Convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh could be getting a new trial thanks to a South Carolina Supreme Court ruling this week. The state Supreme Court overturned a previous ruling that said the former Colleton County Clerk who worked the trial didn’t tamper with the jury, as Murdaugh’s attorneys alleged. The new ruling could pave the way for Murdaugh to get a new trial, the New York Post reported. Before a new trial is granted, however, the state Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for and against the decision. Murdaugh’s attorneys had requested a new trial last year after he was convicted of the 2021 murders of his wife, Maggie, and youngest son, Paul. Their argument for a new trial stemmed from comments then-Colleton County Clerk Rebecca “Becky” Hill made that Murdaugh’s attorneys said amounted to jury tampering. Hill had a book deal to write about the Murdaugh case and trial. She discussed Murdaugh’s demeanor when he testified and made other comments about him to at least one juror. She also allegedly allowed a photo of Murdaugh sitting in a holding cell to be taken so that she could use it to promote her book. Even though she resigned in March, she still faces 76 counts of ethics violations for her behavior, and many of those violations relate to her actions during Murdaugh’s trial. WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI But in January, South Carolina Judge Jean Toal denied that Hill’s actions amounted to jury tampering, though she did admonish Hill for her behavior. “She made comments about Murdaugh’s demeanor as he testified and she made some of those comments before he testified to at least one and maybe more jurors,” Toal said, according to CNN. “Did clerk of court Hill’s comments have any impact on the verdict of the jury? I find that the answer to this question is no.” At least one juror testified that Hill made comments indicating she thought Murdaugh was guilty, which the juror said influenced her decision to convict. But that juror also told Judge Tol that she stood by an earlier sworn affidavit that said the other jurors influenced her to vote guilty more than Hill’s comments. Even if Murdaugh gets a new trial and his conviction is overturned, he’s still likely to remain in prison for the rest of his life. While he’s always denied killing his wife and son, he has pleaded guilty to financial crimes and received a 27-year sentence from the state of South Carolina and an additional 40 years from the federal government to run concurrently. He is appealing the 40-year sentence.

I have a confession to make: When I was a young adult, eligible to vote, I didn’t do it. For years, I did not vote and I am not even certain I was registered to vote. If anyone had asked me then if I thought it was a good thing to vote, I would have said yes. But as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  More importantly, the road to bad public policies is also paved with good intentions. We know there are tens of millions of good people who sit out every election, even the most consequential ones.  I was one of those people and things only changed for me when I made a plan to vote. And now that I vote in every election, it is still imperative that I make a plan. Making a plan to vote begins to move it from a good intention to an actual accomplishment. Moreover, making a plan minimizes the risk of missing your vote because of unforeseen circumstances, maximizes how well prepared you will be to make your choices confidently, and expands the degree to which you can mobilize other voters. So here is a suggested 10-point “Plan to Vote” that I recommend to every voter: Check your Voter Registration at www.CheckYourVoterRegistration.com. Make sure all the details are correct and fix what has to be fixed. Visit your state election website and find the information for your county and voting district. Verify your regular polling place. On that same site, find out when early voting begins in your state and county, and the location where the polling place for you would be for early voting. (It may not be the same as your usual polling place.) Mark your calendar to vote as soon as possible after early voting begins. Choose the day on which you will vote. If circumstances require you to use an absentee ballot, find out from your state election website or your local board of elections when and how they are available, arrange to get yours, and decide what date you’re going to fill it out. If you will vote in person, figure out what time of day you will go and how you will get there. Have a Plan B in case something happens that day with sickness, weather, car trouble, mechanical problems at the polling place, etc. Decide in advance what alternate day you will be able to go vote. Determine if there are others who can come with you. Find your ballot in order to see exactly what it will look like. Study it carefully. Use your state election website, Ballotpedia.org, or iVoterGuide.com. Research each candidate and ballot initiative. Find out from your state election website or your local board of elections how you can track your ballot once it is cast. As the expression goes, every vote counts. But the reality is bigger: Every ballot counts. To ensure the safety of every ballot, also consider becoming a poll watcher or a poll worker. A poll watcher is an election observer whose job is to monitor the elections without violating voter privacy. Poll watchers can be members of a political party, pollsters, candidate representatives or representatives of federal and state agencies. Every state has its own laws about who can become a poll watcher, and how, so a good place to start is at the United States Election Assistance Commission. Poll workers actually staff the polling places on and before Election Day. They set up and prepare the site, welcome voters, verify registrations and many other tasks. Head to this page at the United States Election Assistance Commission to find out how to apply in your state and county. Some states are still conducting their primary elections, but voting in the 2024 General Election begins in just a few weeks, as North Carolina makes the early ballots available on Sept. 6.  Think of Election Day as the first day of early voting in your state and plan accordingly. If a significant portion of voters decide to make a plan, we will end up with better turnout and with election victories at every level. And that’s something worth planning for. * * * Frank Pavone is national director of Priests for Life and the national pastoral director of Rachel’s Vineyard Ministries and the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. The books he has authored include Abolishing Abortion and Proclaiming the Message of Life. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire. 

In the Zoom chat, people talked about “brat summer” and “hotties for Harris.” Meanwhile, the host for Tuesday’s virtual event, Matthew Rein, offered tips and tricks to Kamala Harris supporters on how to post TikToks to support the Democratic presidential nominee. During the “Organizing on TikTok: Training Session,” Rein, who does social media analysis for the Democratic National Committee, admitted that one of the Democrats’ main challenges on TikTok is former president Donald Trump’s massive following. “Really our other challenge is that Donald Trump has a very large following on this platform. He has 10 million followers. Does that mean that he is running his TikTok well? No. But he does have a very large reach on the platform,” he said. NEW? The DNC held a TikTok “training session” for Kamala Harris supporters on Tuesday. See the highlights below. Spoiler, MAGA is “weird,” Trump’s large following is a “challenge,” and one Harris supporter is on TikTok as “woke grandpa.” pic.twitter.com/gcMWviAVCH — Mairead Elordi (@JohnsonHildy) August 15, 2024 As of May, there were twice as many pro-Trump videos as pro-Biden videos on the platform, a slide from the presentation said. Even with Harris bumped to the top of the ticket, “it’s still the case that there are a lot of Trump supporters on this app. There are low information voters with low engagement,” Rein said. Another issue is “right wing actors who are purposely spreading disinformation about Kamala Harris, about Tim Walz now, about Democrats generally,” he continued. “They spread some pretty horrific lies and propaganda, and TikTok isn’t necessarily always the fastest at getting this down.” “But thankfully we also have some tremendous opportunities. We have opportunities to set narratives,” the host added. Harris supporters should also “amplify negative content” and “react to how extreme and weird and bizarre Donald Trump and JD Vance are and MAGA in general,” Rein said. The training offered several examples of pro-Democrat TikToks, including one mocking an Arizona Republican for blaming President Biden for inflation while “on the bill it didn’t include actual grocery items.” At one point in the presentation, the hosts compared a TikTok from the Make America Great Again super PAC to one of the DNC’s TikToks. “Guys, President Biden just dragged Donald Trump,” a woman in the DNC’s post says, followed by a clip of Biden saying, “Donald Trump still thinks windmills cause cancer! That’s what he said! By the way, remember when he was trying to deal with COVID he said just inject a little bleach in your veins. He missed. It all went to his hair.” “Dark Brandon strikes again,” the woman says. That video “drives our narrative” of Biden “being able to be up there, to give a speech, and to be humorous,” Rein said. All the while the Zoom chat was hopping, with one person saying they were already on TikTok as “woke grandpa.” Another said their first TikTok would be, “Why should an old white upper middle class dude like me vote for Harris-Walz?” Another TikTok highlighted during the presentation featured Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who reacted to a TikToker saying he would add Harris to a group chat.  “Can I get in on this group chat too?” Emhoff quipped in the video. Yet another video example involved asking why Trump has “never talked about” Project 2025. “This is prior to Trump denying his involvement with Project 2025,” Rein said. The training also urged supporters to be “engaging” and “a little snappy” with their posts. “If you start your video and you’re just like, ‘well, and today Kamala Harris did this rally,’ no one cares about it, right? No one’s going to care,” Rein said.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said on Wednesday that Democrat-controlled Michigan, a vital swing state in the 2024 election, would become part of a “red wall” of states, arguing that voters are fed up with leftist economic policies. Vance spoke to supporters in Byron Center, a small town just south of Grand Rapids, where he focused on the economy. Former President Donald Trump’s running mate blasted “a generation of failed leadership” in Michigan and predicted that voters in the state would overwhelmingly turn out in support of Republicans in November. “Thanks to a generation of failed leadership, Michigan has seen thousands of manufacturing jobs disappear. We have got to do better,” Vance said, according to The Detroit News. “Michigan, people used to call it a blue wall state. I think Michigan is a red wall state now because people are sick of losing their livelihoods and losing their jobs,” he added. Michigan has been listed in a group of states considered the “blue wall” given their streak of voting for the Democratic presidential candidate in every election from 1992 to 2012. Trump broke the “blue wall” streak in 2016 when he won Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Under Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s leadership, Michigan’s job growth numbers have fallen behind the national average. After the state’s economy took a hit during Whitmer’s prolonged COVID lockdowns, it bounced back slightly but is far behind the pace of the rest of the country. Watchdog group Michigan Capitol Confidential reported in February that jobs in the U.S. were up 3.3% since the pandemic, but over the same time period, employment in Michigan had only gone up 0.3%. WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI Michigan is also near the top of the list among states that have seen the most people move to another state. According to 2022 data from United Van Lines, nearly 168,000 people left Michigan, which was the fifth-highest number among any state. Around 30% of those who fled Michigan did so because of a job in another state. The Great Lakes State saw an especially high number of Gen Z residents leave, being the only state that saw more Gen Z adults flee than move into the state, according to U.S.  Census Bureau data analyzed by Zillow. Michigan is completely controlled by Democrats, who hold the governor’s mansion, a majority in both chambers of the state legislatures, and both U.S. Senate seats. Trump won the state over Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in 2016 by just over 10,000 votes. Biden then took the state in 2020 by more than 150,000 votes. Trump led in the polling average in Michigan before Biden dropped out of the race on July 21. Now that Vice President Kamala Harris is the nominee, Trump trails in the state by 2.4 points, according to the latest average from Real Clear Politics.

Seinfeld was a television staple from 1989 until 1998. One of the main recurring characters was Elaine Benes, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who joined the cast in 1990. Although many of Seinfeld’s scenes with Elaine are hilarious, perhaps the best was her dance scene from Season 8 Episode 4, The Little Kicks. An annual tradition has spun off as a result of this humorous scene. The Brooklyn Cyclones is a minor-league baseball team in Brooklyn, NY. The team puts on special events throughout the season to boost ticket sales. One of those is “Seinfeld Night.” On this night, fans can dress as the characters on the show. One of the best events is the “Elaine Dance Contest.” During the contest, dancers attempt to imitate the wacky moves of Elaine’s embarrassing dance from the Seinfeld episode. This year, contestants nailed it with their efforts. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nicolas Heller (@newyorknico) Before the dance-off, the Cyclones advertised for contestants on social media. Dancers met at the ballpark to strut their stuff, and the fans had no disappointment! You can watch longer coverage of the contest here. The contestants danced, and the crowd narrowed the field to three finalists. When the contest was over and all the shouts were in, Shannon Kintner walked away with all the Junior Mints. The Superman statuette is still in the prop room, but Shannon did get a nice trophy. Image from Instagram. During its run, we watched stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld muddle through life in New York. The show included a cast of crazy neighbors and friends, and watching the group navigate daily life became a mainstay in many households. That we are still celebrating the series three decades later says a lot. Please share if you enjoyed Seinfeld. You can find the source of this story’s featured image here and here. The post Women Gather To Dance Like Elaine From “Seinfeld” In Delightfully Silly Contest appeared first on InspireMore.

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