Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. It's Tuesday, September 29. I'm Keli, with Hast.

KELI We start in Washington. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Smith told senators he had found proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against the nation. Republican members pushed back hard. Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri accused Smith of secretly traveling to Atlanta in 2024 to meet with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, citing text messages he said placed Smith at an Atlanta Hawks game. That line of questioning fell apart in the hearing. A reporter caught up with Schmitt outside the Capitol afterward and asked him what happened in there. Schmitt did not provide a satisfying answer.

HAST The structural fact to note: Smith withdrew both federal prosecutions after Trump won the 2024 election, citing DOJ policy barring prosecution of a sitting president. That context did not appear to be the focus of the Republican questioning today. The hearing was largely framed as an accountability exercise, but the main accountability moment ended up running in the other direction.

KELI Still in Texas, and on the subject of Republican Party accountability. Senator John Cornyn has said he will not vote for Bo French, a Texas Railroad Commission candidate, after French posted a racist comment about South Asian students. Cornyn called French an embarrassment to the Republican Party. French is still on the ballot.

HAST Here is the structural gap. One of Texas's largest oil and gas industry groups condemned French's comments and then did not pull their endorsement. The Railroad Commission regulates oil and gas in Texas. The industry that would be regulated by this candidate has spoken publicly enough to condemn, but not enough to withdraw support. That is the position worth noting.

KELI Also in Texas. The Austin ICE shooting and a broader pattern of migrant deaths in custody. The Texas Tribune reports that most migrant deaths in Texas since the start of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown have occurred while individuals were in detention. Several of those deaths were attributed to natural causes.

HAST The word detained is doing a lot of work here. Deaths in ICE custody are classified differently than deaths during enforcement operations, and the distinction affects oversight mechanisms, reporting requirements, and legal exposure. The coverage has largely treated this as a single category. It is not.

KELI A federal legal question with direct relevance to college campuses. A former Cornell University student has filed a lawsuit alleging she was raped in 2024 by seven male students. The case has renewed attention to the federal law governing how colleges are required to respond to sexual assault allegations.

HAST Title IX is the law in question. The structural tension here is that enforcement of Title IX has been revised multiple times across administrations, changing what schools are required to investigate, what standard of evidence applies, and what rights accusers and the accused each hold. The Cornell case is being covered as an institutional failure story. The legal framework that governs what institutions are required to do has been less prominently featured.

KELI On Second Amendment law. The Ninth Circuit issued a decision in Yukutake, a case involving Hawaii's handgun carry restrictions. Judge R. Nelson dissented, and the dissent focuses on footnote nine of the Supreme Court's 2022 Bruen decision. That footnote stated that shall-issue licensing regimes, where a general desire for self-defense is sufficient to obtain a permit, are not made unconstitutional by Bruen. Nelson's dissent argues the footnote has been misread as a broad carve-out from Bruen's text-and-history test. His position is that it is not.

HAST The practical stakes: courts have divided on whether Bruen's footnote nine gives states room to maintain permitting structures that would otherwise fail the historical analysis Bruen requires. Nelson's dissent says no. If that reading gains traction, a significant number of state licensing regimes could face new constitutional challenges. This is a doctrinal dispute that has not broken out of legal press coverage yet.

KELI In Indonesia, five prison officials have been suspended following the discovery of an apartment-style compound inside Cibinong prison. The warden is among those suspended. Certain inmates had been living in what were described as luxury accommodations within the facility.

HAST Indonesia's prison corruption cases follow a pattern: they surface, officials are suspended, and the systemic conditions that enable them are addressed slowly if at all. This story is being covered as a scandal. Whether it functions as an inflection point depends on what the investigation produces beyond the suspensions.

KELI And in Morocco. Protests have taken place across the country in opposition to Rabat's deepening ties with Israel. The gap between public sentiment and government policy on normalization is wide and visible. The Moroccan government has not reversed course.

HAST Morocco normalized relations with Israel in 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords, in exchange for U.S. recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. That trade is the structural context for why the government's position has proven durable despite the protests. The public opposition is real. So is the geopolitical arrangement that insulates the policy from it.

KELI That's the drop for Tuesday, September 29. I'm Keli.

HAST And I'm Hast. We'll be back tomorrow.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. Over at Gil's Intelligent Version there's a piece on what the original words of scripture actually say about the Trinity — before any translation decided for us.

HAST Six words, examined in Hebrew and Greek. It's at inkwell dot wiki, slash trinity.