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Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) attacked Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s questionable beliefs about science during his confirmation hearing by citing her son, who has "severe cerebral palsy."

Speaking to the committee Thursday, Hassan said she found it "disturbing" that Republicans accused her and her colleagues of partisanship during Kennedy's first hearing a day earlier.

"Like all of us, I take really seriously our obligation for advice and consent," she said of the Senate's role.

ALSO READ: RFK Jr. botched his financial reports — omitting $500,000 in anti-vax and law income

"And I am concerned, as Sen. [Markwayne] Mullin (R-OK) is concerned, about the need for science to help us move forward on critical, critical issues."

"Now, some of you new to this committee might not know that I'm the proud mother to a 36-year-old young man with severe cerebral palsy," Hassan continued, her voice cracking as she spoke.

"And a day does not go by when I don't think about what I did when I was pregnant with him that might have caused the hydrocephalus that has so impacted his life.

"So, please, do not suggest that anybody in this body of either political party doesn't want to know what the cause of autism is!" Hassan shouted at Kennedy.

She went on to argue that the problem with Kennedy is that he continues to try and re-litigate "settled science" about autism and vaccines. The study that Kennedy often cites looked at 12 children who were vaccinated. It then claimed a false connection to those with autism. The journal that published the study ultimately retracted it.

See her comments in the video below or at the link here.

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Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) got into a fiery exchange with Kash Patel, the far-right former House staffer and Trump administration loyalist now nominated to serve as Trump's FBI director, after pointing out that Patel bragged about his role in recording the so-called "January 6 Choir" from the Washington, D.C. jail.

Its members included people involved in assault on police at the Capitol, and their song became a political rallying cry for Trump and his supporters.

Trump ultimately went on to issue a blanket pardon of almost everyone at the attack, including the members of the choir.

Patel sought to deny his involvement in the recording of the choir — but Schiff brought receipts.

"Here's what you told Steve Bannon on his podcast: 'So what we thought would be cool is if we captured that audio, and then, of course, had the greatest president, President Donald J. Trump, recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Then we went to a studio and recorded it, mastered it, digitized it, and put it out as a song now releasing exclusively on The War Room. We, we, we. If you had nothing to do with it, Mr. Patel, why did you tell Steve Bannon and all his listeners that you did?"

"That's why it says 'we,' as you highlighted," said Patel.

"Yeah, and you're part of the 'we,' right? When you say 'we,' that includes you, doesn't it, Mr. Patel?" said Schiff. "So when you said, 'we,' you didn't really mean you? Is that your testimony?"

Schiff then directed Patel to look at Capitol police in the room. "I want you to look them in the eye, Mr. Patel, and tell them you're proud of what you did. Tell them you're proud that you raised money off of people that assaulted their colleagues, that pepper sprayed them, that beat them with poles. Tell them you're proud of what you did, Mr. Patel. They're right there! They're guarding you today! Tell them how proud you are."

"That's an abject lie, and you know it," said Patel. "I've never, never, ever accepted violence against law enforcement. I've worked with these men and women, as you know."

"Oh, no, no, you didn't accept it, you glorified it in song, Mr. Patel!" cut in Schiff.

Watch the video below or at the link here.

President Donald Trump has gained power over all branches of government, including a conservative-run Supreme Court, but law school professor Deborah Pearlstein urged critics not to give up on the courts just yet.

Writing for the New York Times, Pearlstein, a visiting professor of law and public affairs at Princeton and the director of its Program in Law and Public Policy, said that the new administration is clearly less concerned with the legality of its executive orders.

"These are not the strategic moves of a legal A team focused on insulating itself against judicial correction, or teeing up a model case to persuade the courts to move the law in a new direction," she wrote Thursday. "These seem more like the orders of a team unconcerned with the risks of any legal challenge at all."

ALSO READ: Reminder: Trump is a demented criminal president

She acknowledged that American confidence in the Supreme Court may be at an all-time low, but urged "that dispair is premature" and it will take a lot more to side-step the law.

While there is a fear that the courts will simply give in to Trump's demands, judges are already stepping in. On Wednesday, Trump's government funding freeze was itself frozen by a judge. While that's likely being repealed, it will be a long process for Trump lawyers at a time the administration is purging career employees who might work on those cases.

Federal District Court Judge John C. Coughenour also blocked Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship.

"The courts," Pearlstein wrote, "are not so dominated by partisan judges that any action challenging a Republican president will inevitably fail."

She noted that Trump was able to appoint more than 200 judges during his first four years in office, but researchers found that even those judges aren't handing "wins" to Trump out of loyalty.

She recalled stories of lawyers who, during his first term, were able to curb some of Trump's "most lawless efforts." Not having those lawyers on hand may mean more erratic orders, but that doesn't mean they'll survive any legal scrutiny.

"Getting lawyers to back absolutely anything Mr. Trump wants may not be as easy as the president and his advisers think," wrote Pearlstein, noting that they are bound by ethics rules.

"That may explain why some of these early orders in the new administration are largely devoid of specific legal guidance — and why they stand a fair chance of being overturned in the courts," she closed.

Read the full column right here.

Department Health and Human Services (HHS) nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. refused to say that vaccines do not cause autism at his confirmation hearing on Thursday.

During an appearance before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) asked Kennedy about his views on vaccines and autism.

"Vaccines do not cause autism. Do you agree with that?" Sanders stated.

"I said I'm not gonna go into HHS with any preordained...," Kennedy said before being interrupted.

"I ask you a simple question, Bobby," Sanders said. "Studies all over the world say it does not. What do you think?"

ALSO READ: Top GOPer's ‘most immediate’ priority for new committee includes probing a MAGA conspiracy

"Senator, if you show me those studies, I will absolutely, as I promised to Chairman [Bill] Cassidy, apologize," Kennedy replied.

"That is a very troubling response," Sanders noted.

Multiple scientific studies have found no link between vaccines and autism. "Vaccines do not cause autism," the Centers for Disease Control has determined.

Watch the video below or click the link.

by Clara LALANNE

UK prosecutors on Thursday defended the lengthy prison sentences handed down to 16 environmental activists, telling London's Court of Appeal that their actions posed a danger to the public.

The activists with the Just Stop Oil (JSO) group last year received prison terms of between 15 months and five years for several stunts, including throwing soup on Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" in London and blocking the M25 motorway around the UK capital.

They have appealed the length of their sentences, but prosecutors told the court on Thursday that "each of the judges were right" as "all of these applicants went so far beyond what was reasonable".

Their actions also presented an "extreme danger" to the public, they said.

The five "conspirators" who organized the action in which activists climbed onto multiple gantries over the M25 motorway, leading to its closure, "were at the pinnacle of the organizational pyramid of what was intended to be the 'biggest disruption in British modern history'," the court heard.

The action affected around 700,000 vehicles over four days, and the five activists were sentenced to jail terms of between four and five years.

The sentences were "the highest of their kind in modern British history", Danny Friedman, a lawyer for the activists, told the court on Wednesday.

Hundreds of JSO supporters gathered outside the central London court on Thursday, sitting in silence on the road surrounded by portraits of around 100 people they said were "political prisoners" jailed across the world for environmental activism.

Police watched on, but the protest dispersed peacefully.

Just Stop Oil, which is urging the government to ban fossil fuel use by 2030, is known for its eye-catching stunts at museums, sports events and shows but has attracted criticism over its methods.

In recent years, previous Conservative governments passed a series of laws to punish their actions more severely.

NGOs Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have denounced the crackdown and have joined the appeal trial, which they say will have significant implications for the future of peaceful protest.

The court will publish its decision at a later date.

© Agence France-Presse

The Washington Post has a lengthy new report about how President Donald Trump and his administration sparked mass chaos earlier this week when they issued a memo freezing all federal grants and loans.

The memo itself was so broadly written that it resulted in the shutdown of Medicaid portals in all 50 states and also put funding to key programs such as Head Start in jeopardy.

Now that the memo has been rescinded, some White House staffers are acknowledging to the Post that it was a mistake to publish.

“The memo was poorly written and gave people the impression it was taking action it was not,” said one source. “It did not go through the proper approval process.”

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In fact, two of the Post's sources say that the memo was not reviewed by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller or anyone on his team before it went live.

The Post also quotes Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) who said that the order left people in her state scrambling, and also criticized the current structure of the White House for not giving her a clear-cut contact person to address concerns about the order.

“There are still a lot of questions and I’m hearing a lot of anxiety from nonprofits in Maine that are concerned that their grants may be suspended or not forthcoming,” she said. “I don’t know whether this is at [Office of Management and Budget nominee Russell Vought’s] direction or [Elon] Musk’s direction or the acting director of OMB, I just don’t know. That’s one of the things I want to find out... because we don’t know who to go to for clarification."