U.S. Politics

[Rick Plant]

Thanks President Biden for this historic success!

[Rick Plant]

Biden cites 40-day timeline for Supreme Court confirmation



WASHINGTON — The chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin, and the panel’s top Republican, Chuck Grassley, met with the president Tuesday afternoon to discuss a 40-day confirmation timeline for a new Supreme Court pick.
“The Constitution says, ‘advise and consent, advice and consent,’ and I’m serious when I say that I want the advice of the Senate as well as the consent to arrive on who the nominee should be,” President Joe Biden told reporters, according to pool reports.

Biden said that once he announces a nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer by the end of the month, he’s hoping for a 40-day confirmation process, a similar timeline to other nominees. That would put the final Senate vote sometime this spring, since Biden has said he will make an announcement by the end of February.

Biden has vowed to pick the first Black woman to serve on the court.

“He’s looking at the nominees and going to report to us,” Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said to reporters after he returned from the White House.

Breyer, 83, was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1994. He will retire at the end of the 2022 term.

“I had the chance to tell him that I want somebody that’s going to interpret the law, not make law,” Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said after the White House meeting.

The last Supreme Court nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, took 27 days to confirm in a Senate controlled by Republicans in 2020.

During a Tuesday press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden has been looking at potential Supreme Court nominations for about a year.

“The president’s view is that after 230 years of the Supreme Court being in existence, the fact that not a single Black woman has served on the Supreme Court is a failure in the process, not a failure or a lack of qualified Black women to serve as Supreme Court justices,” she said.

Senate leaders of both parties had little to say about a prospective Supreme Court pick following their weekly caucus lunches, reserving most of their remarks for the economy and tensions with Russia.

Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Biden’s pledge to select a Black woman would help make the Supreme Court more reflective of the U.S. population.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, the No. 4 Senate Democrat, noted that Tuesday was the first day of Black History Month and said the prospect of confirming a Black nominee was “very exciting.”

Republicans, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, pledged to treat Biden’s nominee with respect during a “thoughtful process.”

“It’s pretty hard to comment on a nominee until you get one,” McConnell told reporters.

“The Republican minority will treat the nominee with respect and go through the process in a serious, thoughtful way,” he said.

Biden’s pledge to choose a Black woman to serve on the court would allow him to fulfill a campaign promise from 2020.

So far, Justices Thurgood Marshall and Clarence Thomas have been the only Black members of the court. One woman of color, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, has served.

Some top contenders include 51-year-old Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who currently serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She was previously vetted by the Obama administration in 2016 as a possible nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina is also pushing for the nomination of 55-year-old Michelle Childs, a federal judge in South Carolina who has been nominated to serve on the federal appeals court in Washington.

Childs also has the approval of South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, who praised her as a “highly qualified” candidate during an interview on “Face the Nation.” Graham is a top member of Senate Judiciary.

Another possible front-runner is 45-year-old California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and 47-year-old Georgia U.S. District Court Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner, the sister of Stacey Abrams, who is currently running for governor in Georgia.

Virginia Mercury is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Virginia Mercury maintains editorial independence.

https://www.virginiamercury.com/2022/02/01/biden-cites-40-day-timeline-for-supreme-court-confirmation/

[Rick Plant]

What a total disaster failed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is. He let 1 million COVID tests expire in a warehouse. 1 million people who desperately needed covid tests couldn't get them because of DeSantis' negligence. He allowed a covid test shortage to occur in Florida. What is absolutely disgusting is that DeSantis lied and said President Biden didn't send the COVID tests. DeSantis let them expire and he tried to cover it up. He pathetically lied falsely accusing the President when it was his own negligence and the lying right wing media pushed DeSantis' same lie. Despicable!

DeSantis admits to finding 1 million expired COVID-19 tests stockpiled in warehouse

In a press conference Thursday morning, Governor DeSantis admitted state officials found 1 million unused COVID-19 tests in a warehouse. The admission came as DeSantis unveiled a plan to get 1 million COVID-19 tests to Florida’s seniors.

Kevin Guthrie joined DeSantis at today’s press conference. Guthrie, the head of Florida’s Department of Emergency Management said, “We had between 800k and a million Abbott test kits in our warehouse that did expire.”

Today’s revelation follows allegations by Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried that the governor was stockpiling tests which were soon expiring. On Wednesday, the Governor’s office called that allegation “bizarre.”

The governor said he’s asking the federal government to extend the expiration date on these newly-discovered tests. They are awaiting an answer.

“We actually wanted to send a bunch of those [tests] to long-term care facilities at the beginning when we got them,” DeSantis said.

He went on to claim facilities didn’t have adequate staff on hand to accept them.

“So while families all over the state of Florida were waiting in line 4, 5 hours taken away from their vacation, families holidays and while the governor was sitting on these tests,” Fried said on Thursday.

“A million tests that should have gone out to nursing homes, state run facilities that have not been opened up. There are no testing sites statewide run testing sites in our state,” said Fried.

“The question is was this intentional or a complete derelict of his responsibilities? People of our state and people should be outraged,” Fried stated.

“I’m sorry he’s the governor of the state of Florida. The buck stops with you” Fried concluded.

April Masa was frustrated when she heard the state had expired tests. She said she had been trying for days to get tested after she became ill. Masa, like many people waiting in line, wanted an investigation to find out what happened.

“Someone needs to be held accountable to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said.

https://nbc-2.com/news/state/2022/01/07/nikki-fried-claims-nearly-1-million-covid-19-tests-are-being-stockpiled-by-the-state/

ORIGINAL REPORT, January 5:

LEE COUNTY, Fla. – Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried announced Wednesday in Lee County that she believes nearly one million COVID-19 tests have been stockpiled by the state’s executive branch of government.

The explosive allegation comes as thousands of people wait hours in long lines to receive a COVID-19 test. Fried visited a plant farm in Alva to announce a clean water initiative and plans to randomly test for nutrients being used around Florida.

“This is definitely something we have concrete information coming from inside the governor’s office,” Fried said. “It may not be his executive suite but certainly the different agencies he oversees but there is a stockpile of these tests either to expire Dec. 31 or soon thereafter.”

NBC2’s Dave Elias spoke with Fried after announcement in Lee County:

Dave Elias: What proof do you have to prove this?

Nikki Fried: I believe my staff this morning sent a public records request asking for this information.

Dave Elias: I reached out to the governor’s office. Press secretary Christina Pushaw said this is a very bizarre allegation and that they don’t have a stockpile. Your reaction?

Nikki Fried: It’s not a bizarre allegation when I know it’s to be true. We’ve not alleged that the governor’s office has them. It’s the agencies he controls.

Governor Ron DeSantis was in Collier County on Tuesday downplaying vaccines and testing while pushing more monoclonal treatment.

Dave Elias: Your thoughts on the way the governor is handling this?

Nikki Fried: His leadership on this is void.

Dave Elias: The governor believes people are hysterically running out to get tested. Do you believe that?

Nikki Fried: I don’t know a single person that would sit in four or five hours over hysteria.

Dave Elias: Finally, there are a lot of people who do support the way the governor is handling this and concerned about their freedoms, who some argue are making the situation worse?

Nikki Fried: I do say to those individuals this of course is your choice at this point. There of course is no mandate. Nor should there ever be a mandate, and I’ve said that very publicly. I do not agree with mandates or bans. I think they’re two extremes, one from the governor’s office and one from the president’s office. It needs to be in the middle. 

The governor’s press secretary did pass along the claims to the Department of Health. So far they have not responded.

[Rick Plant]

Biden to announce relaunch of Cancer Moonshot program started under Obama
The president is expected to lay out a goal of reducing the cancer death rate by 50 percent over the next 25 years.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Wednesday will announce a relaunch of the Cancer Moonshot program that was started during the Obama administration to end a disease that kills more than 600,000 people a year in the U.S., the White House said.

Biden's revamped Cancer Moonshot aims to reduce the death rate from cancer by at least 50 percent over the next 25 years and improve the experiences of people diagnosed with cancer and their families, according to a fact sheet shared by the White House.

Biden is scheduled to make the announcement Wednesday afternoon in an event in the East Room of the White House, where he will be joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, the first lady and the second gentleman.

In a call with reporters, an administration official said the initiative was deeply personal to both Biden and Harris. Biden lost his son Beau in 2015 to brain cancer, and Harris' mother, a breast cancer researcher, died of colon cancer in 2009.

Biden previously oversaw the Cancer Moonshot program, which was announced during former President Barack Obama's last year in office, and he later founded the Biden Cancer Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to cancer prevention and research. The initiative closed in 2019 after Biden announced his White House bid.

An administration official said the Cancer Moonshot program was being revamped now because "a lot has changed that makes it possible to set really ambitious goals."

Congress provided $1.8 billion for the Cancer Moonshot program in 2016, very little of which is left.

The Biden official said the administration is "very confident that there will be robust funding going forward," arguing that few issues garner as much bipartisan support as cancer research.

Biden on Wednesday will announce a new position, that of Cancer Moonshot coordinator in the White House, as well as a “Cancer Cabinet,” which will include such agencies as the departments of Health and Human Services, Defense and Energy, in addition to the Environmental Protection Agency. He also will announce plans to host a Cancer Moonshot summit at the White House.

The president and the first lady will urge more people to get screened for cancer, especially after millions of screenings have been skipped during the Covid pandemic.

Biden has spoken extensively about his experience losing his son to cancer and has said he wants to be the president remembered for ending the disease.

During a visit last year to Pfizer’s vaccine manufacturing facility in Michigan, Biden said, "I want you to know that once we beat Covid, we're going to do everything we can to end cancer as we know it."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-announce-relaunch-cancer-moonshot-program-started-under-obama-n1288399

[Rick Plant]

Republicans are now out in the open and very vocal with their full on racism. 

GOP senator worried Biden’s SCOTUS pick won’t know a 'law book from a J.Crew catalog'



Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., joined a growing chorus of Republicans bashing President Joe Biden's Supreme Court nominee — well before the president has picked anyone — even as Republican leaders try to avoid a losing fight ahead of the midterms.

Republican Senate leaders worry that picking a fight over Biden's nominee to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, when they lack enough votes to block the nomination, would be "counterproductive" and could "backfire" by distracting from key election issues, according to Wednesday's edition of Politico Playbook. (Judicial nominations cannot be blocked through a Senate filibuster, a change introduced by Republicans when they held the majority.) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told members on Tuesday that replacing a liberal justice with another liberal would not affect the balance of the court, especially after the party packed the court with conservatives under former President Donald Trump.

But some Republican senators have repeatedly attacked Biden for vowing to nominate a Black woman to the court, even though Trump and former President Ronald Reagan similarly vowed to nominate women to diversify a court that has been dominated by white men for generations.

"No. 1, I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog," Kennedy told Politico Tuesday after meeting with the GOP leaders. "No. 2, I want a nominee who's not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try to advance a 'woke agenda.'"

Kennedy, an Oxford-educated lawyer and career politician, rebranded himself as a folksy Republican after a long stint as a Democrat. Louisiana publications have likened his one-liners to Foghorn Leghorn but people who knew him before he became a prominent Republican told BuzzFeed News last year that it's all an act (which he denies).

"John Kennedy is not folksy — he's just offensive," MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan tweeted in response to Kennedy's comment to Politico.

"Kennedy manages to squeeze in sexism, racism, and his fake down home Foghorn Leghorn bit all in about 15 words," wrote Fred Wellman, the former executive director of the Lincoln Project. "Enough is enough with this con artist."

Kennedy rejected GOP leaders' pleas to tone down the rhetoric on Biden's nomination.

"I think some members of leadership think they can control what people want to talk about," he told Politico. "I don't agree with that proposition. I'm going to talk about what I want to talk about, and if they don't like that, they can call somebody who cares."

Kennedy has frequently used the puzzling J.Crew quip in response to a range of issues.

"Anyone who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog does not take this charge seriously," he declared during Trump's first impeachment.

"Anyone who knows a law book from a J.Crew catalog knows that Democrats' attempt to add D.C. as a state is unconstitutional," he said in a Fox News interview last year.

"Nobody knows what he even means by 'a law book,'" tweeted attorney Max Kennerly. "A casebook? Only students use those. The Federal Reporter? No one calls that a 'book.' A John Grisham novel?"

Other Republican senators have also attacked Biden for vowing to nominate a Black woman.

Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., suggested last week that Biden's nominee would be a "beneficiary" of affirmative action policies.

The White House fired back by citing Wicker's very different response to Trump's promise to nominate a woman.

"When the previous president followed through on his own promise to place a woman on the Supreme Court, Sen. Wicker said, 'I have five granddaughters, the oldest one is 10. I think Justice Amy Coney Barrett will prove to be an inspiration to these five granddaughters and to my grown daughters,'" White House spokesman Andrew Bates told CNN. "We hope Sen. Wicker will give President Biden's nominee the same consideration he gave to then-Judge Barrett."

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said over the weekend that it would be "offensive" and "insulting" to select a Black woman because Black women only make up 6% of the population.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki noted on Tuesday that Cruz "had no objection to Donald Trump promising he'd nominate a woman in 2020" and had praised Barrett as a "role model for little girls."

"There is no outcry around that," Psaki said. "The president's view is that after 230 years of the Supreme Court being in existence, the fact that not a single Black woman has served on the Supreme Court is a failure in the process."

That sentiment was echoed by Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Graham is backing the same potential nominee as Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., that being South Carolina District Court Judge J. Michelle Childs.

"Put me in the camp of making sure the court and other institutions look like America. You know, we make a real effort as Republicans to recruit women and people of color to make the party look more like America," Graham told CBS News on Sunday. "Affirmative action is picking somebody not as well qualified for past wrongs. Michelle Childs is incredibly qualified. There's no affirmative action component if you pick her. I can't think of a better person for President Biden to consider for the Supreme Court than Michelle Childs."

Biden is also reportedly considering D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former editor of the Harvard Law Review who clerked for three federal judges, including retiring Justice Stephen Breyer. California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, a former editor of the Yale Law Journal who argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court while serving in the Justice Department under Barack Obama, is also in the running.

Republicans' attacks have little to do with the candidates' qualifications, and even less to do with the makeup of the court, given that 108 of 115 Supreme Court justices in U.S. history have been white men.

The attacks are intended to "reiterate the narrative that liberals elevate unqualified Black Americans at the expense of others who are truly deserving" to reinforce the messages that "advocacy for equal rights is turning white conservatives into an oppressed class," wrote The Atlantic's Adam Serwer. "If the Republicans seeking to stoke resentment over this appointment can successfully turn the story of the first Black woman on the Supreme Court into another example of Black people getting free stuff they haven't earned, they will be perfectly satisfied, even if she is confirmed," he wrote. "The important battles over the future of the Court have already taken place, and the right has already won them."

https://www.rawstory.com/gop-senator-thinks-bidens-scotus-pick-wont-know-a-law-book-from-a-j-crew-catalog/

[Rick Plant]

President Biden heading to NYC Thursday to talk gun violence

NEW YORK (PIX11) — As the city lays to rest another NYPD officer, and more officers face gunfire in Queens, President Biden will make his way to New York City.

“We’re going to have the president of the United States here in this city, and we’re going to lay out clear items on the federal level,” said Mayor Eric Adams early Wednesday morning.

He spoke while visiting another NYPD officer in the hospital, after he was shot during a carjacking in the Rockaways on his way to work. Police said the suspects fired upon more officers before being arrested.

The mayor doubled down on his pledge to protect the city during Officer Mora’s funeral hours later.

“We will work to end the gun violence that has engulfed our city with pain and despair, and protect those who put their lives on the line every day,” Adams said.

Adams has called for more crime intelligence sharing coordinated at the federal level.

He also wants federal funding for trauma intervention at hospitals, DNA testing to close gun cases and anti-gun trafficking efforts.

Ideally, Adams wants to see federal gun law changes, including measures long blocked by Republicans like background checks on all gun sales.

“We support the mayor and his effort to keep the city safe which we wholeheartedly understand,” said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.

She said President Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland will seek to better understand the needs of NYC and other cities experiencing gun violence by meeting with police and community based violence interrupters on Thursday.

She said the administration has already been funding many efforts through the American Rescue Plan, and the President hopes to do more through his currently stalled social spending plans and the upcoming budget.

“There’s $300 million for community policing for cities, $200 million for community based violence interrupters, we know all of this will reduce crime,” Jean-Pierre said.

The White House also points to 37,000 DOJ gun cases opened in recent months working in coordination with local authorities.

https://pix11.com/news/local-news/president-biden-heading-to-nyc-thursday-to-talk-gun-violence/

[Rick Plant]

Breaking News: President Biden says US military forces have “taken off the battlefield” the Islamic State’s leader during an operation in Syria, and that all Americans returned safely. Just another example of what a strong capable leader we have to make America and the world a safer place.

[Richard Smith]

The top anti-Trump propagandist Jeff Zucker has resigned in disgrace at CNN.  Joining Chris Cuomo and his disgraced brother Andrew Cuomo in the halls of shame.  The chickens are really coming home to roost for all their fake stories.