Supreme Court seems poised
to uphold Mississippi’s abortion law
The Supreme Court seemed poised on Wednesday to uphold a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. During sometimes tense questioning in almost two hours of oral arguments, the court’s six conservative justices signaled they are comfortable with the Mississippi law, even though upholding it would be flatly at odds with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion and prohibited states from banning the procedure before fetal viability, currently around 23 weeks. Moving that line to 15 weeks would discard decades of precedent. Several of the conservative justices appeared ready to go further and overrule Roe entirely, letting states decide whether and when to ban abortions.
Suspect in Michigan school shooting
faces murder and terrorism charges
On Tuesday morning, the parents of a 15-year-old sophomore walked into Oxford High School to meet with school officials who had grown concerned about their son’s behavior. About three hours later, the student, Ethan Crumbley, emerged from a bathroom with a handgun. He began firing, killing four students and wounding seven people. New details about the suspect’s behavior and actions in the hours leading up to the shooting spree emerged on Wednesday as he was charged with terrorism, four counts of first-degree murder and an array of other charges. Prosecutors said they were also considering charges against the suspect’s parents; Crumbley used a handgun his father had bought four days earlier.
Biden plans to extend mask mandates
for travelers through March
President Joe Biden will extend until mid-March a requirement that travelers wear masks on airplanes, trains and buses and at airports and transit stations, a person familiar with the decision said Wednesday night. The move to extend the mandate, which was set to expire Jan. 18, is part of a much broader winter strategy for combating COVID-19 that Biden is to announce Thursday, during a visit to the National Institutes of Health. The strategy will also include a new requirement that international travelers be tested for COVID-19 one day before departing for the United States, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Senate Republicans threaten
shutdown over vaccine mandates
A group of Senate Republicans is threatening to delay action on a spending bill needed to avert a lapse in federal funding on Friday unless it also bars enforcement of the Biden administration’s vaccine-and-testing mandate for large employers, heightening the threat of a government shutdown. With Congress lagging on finalizing the dozen annual spending bills needed to keep the government running, there is broad agreement that lawmakers will need to pass a stopgap measure this week to stave off a shutdown. Republicans said the spending bill offered them their best chance to push back on vaccine requirements that President Joe Biden announced in November.
New EU measures set to restrict
asylum rights at Belarus border
The European Union on Wednesday proposed new measures that would allow Poland and other member states bordering Belarus to suspend some protections for asylum-seekers. The proposal would extend the period that Latvia, Lithuania and Poland would be able to detain asylum-seekers while their applications are being processed. EU officials have accused Alexander Lukashenko, the autocratic leader of Belarus, of orchestrating “hybrid warfare” by loosening Belarusian visa rules for migrants, most of them Iraqis, and later helping them reach the EU’s eastern border. Aid groups said the rule change would leave applicants in a state of limbo and in increasingly unsafe conditions.
Jan. 6 panel votes to hold former
DOJ official in contempt
The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection voted Wednesday to pursue contempt charges against Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who refused to answer the committee’s questions, even as the committee has agreed to let him come back for another try. The committee voted 9-0 to pursue criminal charges against Clark, who aligned with Donald Trump as the then-president tried to overturn his election defeat.
By wire sources
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