Month: April 2022

The Senate voted on Thursday to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson, making her the first Black woman to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Senators voted 53-47 in favor of her confirmation. Three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — voted with Democrats to approve President Biden’s first nomination to the country’s highest court.

Jackson was with President Biden in the Roosevelt Room of the White House to watch the historic Senate vote. The White House also said Biden, Jackson and Vice President Kamala Harris will speak about the confirmation on Friday. The 51-year-old Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, was nominated in February; last month, she underwent questioning for two days before the Senate judiciary committee. While some Republicans grilled Jackson on her track record and accused her of being soft on crime as a judge, the committee ultimately passed Jackson’s nomination on to the full Senate.

Jackson’s confirmation maintains the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative edge. The last justice nominated and confirmed to the high court was Amy Coney Barrett in 2020. She was appointed by former President Donald Trump to succeed liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

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On Thursday, the House passed a $55 billion bill to aid restaurants and small businesses impacted by COVID-19.
The bill includes $42 billion for restaurants and $13 billion for other small businesses. The Senate still must vote to pass the bill for it to become law.

The money in this bill replenishes the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, created by the Biden American Rescue Plan that became law in 2021, which provided $28.6 billion for restaurants hit by the pandemic.

In addition to the $42 billion for restaurants in the House bill, it provides another $13 billion for small businesses ineligible for other pandemic relief programs.

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On Wednesday, a jury of 12 found Lawrence Ray guilty of 15 counts related to his decade-long reign of abuse over students at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. The 62-year-old Ray, who is the father of a daughter who attended the small Westchester County liberal arts college, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison with a mandatory minimum of 15 years. Sentencing is set for Sept. 16.

Ray, an ex-convict, faced charges including sex trafficking, forced labor, tax evasion and racketeering. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan argued that Ray’s psychological abuse and physical torment of his victims started out by charming them, then by using his power over the victims to extort sex, money and other favors from them.  Ray posed as a ‘father figure’ to his daughter’s fellow students, and moved into his child’s on-campus dorm in 2010 following a prison stint for securities fraud. He shared the dorm with her male and female roommates, and the group later relocated to a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment.

Ray has maintained his innocence, claiming he was falsely accused of the crimes; however he did not testify at his trial.. Ray has been incarcerated in the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center since his arrest in 2020.

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The U.S. House of Representatives approved “contempt of Congress” charges on Wednesday against two former aides to Donald Trump — Peter Navarro and Daniel Scavino — for failing to cooperate with the probe into the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Navarro, who was a top trade adviser to the former president, and Scavino, who was a deputy chief of staff, did not comply with subpoenas to appear before the House Select Committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. House members backed the charges against the two men with a 220-203 vote; it now refers the matter to the Department of Justice for a decision on whether to press criminal charges.

Scavino and Navarro have argued that their communications are protected by executive privilege, although many legal experts have said that principle does not apply to former presidents. Contempt of Congress bears a penalty of up to a year’s imprisonment and a fine up to $100,000.

The Democratic-led Select Committee has been investigating events leading to the Capitol attack by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, when Vice President Mike Pence and lawmakers gathered to certify Democrat Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election.

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