Por John Fritze, CNN

Mientras la Corte Suprema se precipitaba hacia las últimas semanas de su período el año pasado, el presidente del Tribunal Supremo, John Roberts, hizo una rara aparición pública para defender a sus colegas de las críticas de que estaban demasiado dispuestos a mandar a la basura precedentes de décadas.

Aún magullado por la ira de la izquierda por la monumental decisión del tribunal tres años antes de revocar el fallo del caso Roe v. Wade, Roberts enumeró una serie de estadísticas que subrayaban que su tribunal —el tribunal de Roberts— había apuntado contra muchos menos precedentes que cualquiera de sus predecesores modernos, un promedio de menos de dos “revocaciones” cada año.

“Creo que la gente tiene un malentendido sobre cuánto el tribunal actual está revocando precedentes”, dijo Roberts a una audiencia en el Centro de Derecho de la Universidad de Georgetown.

Pero apenas 10 días después de que se bajara del escenario, la Corte Suprema dejó en pie el despido por parte del presidente Donald Trump de dos altos funcionarios laborales pese a un precedente de 1935 conocido como Humphrey’s Executor que durante décadas ha protegido a los líderes de agencias independientes de ser destituidos si causa por un presidente.

Los críticos de la decisión de gran impacto de la Corte Suprema del miércoles, que desmanteló una disposición clave de la Ley de Derecho al Voto de 1965 y anuló un mapa congresional de Louisiana, dicen que el tribunal hizo lo mismo: efectivamente revocó un precedente de décadas sin decir explícitamente que lo estaba haciendo.

“El resultado es que la mayoría, sin ninguna buena razón, ha revocado la determinación ponderada del Congreso —junto con los precedentes de este tribunal que la respaldan— sobre cómo rectificar las desigualdades raciales en la política electoral”, escribió la jueza Elena Kagan en un voto disidente en nombre de los tres jueces liberales.

Las cifras que citó Roberts eran precisas, lo que le permitió argumentar que el tribunal se está moviendo deliberadamente en lugar de arrasar con casos anteriores. Pero esas cifras no tienen en cuenta los casos en los que el tribunal ha vapuleado un precedente sin eliminarlo explícitamente. En apenas los últimos años, la mayoría conservadora también se ha apartado de precedentes relacionados con la libertad religiosa.

“Para mí, Callais es el ejemplo más reciente de un fallo del tribunal de Roberts que, en el mismo aliento, en gran medida neutraliza un precedente sin revocarlo formalmente”, dijo Steve Vladeck, analista de la Corte Suprema de CNN y profesor en el Centro de Derecho de la Universidad de Georgetown, refiriéndose al caso del miércoles por su título, Louisiana v. Callais.

La distinción entre revocar precedentes formalmente y hacerlo en la práctica es importante, dijo Vladeck.

“Cuando solo los abogados entienden qué queda y qué no queda de una decisión anterior, eso hace mucho más difícil construir el argumento de por qué la Corte, el Congreso o cualquier otro actor debería responder”.

Tanto los jueces conservadores como los liberales, ostensiblemente, desaprueban revocar precedentes porque puede socavar la estabilidad del derecho y puede hacer que el tribunal parezca político, dispuesto a cambiar de postura según qué jueces estén sentados en el estrado.

En el caso de derechos de voto del miércoles, el juez Samuel Alito, el juez conservador que escribió la opinión del tribunal, rechazó enérgicamente lo dicho por Kagan.

En su fallo 6-3, la primera decisión sobre el fondo del año que dividió limpiamente a los bloques conservador y liberal, el tribunal dijo que los votantes que alegan discriminación racial en la redistribución de distritos ahora deben demostrar una “fuerte inferencia” de que los legisladores redibujaron intencionalmente los límites de los distritos para perjudicar a los votantes de minorías.

Per

By Francesca Street, CNN

(CNN) — When Angela Buckner decided to fly halfway across the United States for a blind date, she didn’t consider the decision a leap of faith.

Instead, Angela saw the trip as simply a fun adventure — another in a series of carefree romantic escapades.

“I was a recreation supervisor, laid back, not trying to be in no relationship, trying to have fun,” Angela tells CNN Travel today. “I was very excited to go to New York and literally was doing whatever I wanted.”

That day in the fall of 2023, Angela boarded the airplane with no expectations. Some friends had arranged the date and they knew her well, so Angela — 28 at the time —figured it’d be a good time at least.

She paid no attention to the flight attendant greeting her at the door. She made her way to the back of the aircraft, ready to switch off and get some rest.

“Usually when I fly, I literally put my Beats on my hoodie, on top of my head, and I’m zoned out,” says Angela.

As the flight pushed back from the gate, Angela closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the flight was in the air. She suddenly tuned into voices around her.

The flight attendant was making conversation with the older couple next to her, who’d just ordered red wine. She was quizzing them on how long they’d been together, encouraging them to make the most of the flight, laughing and joking with them.

“I was half asleep, and I kind of woke up, and she was very loud with the older people,” recalls Angela.

She zoned into the conversation and found herself smiling. It was charming, the young female flight attendant connecting with the older couple.

“I was like, ‘Oh my god, she is so sweet and just generous,’” recalls Angela. “I’m a big lover of elderly people, because that’s how we learn, that’s how we get here, is through our elders. So just how she was comforting them and talking to them … I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s so sweet.’”

Angela turned to look at the flight attendant for the first time. The woman was smiling ear to ear as she engaged with Angela’s seat neighbors. Then, suddenly, she turned her attention to Angela. Somehow, her smile was now even wider. Angela’s heart skipped a beat.

“Right then, I forgot all about the date,” recalls Angela. “It was all about her. It was all about her.”

‘She walked on … this tall goddess’

For flight attendant Brittany Hairston, that flight to New York started like any other. She stood by the door, greeting the travelers as they boarded. Some smiled back. Most ignored her.

It was evening, her last flight of the day. Brittany, then 32, loved flying and the flight attendant lifestyle — even when she was tired, even when it was busy, even when passengers were difficult.

“I’m single, living in New York, traveling around the world, just meeting people and enjoying life. It was great,” she recalls.

Then, on walked Angela. She didn’t even look Brittany’s way, but Brittany was immediately smitten.

“She walked on … this tall goddess,” Brittany recalls. “I immediately started pinching the other flight attendant. I’m like, ‘Oh my god, look, look.’”

Angela, meanwhile, was just focused on getting to her seat.

“She had headphones on, she had a hoodie on, not even paying attention,” recalls Brittany. “My mouth was open, and there may or may not have been drool coming out.”

Angela turned to her fellow flight attendant, telling the colleague that she needed to be the one serving Angela once they were in the air.

“Oh, my God, she’s beautiful,” Brittany said, half to herself, half to her coworker, who raised an eyebrow at Brittany, bemused.

Then, Brittany turned to watch Angela walk to the back of the plane, bend her long legs into the tiny seat and close her eyes.

“I

By T.M. Brown, CNN

(CNN) — Barry Levinson’s “Toys” is hard to track down today. It was supposed to be a highlight of the 1992 holiday movie season, a major-studio comedy release with a cast that included Robin Williams, Joan Cusack, LL Cool J, and a cameo from Jamie Foxx for his first film credit. But despite Levinson’s sterling prior directing record, the big names, and an acclaimed set design, audiences avoided it. It went down in film history as a notorious failure, and it’s all but unavailable on contemporary streaming platforms.

Yet lately, people have been rediscovering the film in clip form. “Toys” tells the story of a a warmongering, slightly deranged military officer named Leland Zevo who commandeers his brother’s toy factory for weapons production, starting with cartoony tanks and spyware hidden inside teddy bears, before realizing the real vanguard is in video games.

Toward the end, the movie reveals that Zevo has created a secret bunker where kids play immersive video games that are supposed to simulate war — piloting virtual attack helicopters and blowing up bridges, highways and enemy boats on pixelated battlefields while point values flash on the screen. In fact, he is preparing to deploy a new kind of child soldier, who would unwittingly send cheap remote-controlled vehicles to take out cities to rack up a new high score.

Thirty-four years later, with barrages of cheap drones defining the battlefield in Ukraine and in the Strait of Hormuz, and with the president posting pixelated videos of unarmed boats being blasted into fireballs in the Caribbean, Levinson’s vision of cheap, gamified, dissociated warfare strikes people as all too prescient. We called the filmmaker to talk about how he conceived the movie, and what he thinks of his fictional future now that it’s arrived.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I’m curious if you’re surprised at the resurgence of interest in “Toys.”

I am only because it’s very easy for many movies to just drift away and that’s the end of it. So the fact that this sort of has been popping up is fascinating to me. It’s been a long time since I made it. I always thought it was incredibly misunderstood in its time. I never thought the film was meant for the very young.

The absurdist world that we were creating contained a lot of elements that we saw coming down the road. The computers and the remote-control operations of things, and then the idea of making weapons smaller for economic reasons, as General Zevo talks about in the movie. I always thought that it was almost a fable.

I guess the initial reaction was all over the place.

Some prescient movies seem to be very misunderstood in their time. I think about Paul Verhoeven and “Starship Troopers,” where it felt like the movie was misunderstood by people who weren’t necessarily grasping the satire. I’m wondering if you categorize “Toys” as a movie that was perhaps too good at telling the future.

It happens periodically. I mean, as soon as you see the visuals of this is the factory, which is clearly not like one you’ve seen before, you know this isn’t reality.

And we included these computer elements and these small remote-control planes that can still be deadly, they still have the power to blow up and destroy things. You can see where those things could ultimately mesh. That’s why we have that scene where you see all these kids on their computers blowing up things. The way things are going now, that reality can certainly enter the picture in the near future.

That seems increasingly what military operations look like.

By Patrick Svitek, CNN

(CNN) — The race to lead the country’s biggest blue state has been defined by voter concerns about their quality of life in California and the influence of special interests in Sacramento.

It might not seem like the right moment for California’s next governor to come from Silicon Valley. Matt Mahan and a large group of Big Tech backers think it is.

Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, the state’s third-largest city, is waging an uphill battle as the lone Democrat — in his telling — willing to challenge his own party and how it tackles big problems in the era of Donald Trump. He often says Californians “don’t need MAGA, but we also don’t need more of the same.”

“He’s a strong Democrat. He makes it clear what his values are,” said Tracy Hernandez, co-founder and CEO of the New California Coalition, a group of business and civic leaders. But, Hernandez said, “I think that Californians are moving off of that hyperpartisan-at-all-costs (mindset) and demanding solutions.”

After entering the race in late January, Mahan has drawn attention for his efforts to distinguish himself from other Democrats, for his background as tech entrepreneur-turned-politician and, perhaps most notably, for the amount of money behind his candidacy. His campaign has raised $14 million, more than any other candidate besides billionaire self-funder Tom Steyer, whose campaign has spent more than $137 million on advertising.

Despite his supporters’ enthusiasm, Mahan has remained mired in the single digits in recent polls, overshadowed by Steyer and other better-known and more conventional Democrats. His low numbers will be reflected by his position on the edge of the stage at Tuesday’s gubernatorial debate hosted by CNN.

“I’m in the process of introducing myself to Californians, and I think that people are just starting to tune in,” Mahan told CNN in an interview last week. “We have a lot of people to get to know over the next few weeks.”

Mahan is leaning heavily on his three-plus years as mayor of San Jose, where he has clashed with fellow Democrats on homelessness, housing and public safety. His positions have also sometimes put him at odds with Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate who cannot seek reelection due to term limits.

Between the support from the tech industry and his unorthodox standing inside his party, Mahan has a lot to balance ahead of the nonpartisan June 2 primary to pick the top two candidates for the November ballot.

Steyer has said Mahan is funded by the same people “who profit off your data, crush competition, attack unions, and pour money into surveillance and defense contractors.”

But for Mahan’s backers, it is a worthwhile experiment — with national implications.

“I do not believe we will have a Democrat in the White House until there’s a big blue state that is governed well, and right now there’s no big blue state that is governed well,” said David Crane, president of Govern for California, a pro-Mahan group that works to counter special interests in California politics, and who served as a special adviser to former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

From Harvard into tech

The son of a teacher and letter carrier, Mahan grew up in Watsonville, an agricultural hub along California’s Central Coast, and would travel north to San Jose to attend a college prep school on a scholarship for low-income students. He then attended Harvard University and dove into politics there, serving as student body president.

While at Harvard, he met Mark Zuckerberg, who he says counseled him to skip law school and go into tech to “change the world.”

Mahan followed Zuckerberg’s advice. In 2008, he joined Causes, one of the earliest Facebook apps, which a

Por Mauricio Torres, CNN en Español

Hace dos semanas, un operativo de seguridad para desmantelar laboratorios clandestinos para fabricar drogas sintéticas en el estado de Chihuahua, ubicado en el norte de México y fronterizo con Estados Unidos, derivó en una controversia que hasta ahora aún no tiene un final a la vista.

La revelación de que dos agentes de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia de Estados Unidos (CIA, por sus siglas en inglés) estuvieron en esa operación, y después murieron en un accidente automovilístico, ha hecho que el Gobierno de México pida explicaciones tanto al Gobierno de Chihuahua como al de Estados Unidos, al tiempo que el fiscal de Chihuahua renunció al cargo y muchos especialistas se preguntan de qué tamaño es la presencia de agencias extranjeras en territorio mexicano.

Así es como llegamos hasta aquí.

Entre el viernes 17 y el domingo 19 de abril, elementos de la Fiscalía de Chihuahua e integrantes del Ejército participaron en un operativo para desmantelar laboratorios clandestinos para fabricar drogas en el municipio de Morelos, ubicado en la zona serrana del estado.

La noche del 19 de abril, el entonces fiscal de Chihuahua, César Jáuregui, informó en una rueda de prensa que, durante la madrugada de ese día, cuando el convoy viajaba de regreso a Chihuahua capital, un vehículo se volcó.

En ese accidente, dijo, murieron el director de la Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), Pedro Román Oseguera Cervantes, su escolta Manuel Genaro Méndez Montes y dos funcionarios estadounidenses, a quienes identificó como instructores de la Embajada de Estados Unidos.

El embajador de Estados Unidos, Ronald Johnson, lamentó lo sucedido. “Esta tragedia es un solemne recordatorio de los riesgos que enfrentan los funcionarios mexicanos y estadounidenses dedicados a proteger a nuestras comunidades, y fortalece nuestra determinación de continuar su misión y avanzar en nuestro compromiso compartido con la seguridad y la justicia, para proteger a nuestra gente”, publicó en X.

El lunes 20 de abril, en su conferencia de prensa mañanera, la presidenta de México, Claudia Sheinbaum, lamentó la muerte de los estadounidenses, pero también aseguró que su Gobierno no estaba enterado sobre su presencia en Chihuahua.

Por esta razón, dijo, pidió información tanto al Gobierno de Chihuahua como al de Estados Unidos, con el propósito de aclarar si hubo una posible violación a la Constitución de México y a Ley de Seguridad Nacional, que establecen límites a la cooperación que autoridades mexicanas pueden tener con agencias extranjeras.

Entre otros puntos, esta legislación señala que los agentes extranjeros deben recibir una acreditación del Gobierno federal para permanecer en el país de forma temporal, deben enfocarse en labores de intercambio de información y deben reportar mensualmente las gestiones que realicen. En tanto, la Constitución establece que México no permitirá que instituciones extranjeras realicen “investigación y persecución” de delitos sin que haya “autorización y colaboración expresa”.

El martes 21 de abril, CNN y otros medios reportaron que los dos estadounidenses que murieron en Chihuahua eran agentes de la CIA. Fuentes con conocimiento del caso dijeron a CNN que se trataba de personas que trabajaban con autoridades mexicanas en la ampliación de operaciones antidrogas en México.

La revelación generó numerosas reacciones en México, incluye