Month: May 2022

The Senate failed to advance a Democratic-led bill that would protect abortion access nationwide in a vote on Wednesday. The Women’s Health Protection Act was triggered by a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that indicates Roe v. Wade is likely to be overturned.  The leaked Supreme Court draft opinion may not be the final ruling, and it would have no force of law until it was issued. But it has been widely expected that the court would overturn Roe v. Wade and the subsequent ‘Planned Parenthood v. Casey’ decision, which upheld a constitutional right to abortion.

The bill passed the House with 49 votes, but fell short of the 60 senators needed to break a filibuster. All 50 Republicans and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin voted against proceeding to debate with a vote of 49-51.  Biden said in a statement after the vote:  “Republicans in Congress — not one of whom voted for this bill — have chosen to stand in the way of Americans’ rights to make the most personal decisions about their own bodies, families and lives. To protect the right to choose, voters need to elect more pro-choice senators this November, and return a pro-choice majority to the House. If they do, Congress can pass this bill in January, and put it on my desk, so I can sign it into law.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said it was “one of the most consequential” votes the Senate has held in decades, adding in a floor speech, “for MAGA Republicans, this has always been about making abortion illegal everywhere.”  After the vote, Schumer said Democrats are “going to continue to highlight this issue relentlessly and strongly between now and November because it is so important.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the bill “extreme” and “radical” and added in a floor speech:  “Our Democrat colleagues want to vote for abortion on demand through all nine months, until the moment before the baby is born — a failed show vote that will only prove their own extremism.”

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On Wednesday, President Biden visited farmers in Kankakee, Ill., to speak on the impact of the Russian-Ukraine war on the economy, and the White House’s efforts to lower food prices in the face of rising inflation.  Said Biden: “America’s fighting on two fronts. At home, it’s inflation and rising prices. Abroad, it’s helping Ukrainians defending their democracy. Putin’s war has cut off critical sources of food.”

Biden said efforts will be made at the upcoming G7 meeting to both provide food to the world, and to lower prices – something that the war in Ukraine is preventing from getting to market. Said Biden: “They’re going to see what action we can take to increase fertilizer supplies globally and identify how we can work together to prevent export restrictions on food and bring more global production to market, which will stabilize prices [and] bring more certainty to our farmers and keep people from dying of hunger.”  He added that his administration is working to “drive down the costs to farmers and prices to consumers,” and that the market has been distorted by lack of competition, which increases prices.

The White House said in a statement earlier Wednesday: “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine has cut off a critical source of wheat, corn, barley, oilseeds and cooking oil. It has also disrupted global supply chains for fertilizer, which farmers depend on to maximize yields. These and other actions, combined with the ongoing pandemic-related disruptions to global supply chains, have put pressure on food prices, with global food prices increasing nearly 13% following Putin’s invasion.”

Earlier Wednesday, the Labor Department said that consumer prices rose by 0.3% during the month of April — slightly more than most economists projected. In particular, the report said that food prices increased almost 1% last month.

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During an interview at Financial Times’ Future of the Car conference on Tuesday, Elon Musk said he would reverse Twitter’s permanent ban of former President Donald Trump if he were to assume control of the social media company. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, offered to purchase Twitter for $44 billion last month.

Musk said it was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme” for Twitter to ban Trump amid the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol. Twitter said was meant to prevent the “risk of further incitement of violence.”  Said Musk: “I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump. I think that was a mistake. It alienated a large part of the country and did not ultimately result in Donald Trump not having a voice.”

Musk has more than 90 million Twitter followers, and has been vocal in his criticism of the social network’s moderation decisions. Musk said that former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was in agreement that Twitter “should not have perma-bans.” Dorsey confirmed that he did agree with Musk, citing exceptions such as illegal behavior or network manipulation, writing on Twitter: “Generally, permanent bans are a failure of ours and don’t work.”

Musk believes Twitter exhibits a political bias that harms those on the right, saying:  “I think Twitter needs to be more evenhanded. It currently has a strong left bias because it’s based in San Francisco. I don’ think the people there necessarily intend, or at least some of them don’t intend, to have a left bias. They just, from their perspective, it seems moderate, but they’re just coming after it from an environment that is very far left.” 

Musk also repeated that while the company’s board had accepted his deal to purchase Twitter, it was not finalized:  “I will say that I don’t own Twitter yet, so this is not a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don’t own Twitter.” 

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A Connecticut man was convicted Tuesday of all charges for murdering his wife. Despite alleging the crime was committed by an intruder, the defendant’s testimony was contradicted by a “Fitbit” activity tracker.

Following a five-week trial, a jury in Rockville Superior Court in Connecticut took less than four hours to find 45-year-old Richard Dabate guilty of guilty of all three charges — murder, tampering with evidence and making a false statement to authorities — for fatally shooting his wife, 39-year-old Connie Dabate, two days before Christmas in 2015.  The murder charge carries up to 60 years in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 16. Court marshals handcuffed Dabate and led him out of the courtroom after Judge Corinne Klatt increased his bond to $5 million. He had been free after posting $1 million bail following his arrest. Dabate’s lawyer, Trent LaLima, said they would be appealing the verdict:  “I think we put on a very strong case for why Rick did not commit this offense.”

Prosecutor Matthew Gedansky said in his closing argument that Dabate hatched a plan to kill his wife and stage a home invasion as his life was about to unravel with the birth of a child he was having with another woman. Connie Dabate was wearing the activity tracker wristwatch and data recovered from the device allegedly showed she was leisurely walking around an hour after Dabate claimed she had been killed by a large masked man with a voice like actor Vin Diesel and dressed in camouflage, and tied him up at the couple’s Ellington home in December 2015. Police said the information onConnie Dabate’s Fitbit contradicted her husband’s story.

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