Detroit Pistons All-Star forward Blake Griffin spent the first two games of his team’s first-round Eastern Conference series against the Milwaukee Bucks on the sidelines with knee soreness, and he underwent an arthroscopic procedure on his left knee to start his offseason on Wednesday.
According to James Edwards III of The Athletic, Griffin is not expected to miss any planned offseason training.
Prior to the operation, the veteran forward talked about having the opportunity to get healthy over the summer.
“I don’t anticipate missing any time working out other than just my normal time I take off,” he said, perNBA.com. “It’ll be a long off-season again, like last off-season, which is a good thing for me because I’ll be able to get in the gym and work and come back and be ready.”
Griffin was active for Game 3 of the series, but his presence was not enough to help the Pistons avoid a sweep at the hands of the top-seeded Bucks. He averaged 24.5 points, 6.0 rebounds and 6.0 assists in two appearances.
As head coach Dwane Casey made clear after the series, per NBA.com, his effort stood out:
“Blake played his heart out with basically one leg and he gave everything he could to our team. He fought a lot of pain, swelling just so he could support his teammates. I think we were in sixth place when he started experiencing the pain and swelling but he kept with it. Kept playing until he couldn’t play any more. He gave everything he could to our team. We owe him a lot as far as what he gives us, the leadership he gave to the young players.”
The 30-year-old six-time All-Star dealt with the nagging knee injury down the stretch this season. On April 7, Casey commented to the Detroit News‘ Rod Beard that playing couldn’t further injure Griffin’s knee.
However, the team still opted to sideline the power forward for the final game of the regular season and the first two postseason games.
Following Game 1, Griffin admitted to Beard that he would have played if it were up to him, which makes the situation all the more peculiar.
Rod Beard @detnewsRodBeard
#Pistons Blake Griffin on sitting out games because of his knee injury: “I have to do what our organization, our training staff, our doctors think is best – and that’s the bottom line.”
Rod Beard @detnewsRodBeard
#Pistons Blake Griffin said returning from his knee injury is not a pain issue only…sounds more complicated than that, with a lot of people in on the decision to sit him.
When on the court, Griffin was undoubtedly the biggest difference-maker for the Pistons. In his first full season with the team, he averaged 24.5 points, 7.5 rebounds and 5.4 assists across 75 contests.
Administration lawyers have rejected several House subpoenas and requests, all but ensuring long legal battles.
President Donald Trump may successfully drag out many of his legal battles with Congress beyond 2020, denying Democratic investigators much, if any, political bounty before the next election.
With Democrats pressing on multiple fronts, from demanding Trump’s tax returns to seeking the testimony of current and former administration officials, some Trump allies see a White House working to buy time.
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Administration lawyers have rejected a variety of Democratic requests and subpoenas, taking steps that seem to ensure protracted legal battles, which past presidents have used to run out the clock on their congressional adversaries.
Asked whether Trump could keep his legal blockade up through November of next year, one former senior White House official said: “One and a half to two years is a safe bet.”
Eric Columbus, a Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security attorney during the Obama administration, said: “The pace tends to be very slow. It might end up going all the way to the Supreme Court.”
That creates the prospect that Trump won’t be forced to turn over explosive documents or provide witnesses for hearings until after his re-election bid is complete.
And while Trump’s defiant posture — including hisdeclaration on Wednesday that he will fight “all the subpoenas” Congress has issued — could look like stonewalling, the president has shown little concern for appearances.
“One of the goals [for Trump] is to delay things as much as possible — and you can do that when fighting a subpoena, if you’re not worried about being perceived to be blocking information from reaching the public,” Columbus said.
Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, told POLITICO on Wednesday that a stalling effort was wise given what he called the partisan motives of congressional Democrats.
“I think it’s exactly the right legal strategy. … I doubt there’s anybody in America that thinks this has some legitimate governmental purpose,” Giuliani said, noting that he is not shaping the White House’s legal strategy for handling official requests. “It’s a joke. I mean, they really have to be very naive.”
“This is like a judge saying I’m going to hang you but I’ll give you a trial first,” he added. “We generally don’t go for that in America, and you’d have to be a fool to cooperate with it. It’s obviously a political effort. Congress shouldn’t be used for it. Let’s see if a court wouldn’t agree.”
Trump is hardly the first president to vigorously contest congressional oversight, even if Democrats insist he is stonewalling to an unprecedented degree. Similar showdowns between Congress and the White House under prior presidents have lingered for years as the two sides haggled in court.
A standoff between the House Judiciary Committee and President George W. Bush’s administration over the November 2006 firing of several U.S. attorneys dragged into 2009, for instance, resulting in a deal for the testimony of former White House officials that President Barack Obama’s White House negotiated after Bush left office.
And an Obama-era fight in which a Republican House demanded information on the gun trafficking probe known as Operation Fast and Furious was joined in 2011, with the House voting in 2012 to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt. The fight lingers in court to this day, with information emerging in dribs and drabs over the past seven years.
All too aware that Trump can invoke constitutional arguments like executive privilege to fend off inquiries that touch on his presidency, House Democrats are also going after Trump where he has fewer legal defenses.
Both the House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee are seeking information not only from government agencies and members of Trump’s inner circle, but also from businesses, banks and private individuals who were involved in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation or in business dealings with the Trump Organization.
While White House officials and federal agencies may defy a congressional subpoena at the White House’s direction, businesses and others outside the government are unlikely to do so. That puts the onus on Trump’s attorneys to challenge such subpoenas, rather than waiting for the House to act to enforce them.
“It’s the right strategy,” one former White House official said of the House effort. “Private companies don’t want bad publicity. They may have ongoing relationships with the government or congressional committees and don’t want to affect that.”
The White House and government agencies sometimes decide not to comply with a subpoena, but “banks are not generally inclined to do that,” the ex-official added.
The House’s strategy of seeking information from alternative sources led to a new battle this week as Trump’s lawyers went to court to try to block one of his accounting firms from handing over records in response to a House subpoena. The suit, filed against Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), chairman of the Oversight Committee, accuses the panel of acting without any legislative purpose and out of a political vendetta against Trump.
The case was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, an appointee of President Barack Obama. Mehta has set a hearing for May 14 on Trump’s demand for an injunction.
The suit seems like an uphill battle for Trump. Last year, House Republicans tried a similar tactic to the one that House Democrats are pursuing now. After Fusion GPS — the research firm that prepared the widely disputed dossier on Trump’s ties to Russia — refused to comply with a subpoena for records about payments it made, the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed similar information from the firm’s bank. Fusion GPS sued to block the bank from disclosing the info, but a judge turned the company down.
“This court will not — and indeed, may not — engage in a line-by-line review of the committee’s requests,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee. Leon also cited a Supreme Court ruling saying he had no authority to consider the “motives” behind Congress’ action.
However, despite that decision, one House Republican committee source suggested that courts might find limits on Congress’ ability to enforce subpoenas, especially if a judge deemed it to have “the intent of abusing or embarrassing the person being investigated.” The source also suggested that courts, which have historically granted Congress enormous latitude to demand information from the executive branch and private sector, might view the personal records of the president differently.
“I’m not sure there’s a lot of precedent for a scenario just like this one,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It’s probably a pretty novel question.”
Another battle seems to be looming over the testimony of former White House Counsel Don McGahn. The White House appears set to fight any House subpoena for McGahn, which could trigger a court fight over executive privilege.
However, Trump may have undercut his privilege claim by allowing McGahn to be interviewed by Mueller for 30 hours about all kinds of internal deliberations, including direct conversations with the president. Some lawyers say the claim was further undermined when the White House signed off on the release of Mueller’s report without any redactions on executive privilege grounds.
“It may be that executive privilege would have applied, but I think the waiver argument is very compelling,” said Ron Weich, dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law, who served as head of the Justice Department’s legislative affairs shop during the Obama administration.
Other lawyers say court rulings suggest that the waiver could be more narrow, limiting what Congress could ask McGahn. And some also say that legal precedents suggest the House could bolster its claim to testimony from McGahn and others by formally opening an impeachment inquiry, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been reluctant to do.
The Bush White House’s attempt to resist subpoenas for former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and other officials about the U.S. attorney firings resulted in an initial ruling that went against the president. U.S. District Court Judge John Bates rejected the administration’s position that the officials were completely immune from testifying and did not even have to show up.
Bates ordered them to appear for depositions, although he left open the possibility that they could refuse to answer certain questions. His ruling was on appeal to the D.C. Circuit when Bush left office. The Obama administration, in consultation with Bush representatives, cut a deal to have Miers and former Bush aide Karl Rove submit to interviews behind closed doors. But the battle took almost two years.
The appeal was withdrawn and the D.C. Circuit never ruled on whether Bates was right.
Lawyers said one wild card in the forthcoming fight was how willing McGahn would be to appear and tell his story. As White House counsel, he was notoriously taciturn in public, speaking publicly only once or twice a year but displaying a wry sense of humor when he did.
If Congress tries to force McGahn to testify, that process could be complicated.
“Many years ago, Congress ceased trying to enforce its own subpoenas and instead generally seeks to outsource enforcement to the other branches,” said Ross Garber, a legal expert in government investigations and impeachment. “Here, the executive branch will not come to its aid, and the judicial branch … will generally show great reluctance to intervene in a dispute between the executive and legislative branches. Civil litigation, which the path the House is now contemplating, can be long and uncertain, both of which favor the president.”
While McGahn has praised Trump and seems ideologically aligned with the White House, it’s unclear whether Trump’s recent public attacks on McGahn might push the conservative lawyer into a more adversarial stance toward the president.
If McGahn wants to testify, it may be difficult for the White House to stop him by racing to court.
“It would be a drastic step. I can’t think of any prior example,” said Mark Zaid, an attorney who advises government employees on their confidentiality obligations.
Zaid noted that because executive privilege covers all presidential advisers, not just White House lawyers, any legal move to stop McGahn from speaking publicly about his tenure at the White House would seem to open the door to silencing White House aides more generally.
In theory, McGahn could be risking some bar sanction if he revealed confidences he learned while in the White House. In 2017, acting Attorney General Sally Yates raised a similar concern about a congressional demand for her testimony about discussions that led to her resignation over Trump’s travel ban policy. The White House eventually agreed to let her testify.
“There are tons of people who have written books about being lawyers in the government, they have possibly crossed that line and nothing happened to them,” Zaid noted.
McGahn’s attorney didn’t respond to requests for comment, but his team seems to be seeking some protection on that front, either in terms of White House permission or a court ruling blessing his testimony
It’s also unclear how Trump’s public intransigence will play with judges. In past fights in other administrations, judges have traditionally urged both sides to try to negotiate some resolution. If Trump rejects any such effort, it’s possible he could unwittingly prompt faster action by the courts.
“The executive branch usually does not want to be seen fighting transparency,” said Columbus, the former government attorney. “If the president is OK with that, he may feel no harm to just fighting everything.” But, he said, the pressures for some negotiation could lead Trump to waver on his vow to defy Congress.
“He says that now, but he may — or may not — continue to take that position.”
New Delhi, India – As India conducts the biggest democratic exercise in the world, its Muslim minority has little to cheer amid their increasing electoral marginalisation.
In the lower house of the outgoing parliament known as Lok Sabha, there were only 22 Muslims of 543 politicians.
The South Asian nation’s largest minority forms some 14 percent of the country’s 1.3 billion population, but only four percent are represented in the Lok Sabha. It is the lowest Muslim representation in five decades, compared with more than six percent a decade ago and a peak of 9.6 percent in 1980.
Many young Muslims Al Jazeera spoke to expressed pessimism about the future of Muslim politics in the country currently ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
“Over the last five years, the BJP has polarised votes to such an extent that political parties are now reluctant to give tickets to Muslim candidates. Parties fear it will cost them the Hindu vote bank,” Mohammad Adnan, who runs a travel agency in New Delhi’s Jamia Nagar area, told Al Jazeera.
In 2014, BJP won a record 282 seats in the Lok Sabha with none of its MPs from the Muslim community.
In the past five years under Modi, the representation of Muslims in state assemblies has also fallen, with critics blaming anti-Muslim rhetoric pushed by the BJP.
“BJP very consciously and explicitly aims to exclude Muslims from the public sphere,” Gilles Verniers, a political scientist at Ashoka University based in Haryana state, told Al Jazeera.
‘Hindu majoritarian party’
Verniers said the BJP’s policy of marginalising Muslims electorally is a signal to its voter base that it is a “Hindu majoritarian party”.
In 2017, the BJP didn’t field a single Muslim candidate in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state with a population of 40 million Muslims. In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, which also went to the polls in 2017, BJP again failed to give a single ticket to Muslim candidates. The right-wing party came to power in both states.
A BJP spokesperson denied the party discriminated against any citizen on the basis of religion.
“BJP doesn’t discriminate or distinguish between Indian citizens on the basis of caste, religion, colour, region or any other agenda. It (BJP) follows Article 14 of the constitution, right to equality, in totality,” Nalin Kohli told Al Jazeera.
Since Modi came to power in 2014, Muslims have faced increased hate crimes [Amit Dave/Reuters]
“Representation or giving seats in an election is primarily winnability-driven. We have had Muslim candidates also and [if] more such winnable candidates are part of our party fold, they certainly will find their opportunities,” he said.
The secular parties, including Indian National Congress – a party that prides itself for having fought for India’s independence with purported ideals of plurality and secularism – have also begun to shun Muslims in recent decades.
Last year, former Congress chief Sonia Gandhi said the BJP had managed to “convince” people that the Congress was a “Muslim party” and indicated that her son and current party president Rahul Gandhi’s much talked-about visits to Hindu temples were an attempt to shed that perception.
“With the formidable rise of the BJP, other political parties have also become somewhat reticent in fielding a lot of Muslim candidates. The Congress, in particular, the BJP’s main rival, has reduced the number of tickets to Muslims due to fear that it would backfire electorally,” said Verniers.
‘Electorally irrelevant’
Mohammad Sajjad, professor of history at Aligarh Muslim University, Uttar Pradesh,said Hindu majoritarianism is aimed at making India’s Muslims “electorally irrelevant”.
BJP very consciously and explicitly aims to exclude Muslims from the public sphere
Gilles Verniers, a political analyst
“The Hindu consolidation is being done by vilifying Muslims, by spreading hatred against Muslims,” he said.
Modi came to power on a promise to deliver economic growth, more jobs and to end corruption, but as he seeks a second term, the country is facing its worst job crisis in 45 years.
The past five years have seen a rise in hate crimes against Muslims and other minorities, and people, mostly Muslims, have been lynched by “cow vigilantes”, radical cow protection groups.
According to FactChecker.in, which tracks hate crimes in India, of 79 fatal incidents recorded by the website since 2009, 76 happened in the past five years.
Meanwhile, the people involved in hate crimes have been honoured by senior ruling party leaders.
Jayant Sinha, a Modi cabinet minister, last year stoked controversy after he garlanded eight men – convicted for killing a Muslim cattle trader while they were released on bail.
“Since the BJP government came to power, Muslims are living in an environment of fear,” said Ehtisham Uddin, a resident of Old Delhi.
“Every now and then, we see reports of a Muslim attacked on suspicion of eating beef or in other cow-related cases.
‘Silence on Muslim exclusion’
Kohli, the BJP spokesperson, however, said that the “prime minister himself has condemned such acts of hooliganism”.
Muslims, who number 170 million, are historically underrepresented in democratic institutions. [Amarjeet Kumar Singh/Al Jazeera]
“[The] law is acting against each one of such perpetrators, we are not interfering in it.”
Political analyst Shiv Visvanathan said that as the BJP’s influence spreads, it is becoming more and more exclusive.
“BJP wants a uniform world,” he said. “It doesn’t know how to be pluralistic.”
Visvanathan said the BJP’s electoral majority has made it “indifferent to minority politics”, adding that in such a climate, “nobody is raising issues concerning Muslims”.
“This election will be known for its silences rather than issues,” he said.
Verniers said even other political parties, with their claims of secularism, have failed to take on the BJP on its anti-Muslim stance.
“No one is really willing to confront the BJP on its practice of exclusion of Muslims. They are not doing it out of fear of being branded pro-Muslim, and therefore anti-Hindu,” Verniers told Al Jazeera.
History of underrepresentation
While India’s Muslims have held high-profile constitutional posts, including the president and chief justice, analysts say the community has been historically underrepresented in democratic and government institutions.
In 1947, a majority of Muslims did not migrate to Pakistan when British India was partitioned into Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India. In India’s first national elections in 1952, only 11 Muslims could make their way into parliament.
“In the first elections after independence, parties wouldn’t give too many seats to Muslims as there was a clear lack of legitimacy of Muslim candidates and a climate of suspicion against Muslim politicians,” Verniers told Al Jazeera.
“The Congress would provide them protection against their votes, but that would not translate into political representation. That practice lies at the root of skewed Muslim representation.”
Author and political commentator Siddiq Wahid said the Congress looked at Muslims only as a “vote bank” and did little to promote leadership within the community.
However, senior Congress leader Saifuddin Soz called the grand-old party a “unifier” and a “great hope, not only for Muslims but for all the downtrodden people across India”.
“The weaker sections of society look up to the Congress,” Soz told Al Jazeera.
BJP doesn’t discriminate or distinguish between Indian citizens on the basis of caste, religion, colour, region or any other agenda.
Nalin Kohli, BJP spokesperson
Professor Sajjad, however, added that mere emphasis on identity may not help Muslims and they should also focus on quality leadership.
Between 2012 and 2017, Sajjad said there were more than 60 MLAs from the Muslim community in the Uttar Pradesh assembly – but they didn’t speak out against the violence that happened in several parts of the state against Muslims.
“So mere numbers won’t work. Muslims require quality leaders who can make intervention both inside and outside the legislative arena,” he added.
‘We’re going to be judged by what we can do in the first 24 hours, the first week,’ the former vice president told a group of top donors.
On the eve of announcing his presidential bid, former Vice President Joe Biden raised the alarm about fundraising in a Wednesday conference call with top donors and supporters.
“The money’s important. We’re going to be judged by what we can do in the first 24 hours, the first week,” Biden told the group, according to one participant, whose recollections of the quotes were confirmed by two others on the call.
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“People think Iowa and New Hampshire are the first test,” Biden said. “It’s not. The first 24 hours. That’s the first test. Those [early states] are way down the road. We’ve got to get through this first.”
Biden — noting that “I hate to do this” in discussing the fundraising — said he would be flying around the country for fundraisers with the participants but urged them to do what they can as soon as possible.
“Do what you can right now,” Biden said.
The former vice president is expected to announce his presidential run in a video to be released Thursday.
On the call, an upbeat Biden said his candidacy was a calling, a duty —and that it’s not just Democrats or Americans who want him to run to stop President Donald Trump.
“I get calls from people all over the world — world leaders are calling me — and they’re almost begging me to do this, to save the country, save the world,” Biden said. One of the participants on the call stressed that Biden wasn’t making it sound as though he has a messiah complex, but rather that world leaders are looking toward the Democratic Party to defeat Trump, whether it’s Biden or another Democrat.
Biden also made a round of fundraising calls on Tuesday, including to top Florida Democratic fundraiser Chris Korge, who told him he was staying neutral in the race for now. But, Korge said, he thinks Biden could win the expectations game when it came to raising small-dollar donations, which are not his forte.
“Joe is going to do a lot better than a lot of people think,” said Korge, Hillary Clinton’s top bundler in 2016. “There’s broad support from him in our party, just look at the polling.”
In addition, he said, Biden can count on some residual goodwill from President Barack Obama’s former donors who feel a sense of loyalty to his former vice president.
“I think it’s fertile ground,” said Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina state senator and onetime chair of the state Democratic Party, who will be playing an on-the-ground role in Biden’s campaign. “I did some calling yesterday, I found some $30,000 to $40,000 low-hanging fruit that wasn’t all that hard to find.”
Longtime Democratic fundraiser and trial attorney Joe Cotchett predicted Biden’s fundraising would ramp up quickly once he’s actually in the race.
“I think that might change really quick,” says Cotchett, who says he’ll be active in Biden’s campaign and fundraising in the Bay Area, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Arizona. “I think he’s going to get on the street and you’re going to see a lot of people moving towards him when you finally convince them that he can beat Donald Trump.”
ProminentFlorida Democratic donor John Morgan, who also spoke Tuesday with Biden and was on the Wednesday conference call, said the former vice president sounded “positive” on the call. He said Biden is realistic about the challenges ahead, but he’s not “worried” about fundraising.
“He sounds ready to go. We know him and love him and he’s the candidate of sanity with the best chance to win,” Morgan said. “He wanted my help and I said, ‘Tell me when to have a fundraiser.‘”
While Oklahoma’s Kyler Murray and Ohio State’s Dwayne Haskins have been the most talked-about quarterbacks leading up to Thursday’s NFL draft, Duke’s Daniel Jones could wind up being a top-10 pick.
In fact, the Blue Devils star may not fall past the New York Giants at No. 6.
“That’s their guy,” an NFL source told SNY’s Ralph Vacchiano on Wednesday. “They love him and they have for a while. I can’t imagine they’ll wait until 17. He’s not likely to last that long.”
New York owns two first-round picks—Nos. 6 and 17.
With 38-year-old Eli Manning entering the final season of his contract in 2019, the Giants may be in the market to draft his potential successor after they passed on the opportunity with the second overall pick last year. However, general manager Dave Gettleman recently made it clear that the team will be looking to draft the best available player, regardless of whether he’s a quarterback.
“I won’t force a pick. You can’t draft for need. You will get screwed every time and make a mistake. …
“The priority is to select the best players. Last year, we could not pass up on Saquon [Barkley]. He was the best player in the draft. You can’t do that. We have had this conversation before. Eli is closer to 40 than he is to 25. We can do that math. At the end of the day, we are going to take the best players.”
While he may have been overlooked while playing college ball in Durham, Jones is coming off his best performance to date. He completed 60.5 percent of his passes for 2,674 yards, 22 touchdowns and nine interceptions as a redshirt junior for the Blue Devils.
Steve Palazzolo @PFF_Steve
2018 Daniel Jones has the fourth-highest PFF grade on Over-the-Shoulder throws in the last three draft classes, but his completion percentage of 19.6% is second-worst out of 24 qualifiers
Steve Palazzolo @PFF_Steve
Lowest percentage of “uncatchable” passes on throws up to 20 yards among top QB prospects:
Will Grier 13.2%
Kyler Murray 13.4%
Dwayne Haskins 15.4%
Daniel Jones 16.2%
Drew Lock 20.4%
Cris Collinsworth @CollinsworthPFF
@formula1speed I could sneak Daniel Jones from Duke in there late. He does a lot of good stuff with an over-matched team at times.
Gettleman noted there are “a couple of really good quarterbacks in this draft” while adding that the pressure of playing in the Big Apple is not for everyone:
“Being a quarterback of a team in this type of market is a load. It is a mental load. You have to really vet out the background of these guys. … You have to have a mental toughness about you to play the position here in New York. Or to play the position anywhere. That is a huge piece of it. It is important. If you don’t think it is, you need to re-think it.”
Jones would welcome the opportunity to be drafted by the Giants, giving him the chance to learn from a two-time Super Bowl MVP.
“That’d be awesome,” he said Wednesday, per Chris Isemanof theNew Jersey Record. “I’d be extremely excited about that. I think an opportunity to learn from a guy like Eli, watch him the way he carries himself day in and day out would be a tremendous learning opportunity for a young guy, and that would be an awesome situation.”
Jones will have to wait until at least Thursday to find out where he’ll land. It appears as though New York has interest, but it could also be a smokescreen. Vacchiano wrote the NFC East rival Washington Redskins have also been linked to Jones.
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