Month: May 2022

On Wednesday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on abortion rights in the wake of a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion indicating five justices are poised to reverse Roe vs. Wade. Abortion-rights supporters said that right is an individual liberty; while anti-abortion activists said there is no individual liberty unless government prevents abortions.

Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. said in opening remarks: “The decision to become a parent belongs to the individual. She may consult with her doctor or her loved ones to inform that decision, but the decision belongs to her.” Nadler said overturning Roe vs. Wade would take that power away from women and give it to the state: “Bodily autonomy is a prerequisite for liberty.”

Committee ranking member Rep Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, disagreed, stating in his opening remarks: “You never have a real liberty, you never have true freedom, if government won’t protect your most fundamental right, your right to live.”  Jordan also said Democrats in the House have blocked the House from considering a Senate-passed measure providing extra security for Supreme Court justices as the justices face protests at their homes over the leaked opinion.

Americans United For Life President and CEO Catherine Glenn Foster told the House Judiciary Committee: “The truth is, abortion is always damaging and deadly. To speak for the violence of abortion is to speak for injustice.” Foster said the anti-abortion rights movement wants “a true constitutional order that equally protects all members of the human family.”

University of California Irvine School of Law Professor Michelle Goodwin told the House Judiciary Committee that if Roe vs. Wade abortion rights are lost, poor women will suffer most: “For poor women, particularly women of color, the loss will be deadly. This is the coming of the new Jane Crow.”  Professor Goodwin said that over the past 15 years there have been nearly 50 bombings of abortion clinics, where doctors, nurses and security guards have been killed. in addition to threats and mass shootings at abortion clinics.

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One of the Minneapolis police officers involved in the deadly arrest of George Floyd two years ago has pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of aiding and abetting manslaughter in Floyd’s death.

The former police officer, Thomas Lane, entered the plea to second-degree manslaughter in Hennepin County court to Judge Peter Cahill, the same judge that presided over the criminal trial of Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for close to 10 minutes and caused his death during an arrest; he was convicted last year on state murder and manslaughter charges and sentenced to more than 22 years in prison.

Lane pleaded guilty on Wednesday in exchange for a three-year prison sentence to be served concurrently with his federal sentence for violating Floyd’s civil rights. That sentence has not yet been imposed. Also as part of the plea, prosecutors will drop a charge of aiding and abetting second-degree unintentional murder.

Former Minneapolis police officers Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng are also scheduled to stand trial next month on state charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death. All three were found guilty in federal court in February of violating Floyd’s civil rights during the May 2020 arrest. Last week, a federal judge accepted a plea deal for Chauvin in which the former officer will receive a sentence of between 20 and 25 years for violating Floyd’s civil rights.

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On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) authorized the use of a single booster dose of the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Pfizer-BioNTech for children ages 5 through 11.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert M. Califf said: “While it has largely been the case that COVID-19 tends to be less severe in children than adults, the omicron wave has seen more kids getting sick with the disease and being hospitalized, and children may also experience longer term effects, even following initially mild disease.” Califf said that the authorization for the single dose in the youngest children eligible for the vaccine provides “continued protection against COVID-19,” adding that “vaccination continues to be the most effective way to prevent COVID-19 and its severe consequences… and it is safe.”

Pfizer in late April asked the FDA for the emergency authorization to cover booster shots for children 5 to 11.  Earlier that month, Pfizer and BioNTech released clinical trial data from 140 children between the ages of 5 and 11 who had received a booster shot showing a six-fold increase in neutralizing antibodies against COVID-19.

Last October, federal regulators first authorized use of the vaccine for children between 5 and 11; and late last month, a second booster shot of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine was approved for those 50 and older.

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During a trip to Buffalo, N.Y., on Tuesday to visit with families of the victims killed in a mass shooting over the weekend, President Biden said that White supremacy is a “poison” that “has no place in America.”  The President and First Lady Jill Biden also met with community leaders, and visited a memorial site for the victims where they added a bouquet of flowers and had a moment of silence.

The attack on Saturday at the TOPS Market in Buffalo killed 10 people and injured three others, making it the deadliest of multiple attacks that occurred in the United States over the weekend. Police say they’re investigating the shooting as a hate crime. Authorities say the suspected shooter, 18-year-old Payton Gendron, was motivated by hate when he opened fire at the store and had written a lengthy manifesto before the attack in which he communicated racist views against people of color. Gendron traveled about 200 miles to Buffalo from his home in another part of New York. Authorities said they believe that Gendron had planned on carrying out more shootings in other locations before he was stopped at the TOPS store.

The President called the shooting an act of domestic terrorism:  “White supremacy is a poison, it’s a poison … running through our body politic…And it’s been allowed to grow and fester right before our eyes. No more, no more. We need to say as clearly and as forcefully as we can that the ideology of White supremacy has no place in America. None.  In America, evil will not win, I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word. The evil did come to Buffalo and it’s come to all too many places, manifested in gunmen who massacred innocent people in the name of hateful and perverse ideology, rooted in fear and racism. It’s taken so much.”

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