OTTAWA — NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says his party will not support a Liberal plan to give Canadians a GST holiday and $250 unless the government expands eligibility for the cheques, saying the rebate leaves out "the most vulnerable." The Liberals announced a plan last week to cut the federal sales tax on a raft of items like toys and restaurant meals for two months, and to give $250 to more than 18.7 million Canadians in the spring. Speaking after a Canadian Labour Congress event in Ottawa, Singh says he's open to passing the GST legislation, but the rebate needs to include seniors, students, people who are on disability benefits and those who were not able to work last year. Singh says he initially supported the idea because he thought the rebate cheques would go to anyone who earned under $150,000 last year. But the so-called working Canadians rebate will be sent to those who had an income, leaving out people Singh says need the help. The government intends to include the measures in the fall economic statement, which has not yet been introduced in the House of Commons. The proposed GST holiday would begin in mid-December, lasting for two months. It would remove the GST on prepared foods at grocery stores, some alcoholic drinks, children's clothes and toys, Christmas trees, restaurant meals, books, video games and physical newspapers. A privilege debate has held up all government business in the House since late September, with the Conservatives pledging to continue a filibuster until the government hands over unredacted documents related to misspending at a green technology fund. The NDP said last week they had agreed to pause the privilege debate in order to pass the legislation to usher in the GST holiday. Singh said Tuesday that unless there are changes to the proposed legislation, he will not support pausing the debate. The Bloc Québécois is also pushing for the rebates to be sent to seniors and retirees. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 26, 2024. David Baxter, The Canadian PressTrump has promised again to release the last JFK files. But experts say don’t expect big revelations
DOGE at Work: Whistleblower Alleges Federal Employee Moved to Florida, Continued to Receive Full D.C. PaycheckBy The Associated Press Albany Great Danes (7-0) at Siena Saints (2-4) Loudonville, New York; Saturday, 2 p.m. EST BOTTOM LINE: Albany visits Siena after Lilly Phillips scored 24 points in Albany’s 80-59 win over the Stonehill Skyhawks. The Saints are 1-1 on their home court. Siena is fifth in the MAAC in rebounding with 30.2 rebounds. Zyriah Price paces the Saints with 6.2 boards. The Great Danes are 3-0 on the road. Albany ranks fifth in the America East with 9.0 offensive rebounds per game led by Kayla Cooper averaging 3.0. Siena scores 58.2 points per game, 4.3 more points than the 53.9 Albany allows. Albany averages 7.7 made 3-pointers per game this season, 1.7 more made shots on average than the 6.0 per game Siena allows. TOP PERFORMERS: Ahniysha Jackson is scoring 14.2 points per game with 2.2 rebounds and 3.0 assists for the Saints. Cooper is scoring 19.6 points per game and averaging 8.9 rebounds for the Great Danes. ___ The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .
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NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers urged a judge again Friday to throw out his hush money conviction, balking at the prosecution’s suggestion of preserving the verdict by treating the case the way some courts do when a defendant dies. They called the idea “absurd.” The Manhattan district attorney’s office is asking Judge Juan M. Merchan to “pretend as if one of the assassination attempts against President Trump had been successful,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a blistering 23-page response. In court papers made public Tuesday, District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office proposed an array of options for keeping the historic conviction on the books after Trump’s lawyers filed paperwork earlier this month asking for the case to be dismissed. They include freezing the case until Trump leaves office in 2029, agreeing that any future sentence won’t include jail time, or closing the case by noting he was convicted but that he wasn’t sentenced and his appeal wasn’t resolved because of presidential immunity. Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove reiterated Friday their position that the only acceptable option is overturning his conviction and dismissing his indictment, writing that anything less will interfere with the transition process and his ability to lead the country. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined comment. It’s unclear how soon Merchan will decide. He could grant Trump’s request for dismissal, go with one of the prosecution’s suggestions, wait until a federal appeals court rules on Trump’s parallel effort to get the case moved out of state court, or choose some other option. In their response Friday, Blanche and Bove ripped each of the prosecution’s suggestions. Halting the case until Trump leaves office would force the incoming president to govern while facing the “ongoing threat” that he’ll be sentenced to imprisonment, fines or other punishment as soon as his term ends, Blanche and Bove wrote. Trump, a Republican, takes office Jan. 20. “To be clear, President Trump will never deviate from the public interest in response to these thuggish tactics,” the defense lawyers wrote. “However, the threat itself is unconstitutional.” The prosecution’s suggestion that Merchan could mitigate those concerns by promising not to sentence Trump to jail time on presidential immunity grounds is also a non-starter, Blanche and Bove wrote. The immunity statute requires dropping the case, not merely limiting sentencing options, they argued. Blanche and Bove, both of whom Trump has tabbed for high-ranking Justice Department positions, expressed outrage at the prosecution’s novel suggestion that Merchan borrow from Alabama and other states and treat the case as if Trump had died. Blanche and Bove accused prosecutors of ignoring New York precedent and attempting to “fabricate” a solution “based on an extremely troubling and irresponsible analogy between President Trump” who survived assassination attempts in Pennsylvania in July and Florida in September “and a hypothetical dead defendant.” Such an option normally comes into play when a defendant dies after being convicted but before appeals are exhausted. It is unclear whether it is viable under New York law, but prosecutors suggested that Merchan could innovate in what’s already a unique case. “This remedy would prevent defendant from being burdened during his presidency by an ongoing criminal proceeding,” prosecutors wrote in their filing this week. But at the same time, it wouldn’t “precipitously discard” the “meaningful fact that defendant was indicted and found guilty by a jury of his peers.” Prosecutors acknowledged that “presidential immunity requires accommodation” during Trump’s impending return to the White House but argued that his election to a second term should not upend the jury’s verdict, which came when he was out of office. Longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution . Other world leaders don’t enjoy the same protection. For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial on corruption charges even as he leads that nation’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza . Trump has been fighting for months to reverse his May 30 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records . Prosecutors said he fudged the documents to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress her claim that they had sex a decade earlier, which Trump denies. In their filing Friday, Trump’s lawyers citing a social media post in which Sen. John Fetterman used profane language to criticize Trump’s hush money prosecution. The Pennsylvania Democrat suggested that Trump deserved a pardon, comparing his case to that of President Joe Biden’s pardoned son Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of tax and gun charges . “Weaponizing the judiciary for blatant, partisan gain diminishes the collective faith in our institutions and sows further division,” Fetterman wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. Trump’s hush money conviction was in state court, meaning a presidential pardon — issued by Biden or himself when he takes office — would not apply to the case. Presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes. Since the election, special counsel Jack Smith has ended his two federal cases , which pertained to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and allegations that he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. A separate state election interference case in Fulton County, Georgia, is largely on hold. Trump denies wrongdoing in all. Trump had been scheduled for sentencing in the hush money case in late November. But following Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory, Merchan halted proceedings and indefinitely postponed the former and future president’s sentencing so the defense and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case. Merchan also delayed a decision on Trump’s prior bid to dismiss the case on immunity grounds. A dismissal would erase Trump’s conviction, sparing him the cloud of a criminal record and possible prison sentence. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.
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NEW YORK (AP) — Bob Menendez asked a judge Wednesday to set aside guilty verdicts that forced his resignation from the U.S. Senate and grant a new bribery trial. Lawyers for the New Jersey Democrat said in papers filed in Manhattan federal court that a recent revelation by prosecutors that improper evidence was put on a computer used by jurors during deliberations means that a new trial is “unavoidable.” The 70-year-old Menendez was convicted in July of 16 charges , including bribery, in part based on an allegation that he accepted bribes in exchange for approving military aid to Egypt. He awaits a Jan. 29 sentencing. Menendez resigned from the Senate in August. At trial, prosecutors said Menendez accepted gold and cash from three New Jersey businessmen in return for favors. Earlier this month, prosecutors revealed in a letter to Judge Sidney H. Stein that they had discovered that some factual information that the judge had ruled should be excluded from several trial exhibits was instead inadvertently loaded onto a computer used by jurors to reach their verdict. In their letter, prosecutors said incorrect versions of nine government exhibits were missing some redactions ordered by Stein to ensure that the exhibits did not violate the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which protects speech relating to information shared by legislators. Prosecutors argued in their letter that no action was necessary in light of the error for several reasons, including that defense lawyers did not object after they inspected documents on that laptop before it was given to jurors. They also said there was a “reasonable likelihood” that no jurors saw the erroneously redacted versions of the exhibits and that the documents could not have prejudiced the defendants anyway because they were of “secondary relevance and cumulative with abundant properly admitted evidence.” Lawyers for Menendez, though, said in their submission Wednesday that the exhibits contained the “only evidence in the record” tying Menendez to military aid to Egypt, “an otherwise-missing fact at the very center of the central charge against him.” “In light of this serious breach, a new trial is unavoidable, despite all the hard work and resources that went into the first one,” they wrote. The lawyers criticized the government's attempt to shift blame for the error onto them by saying they viewed the laptop's contents and approved it. “That is both factually and legally outrageous,” they wrote. “The defense had only a few hours to review a laptop that contained nearly 3,000 exhibits; it had the right to expect that the government had not mislabeled non-introduced and constitutionally barred exhibits as admitted ones. If this were treated as a waiver, that would give parties the incentive to intentionally try to pull a fast one.” Larry Neumeister, The Associated Press