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Politico Issues Retraction After Reporting Justice Sotomayor Dined With Top Dems After Biden Vaccine Mandate Hearing

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OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.


Politico’s Playbook newsletter was forced to issue an embarrassing retraction after misidentifying Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s wife, Iris Weinshall.

The publication claimed that the photo was sent in by a tipster and was allegedly taken at the D.C. eatery Le Diplomate.

Politico claimed in its original report that Sotomayor, who did not appear for oral arguments on Friday at the Supreme Court over coronavirus concerns, was dining with Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and others.

“SPOTTED: Speaker NANCY PELOSI, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER and wife, IRIS WEINSHALL, Sens. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-Minn.) and DICK DURBIN (D-Ill.) dining together at Le Diplomate on Friday night,” Politico Playbook said.

The outlet was forced to issue an embarrassing retraction after it was revealed that it was Schumer’s wife, not Sotomayor.

“CORRECTION: The original version of this item misidentified Iris Weinshall, the wife of Chuck Schumer, as Sonia Sotomayor. Our tipster got it wrong, but we should have double-checked,” the correction reads.

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Below is the photo that was allegedly sent to Politico:

Screengrab

Several on Twitter mocked Politico for the mistake.

Beyond that, Sotomayor came under fire after she spouted an egregious falsehood during oral arguments over Biden’s OSHA vaccine “mandate.”

Sotomayor falsely claimed that the “vaccines” stop the spread of Covid-19 — and particularly, the Delta and Omicron variants.

Sotomayor also made a false statement on child hospitalizations.

“We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators,” she claimed.

Even left-wing Politifact issued a correction on the claim and labeled it as “false.”

The nation’s highest court heard oral arguments challenging both Biden’s vaccine mandate for businesses with over 100 employees and for healthcare workers at facilities receiving Medicaid and Medicare funding.

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“Several Republican-led states, businesses, and other opponents have put Biden’s mandates in legal limbo for weeks, with federal courts having halted their enforcement pending the outcome of the legal challenges. While courts have generally upheld the rights of private businesses and schools to implement their own vaccine mandates, the lawsuits over Biden’s rules challenge whether the federal government has the authority to force employers and other entities to require vaccinations,” Fox News reported.

“Arguments over the mandate for healthcare workers at facilities receiving Medicaid and Medicare funding remains murkier, with a federal appeals court lifting the ban on that mandate last week. The ruling created an avenue for enforcement of the mandate across the country, though it remains to be seen how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule,” the Fox report added.

“Biden’s employer mandate was dealt its largest blow by U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana Judge Terry Doughty, who ruled the administration does not have the authority to bypass Congress on the issue and halted enforcement nationwide,” the report continued.

“The reasoning across the cases is basically the same, which is that these statutes don’t give the president or the agency in question the authority to issue the mandates,” said Gregory Magarian, a constitutional law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

“If the executive branch is allowed to usurp the power of the legislative branch to make laws, two of the three powers conferred by our Constitution would be in the same hands,” he wrote. “If human nature and history teach anything, it is that civil liberties face grave risks when governments proclaim indefinite states of emergency.”

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Earlier this week, several Republican lawmakers filed a “friend of the court” brief in support of a group of U.S. Navy SEALs who have filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration over its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for the service branch and the military in general.

“My colleagues and I filed an amicus brief in U.S. Navy Seals v. Biden in support of 26 service members with religious objections to Biden’s vaccine mandate. Religious freedom is fundamental to every American’s liberty,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, noted on Twitter, with a link to a statement posted to his Senate website.

In addition to Cruz, Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), along with 38 members of the House of Representatives led by Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), signed the amicus brief.

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