ORANGE ALERT: Special Counsel Jack Smith has skipped the appeals court level and asked the Supreme Court to rule quickly on whether Donald Trump has presidential immunity from criminal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. 

  The court said they would take a fast track to deciding whether they will consider the motion.

  Smith wrote in his filing with the court that, “This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.” 

  The trial level judge, Tanya Chutkan, had previously rejected Trump’s claim that he has “absolute immunity” from the election interference indictment because he was acting in his capacity as president. The basic question is this: Did Trump try to overturn the election as president, or as a presidential candidate, and as a candidate, does he have presidential immunity?

  Smith is trying to get the issue settled so he can take Trump to trial before the 2024 election. If Trump can delay until after the election, and he gets elected, he could then have his new attorney general dismiss the charges.

EAST OF THE PECOS: The Texas Supreme Court on Monday overturned the lower court order that would have granted a woman an exception to the state’s anti-abortion law hours after the woman announced she would be leaving the state to have the procedure. Kate Cox is more than 20 weeks pregnant with a child that has a fatal genetic condition. Delivering the baby could endanger Cox’s life and possibly render her unable to have more children, her doctors say.

  A judge had given Cox permission for an abortion but that was put on hold when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed it to the state’s Supreme Court, which ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence to demonstrate that Cox’s life was in danger. 

  “Kate desperately wanted to be able to get care where she lives and recover at home surrounded by family,” the chief executive for the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement. “While Kate had the ability to leave the state, most people do not, and a situation like this could be a death sentence.”  

HIGHER EDUCATION: Following the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, Harvard President Claudine Gay also is up against mounting pressure to resign over her congressional testimony last week on antisemitism on campus. Nonetheless, 700 members of the of Harvard faculty signed a letter of support urging that she should not be fired.

  Dr Gay, 53, like Magill, apologized after she failed to say whether students calling for the genocide of Jewish people would be disciplined.  During pressured questioning by Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, Dr. Gay said it “depends on the context.” 

  Stefanik is now on a campaign to collect the scalps of Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth.

THE OTHER WAR: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is in the US to appeal for continuing US military aid as his war against Russian invaders approaches its third year.

  Zelensky said he is fighting for “global democracy” and that the Republican blockage of further military aid is a “dream come true” for Vladimir Putin. Republicans are attaching their support for Ukraine aid to a demand for southern border security.

  Ukraine’s high hopes for a summer counter offensive is bogged down in the fortified and heavily mined front with winter setting in. Ukraine’s forces have retaken less than 100 square miles of land and now Russia is on the offensive again.

MISSING: Russian dissident Alexei Navalny is reported to have been removed from the penal colony where his is imprisoned and is now missing or unaccounted for somewhere in the Russian gulag, his family says. They have not heard from him in six days. 

  Navalny did not appear at a scheduled court hearing. He has been sentenced to 28 years on charges ranging from fraud to funding an extremist organization, all of which he and his supporters dismiss as political punishment for opposing the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Navalny’s supporters say Putin wants to silence him while the Russian president runs for re-election.

THE SPIN RACK: Lawyers for Rudy Giuliani told jurors in Georgia that the $43 million in damages sought by two Georgia election workers in their defamation suit “will be the end of Mr. Giuliani,” comparing it to a civil death penalty. Giuliani has already been found to have lied about the election workers trying to fix votes, and they say he ruined their lives. — Former New York Rep. George Santos, who was expelled from Congress, is in plea negotiations to settle his indictment for fraud and campaign finance crimes, federal prosecutors revealed in court papers. — The Supreme Court yesterday declined to hear a First Amendment challenge to the Washington State law that bans professional counseling services intended to change a minor’s gender identity or sexual orientation. The law forbids licensed therapists in Washington State from performing conversion therapy. — Federal authorities arrested a 30-year-old New Hampshire man, charging him with threatening to kill Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and his supporters. 

BELOW THE FOLD: The Arena Group, which owns the publications Sports Illustrated and The Street, fired its chief executive Ross Levinsohn yesterday after the discovery that SI had published stories generated by artificial intelligence credited to fake bylines and accompanied by thumbnail pictures of writers who don’t exist.

  The future is here.

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