WHAT'S BREWING
SCOTUS COULD RESTRAIN CONGRESS WHILE UPHOLDING SUBPOENAS FOR TRUMP'S TAXES For over a year, Congress has wanted to investigate personal financial records that Trump has gone to great lengths to conceal. A court fight over subpoenas for those records reached the Supreme Court on Tuesday in Trump v. Mazars. This case could result in a major separation-of-powers ruling that changes whether, or how, Congress can investigate the president. The main question that arose Tuesday was what limits could exist when Congress subpoenas personal records. [HuffPost]
CDC REOPEN ADVICE VASTLY DIFFERS FROM WHITE HOUSE PLAN Advice from the nation’s top disease control experts on how to safely reopen businesses and institutions amid the coronavirus pandemic included detailed instructive guidance and some more restrictive measures than the plan released by the White House last month. The guidance, which was shelved by Trump administration officials, also offered recommendations to help communities decide when to shut facilities down again during future flareups of COVID-19. [AP]
CALIFORNIA CHURCH PLEDGES TO REOPEN DESPITE ORDERS Several California pastors have pledged to reopen their churches on May 31 “or sooner,” regardless of whether their plan lines up with a schedule put forth by Gov. Gavin Newsom.The pastors released a letter arguing that churches are “essential” during the pandemic and that people of faith have a right to worship in person. Dan Carroll, the senior pastor of Fontana’s 20,000-member Water of Life Community Church, said he thinks Californians of faith feel like they’ve been “kicked to the curb” and “marginalized.” [HuffPost]
FALL CLASSES GO ONLINE AT CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY California State University said its 23 campuses will officially be conducting classes online this fall semester, with a few possible exceptions, because of the coronavirus pandemic. CSU is the nation’s largest four-year public university system, with around 480,000 students enrolled in schools that stretch the state and include San Francisco State, Cal State Los Angeles, and San Diego State University. Courses will be “primarily delivered virtually” during the fall term. [HuffPost]
ARREST MADE IN 1988 HATE CRIME AGAINST GAY MAN After more than 30 years, authorities in Australia have announced an arrest in the notorious cold-case murder of an American man who it’s believed was forced off a cliff for being gay. Scott Johnson was a 27-year-old mathematician earning his doctorate in Canberra when in December 1988 he was found naked and dead near the base of a cliff near Sydney. In 2017 an Australian coroner found that Johnson had fallen due to actual or threatened violence. The coroner ruled his death a hate crime. [HuffPost]
THE LONG, STRANGE HISTORY OF BILL GATES CONSPIRACY THEORIES Three months into the global coronavirus pandemic, Bill Gates has displaced George Soros as the chief bogeyman of the right. Gates, who has announced that his $40 billion-foundation will shift its “total attention” to fighting COVID-19, has been accused of a range of misdeeds, from scheming to profit off a vaccine to creating the virus itself. On April 8, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Attorney General Bill Barr speculated about whether Gates would use digital certificates to monitor anyone who got vaccinated. [HuffPost]
TRUMP RAILS AGAINST BALLOT FRAUD, BUT THAT'S WHAT HE DID The definition of election fraud embraced by Trump and his GOP enablers shows it's been happening at the nation's most prominent address: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump and his wife marked ballots that an intermediary had received from elections officers in Florida. Those ballots were then hand-delivered back to West Palm Beach for tabulation — a process that is legal under Florida law, but which Trump himself has equated to a fraud called ballot harvesting. [HuffPost] | 
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