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge K. Michael Moore issued a sharp ruling that invalidated the boundaries of each of the city’s five districts – rejecting a mindset that has defined how the city chose elected representatives for more than two decades.

The judge barred the city from holding any elections under the unconstitutional districts. The next city elections are in November 2025. The judge said he would set a court date to bring both sides together to discuss the next steps, which could include holding special elections and drawing a new map.

The decision tees up a discussion over how to redraw the voting map, which would decide who can vote for candidates to represent them in neighborhoods across Florida’s second-most populous city.

Set against a backdrop of scandal at City Hall, the ruling could also fuel debate over whether the five-person City Commission should be expanded and if commissioners should represent districts or if elected officials should be chosen by voters citywide.

Moore sided with a coalition of city residents and community groups, including two branches of the NAACP, Grove Rights and Community Equity (GRACE), and multiple individuals who sued the city in late 2022. The community groups are being represented by attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Dechert law firm.

The plaintiffs argued that the city violated the Equal Protection Clause of the

14th Amendment when commissioners fixated on preserving the ethnic makeup of the commission by using racial quotas to draw the voting map, packing Hispanic and Black voters into districts.

Source: Tribune News Service