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Kentucky attorney general asks state Supreme Court to reinstate abortion ban

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R) asked the state’s Supreme Court on Sunday to reinstate an abortion ban that briefly went into effect following the overturning of Roe v. Wade but was later blocked by a lower court.

A judge on Thursday had temporarily blocked the implementation of two state laws, which would effectively ban abortion unless necessary to save the woman’s life, following a challenge from abortion-rights groups arguing that Kentucky’s state consitution protected abortion rights. An appeals court judge later denied a request from Cameron to reinstate the ban.

“We are exhausting every possible avenue to have Kentucky’s Human Life Protection Act and Heartbeat Law reinstated,” Cameron said in a statement. “There is no more important issue than protecting life, and we are urging the state’s highest court to consider our request for emergency relief.”

Cameron’s filings with Kentucky’s Supreme Court argue there is no right to abortion in the state’s constitution and that without an emergency ruling from it, unborn children will suffer immediate and irreparable harm.

Samuel Crankshaw — spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, which represents one of the abortion providers in the suit — praised the appeals court ruling that affirmed blocking the law’s immediate implementation.

“We’re glad to see the Court of Appeals agrees the lower court has taken proper emergency action to protect abortion access,” Crankshaw said in a statement. “This win is temporary, but we won’t back down in the fight to defend Kentuckians’ most basic rights from extremist politicians like Daniel Cameron.”

Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Indiana, Kentucky, another plaintiff in the suit, did not immediately return a request for comment.

The U.S. Supreme Court last month upheld a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi, overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey decisions that established and protected a constitutional right to abortion.

Kentucky and other states had passed so-called “trigger” laws that automatically went into effect upon the court’s ruling. With officials now beginning to enforce those laws in states across the country, abortion activists have filed a flurry of lawsuits seeking to stop the newly implemented restrictions.

The strikedown of federal abortion rights has fueled intense anger for many, with liberals hoping the ruling will galvanize voters to support Democrats.

Source: TEST FEED1

Nearby July 4 events canceled after Highland Park mass shooting

Multiple Chicago suburbs on Monday announced they would be canceling their Fourth of July events after a mass shooting in Highland Park, Ill., left at least six people dead and many more injured.

Evanston, Morton Grove, Deerfield, Glenview and Glencoe all announced they were canceling their scheduled events after the Independence Day shooting.

“Due to a tragic mass shooting that took place earlier this morning in Highland Park, the Evanston will be canceling this year’s 4th of July Parade & celebrations effective immediately,” the municipality’s police department tweeted.

“Out of an abundance of caution amid the developing situation, the Morton Grove Days 2022 parade has been cancelled,” the Morton Grove Police Department said in a statement issued through Twitter.

The Glenview Police Department and Village of Glencoe both acknowledged in statements on Twitter that there were “no incidents or direct threats” to either area but would be forgoing their events anyway.

“Due to a shooting in Highland Park, Family Days activities at Jewett Park have been cleared and the parade is canceled. Please share that the parade activities are canceled with your family and friends,” the Village of Deerfield tweeted.

The Highland Park shooting occurred earlier on Monday morning following the start of a parade in the Chicago suburb, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. At least six people have been reported dead, and the suspect was not immediately taken into custody.

Lynn Sweet, a columnist and the Washington bureau chief of the Sun-Times, tweeted out a video showing a band playing during the parade as people started running in the opposite direction, past the band. 

“My staff and I are closely monitoring the situation in Highland Park. State police are on the scene and we have made all state resources available to the community. We will continue working with local officials to help those affected,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) tweeted. 

Source: TEST FEED1

How the fall of Roe v. Wade could impact abortion access around the world

Abortion rights activists say the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade will reverberate around the world, possibly restricting access to the procedure in other countries and weakening the global movement for reproductive rights. 

As part of the so-called Green Wave movement that started in Argentina, majority-Catholic countries across Latin America — including Colombia and Mexico — have recently legalized abortions. Across the Atlantic, Ireland has taken the same, previously unthinkable step. And in Asia, South Korea lifted a 66-year ban on abortions last year. 

Activists, however, are now concerned that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling could fuel anti-abortion groups, reversing hard-fought gains or stifling efforts to expand abortion rights across the world. 

“What happens in the US doesn’t just impact the U.S., as we have seen in almost every issue, but it impacts everyone, everywhere,” said Giselle Carino, the CEO of international reproductive rights alliance Fòs Feminista. 

She added that the rollback of abortion rights as part of a wider weakening of democratic institutions in the U.S. and in increasingly authoritarian countries around the world. 

As an example, Marcia Soumokil, director of abortion advocacy group Ipas Indonesia, said that she fears that the overturn of Roe v. Wade would give the Indonesian government — which already enforces restrictive abortion laws — cover by signalling that abortion access is “not human rights”. 

Experts say that in many parts of the world, the U.S. is seen as an agenda-setter, with lawmakers pointing to U.S. domestic policies during their own domestic debates, ranging from reproductive rights to racism and police violence.

The U.S. has a “huge, outsized influence” on global sexual and reproductive health programs for family planning, reproductive health, and maternal and child health, Bethany Van Kampen Saravia, a senior legal and policy adviser for Ipas, added.

“The U.S. is actually the largest funder when it comes to those programs,” she added, noting that a number of restrictive abortion policies already on the books were already limiting abortion access, such as the the Global Gag Rule, which prevents foreign organizations receiving U.S. funding from providing information, referrals, or services for abortion.

As domestic policy on abortion becomes more restrictive, so too might the rules around U.S. funding for women’s and family health overseas, she warned. And the striking down of Roe v. Wade, she added, gives tacit support to anti-abortion rights actors in other countries, and undercuts those defending reproductive rights. 

“None of us have a crystal ball but I think it’s fair to say that in some countries that are looking to liberalize, that might be on the cusp, might think again for fear of losing their U.S. funding [by] upsetting the U.S. government,” said Van Kampen Saravia.

However, Susan Yanow, the U.S. spokeswoman for the group Women Help Women, is optimistic that the abortion rights movement, at least in South America, will not be too deeply impacted by domestic changes in the U.S. 

“Things have shifted, in some ways, in terms of our position as a leader in the world. I say that because I am hoping that the changes we’ve seen in Latin America, for example, are a stronger wind than what’s going on in the United States,” she added. 

However, even if the wider abortion rights movements continue to accelerate in Latin America, Yanow said that U.S. policy could still limit access to abortions outside America’s borders. 

“The impact on people’s lives, regardless of what access to abortion looks like, is enormous,” she said of U.S. global health policies. 

As an example, Yanow pointed to U.S.-educated doctors and nurses working in abortion care around the globe.

“The United States has been seen as a resource for training doctors and nurses to provide abortion care,” she said, adding that any changes to these programs would have a negative impact overseas. 

Both Yanow and Carino said they were concerned that the overturn of Roe v. Wade is a sign of weakening democracy in the U.S., which they said could ultimately have an even greater impact on U.S. standing abroad. 

“It’s also important to highlight that when you have totalitarian or authoritarian governments, like the prior administration in the US, the damage they do lasts much longer than the year they may be in power,” Carino said.

These concerns were echoed by Licha Nyiendo, chief legal officer of Human Rights First, who said in May, following the leak of the Supreme Court opinion overturning of Roe v. Wade, that it would be a “step in a very dangerous direction.” 

Reversing Roe, she warned, would be “a frightening signal to authoritarians around the world that they can strip long-established rights from their countries’ people.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Heard seeks to throw out verdict in Depp defamation trial

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Amber Heard’s lawyers have asked a judge to throw out the $10.35 million verdict against her in the defamation case filed by ex-husband Johnny Depp, arguing that the verdict was not supported by the evidence and that one of the jurors may not have been properly vetted by the court.

In post-trial motions filed Friday, Heard’s attorneys call the jury’s June 1 award of $10 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages to Depp “excessive” and “indefensible.” They ask the judge to set aside the verdict and dismiss Depp’s lawsuit or order a new trial. Immediately after the verdict, the judge reduced the compensatory damages to $350,000 under a state cap.

Depp sued Heard for libel in Fairfax County Circuit Court over a December 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” Depp’s lawyers alleged he was defamed by the article even though it never mentioned him by name.

The six-week televised trial turned into a spectacle that offered a window into their dysfunctional marriage. Much of the testimony focused on Heard’s claims that she had been physically and sexually abused by Depp. Heard described more than a dozen alleged assaults, including a fight in Australia — where Depp was shooting a “Pirates of the Caribbean” sequel — in which Depp lost the tip of his middle finger and Heard said she was sexually assaulted with a liquor bottle.

Depp said he never hit Heard and that she was the abuser.

Depp had to prove that he never assaulted Heard, that her op-ed piece defamed him and that she wrote the article with actual malice.

In their post-trial motions, Heard’s legal team argued that to find that Heard had actual malice, Depp would have had to show that at the time Heard’s article was published, she did not believe she had been abused.

“Instead, the evidence overwhelmingly supported Ms. Heard believed she was the victim of abuse at the hands of Mr. Depp,” Heard’s lawyers say in their motion.

Heard’s lawyers also ask the judge to investigate “potential improper juror service,” alleging that one of the jurors who was chosen to serve on the jury was listed as being born in 1945 in documents given to the attorneys before the jury selection process, but is listed as being born in 1970 in publicly available information.

“This discrepancy raises the question whether Juror 15 actually received a summons for jury duty and was properly vetted by the Court to serve on the jury,” Heard’s lawyers said in their motion.

Depp’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The jury also awarded Heard $2 million in her counterclaim against Depp, finding that that Heard was defamed by one of Depp’s lawyers, who accused her of creating a detailed hoax that included roughing up the couple’s apartment to look worse for police.

In some ways, the trial was a replay of a lawsuit Depp filed in the United Kingdom against a British tabloid after he was described as a “wife beater.” The judge in that case ruled in the newspaper’s favor in 2020 after finding that Heard was telling the truth in her descriptions of abuse.

Source: TEST FEED1

The Supreme Court fires broadside against the Constitution

In its decisions to strike down the constitutional right to abortion and New York City’s concealed firearms ban, the Supreme Court has let loose a 21st century volley amid an ongoing political, cultural and social uncivil war not seen since the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861. 

These decisions have now created a “doctrine of selective inference” in the court’s interpretation of the law. This raised a judicial double standard that, ironically, will make the underlying reasoning of Dred Scott (1857) and Plessey v. Ferguson (1896) relevant again. And one consequence of returning the legality of abortion to the states is that it may well metastasize into a condition of permanent legal strife.

Proponents and opponents of these decisions should be very worried given the divisive, disruptive and contradictory consequences that will arise from these cases. About abortion and concealed carry, nowhere in the Constitution are abortion or self-defense as a reason for carrying a concealed weapon explicitly stated or enumerated. 

Roe v. Wade inferred from the 14th Amendment that abortion was constitutional. By torturing and distorting the Second Amendment beyond the court’s 2008 Heller ruling , it inferred a constitutional right for concealed carry.

The court struck down Roe, asserting there was no inferred right in the Constitution to abortion. But stunningly, the court contradictorily struck down the New York law interpreting the 2nd Amendment as making concealed carry legal. Hence, a doctrine of selective inference in which ideology and politics and not the law seems to take precedence.

Consider one consequence. Suppose a woman living in a state that bans abortion travels to a state where the procedure can be legally performed. According to some state laws, she could be arrested upon returning for violating the relevant statute banning abortion. Or could an arrest warrant be honored if she did not return? How would the court rule in such a case?

This contradiction makes Dred Scott relevant. That case concluded that a slave who was taken or escaped to a free state was still the property of his or her owner and if apprehended must be returned. The same flawed logic seems to apply in 2022.

Similarly, what are the limits of concealed carry under this ruling? Can a firearm be carried in a subway, an airplane, the White House or a sporting event all based on the inherent right of self-defense? These decisions have opened a Pandora’s box of questions that will overload the justice system and inflame an already incendiary situation.

That means Plessey is also back. That decision held that segregation in education was constitutional provided it was “separate but equal.” The court’s decisions now have introduced a Plessey “double standard” in interpretation. Decisions seem to conform to the justices’ preconceived notions rather than the law.

One consequence is that Article III and the court have become politicized and, to many, delegitimatized. The precedent was the 2000 presidential election and Gore v. Bush. Five Republican-appointed justices effectively made George W. Bush the nation’s 43rd president by 532 Florida votes. Now, public consensus is that the Republican appointed justices, five of whom strongly support pro-life and pro-gun views, have politicized the court at least for their lifetimes.

In fairness, on these politically charged issues, if Democratic appointees on the court held the majority, Roe and New York would have almost certainly been sustained on reverse ideological grounds.

Arguably, America has not been so politically divided, volatile and polarized since 1861. Given the absence of civility and the increasing recourse to violence in America, the abortion and concealed weapons decisions will exacerbate these dire conditions, possibly making them irreversible. Worse, a 21st century broadside has been fired against the Constitution.

Where this is headed is anyone’s guess. But you can bet both Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are sitting back and watching as America implodes.

Harlan Ullman is senior adviser at the Atlantic Council and the prime author of “shock and awe.” His latest  book is “The Fifth Horseman and the New MAD: How Massive Attacks of Disruption Became the Looming Existential Danger to a Divided Nation and the World at Large.” Follow him on Twitter @harlankullman.

Source: TEST FEED1

State of emergency called in Akron following protests over Jayland Walker’s death

A state of emergency was called in Akron, Ohio, on Monday following protests that took place on Sunday night over the death of Jayland Walker, a Black man who died after police shot him dozens of times. 

“Early yesterday, we had several peaceful protests in the downtown footprint related to the officer-involved shooting of Jayland Walker. These protests did not escalate to violence and destruction,” Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan (D) said in a statement. 

“However, as night fell and others began to join, the protests became no longer peaceful. There was significant property damage done to downtown Akron. Small businesses up and down Main St. have had their windows broken. We cannot and will not tolerate the destruction of property or violence,” he said.

He said that he was also implementing a curfew, which will be in effect in the downtown area between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., and that fireworks scheduled to commemorate the Fourth of July had been canceled.

“As I stated yesterday, I fully support our residents’ right to peacefully assemble. What we have been calling for since the beginning, and what the Walker family and many community leaders and faith leaders have also urged, is peace,” Horrigan said. 

The protesting came in response to Walker’s fatal shooting by Akron police last week. Police body-camera video released Sunday showed officers firing a barrage of bullets at 25-year-old Walker as he was running away following a traffic stop for an unspecified violation.

Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett said officers involved in the shooting saw Walker as a threat because he appeared to fire a shot while they were pursuing his vehicle in an attempt to pull him over. A gold ring, handgun and loaded magazine were later found in his car, though Bobby Dicello, a lawyer for Walker’s family, contends that when the firearm was recovered by police, they did not find any bullets in it, The New York Times reported.

Police said in a Tuesday statement that after leaving his still-moving vehicle Walker ran into a parking lot and that “actions by the suspect caused the officers to perceive he posed a deadly threat to them.” DiCello said that in the body-cam footage Walker did not appear to gesture toward the officers in a threatening way and looked like he was fleeing with nothing in his hands when he was shot. The lawyer said Walker received 60 to 80 gunshot wounds.

The protesting comes more than two years after a white Minnesota police officer murdered George Floyd, a Black man, by kneeling on him for more than nine minutes, reigniting demonstrations over racial justice and police brutality around the country. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Credit scoring is broken — buy now pay later can help

Credit is an essential fact of life, yet millions of Americans lack access to affordable, responsible credit options. As consumer advocates correctly point out, our nation’s broken credit scoring system is in desperate need of an upgrade. That’s because traditional credit scoring can be spotty in whether and how it collects relevant data and can generate opaque and unfair outcomes.  

Credit scores are essential to more than getting a loan. They are increasingly important when renting an apartment, applying for home or auto insurance, or even getting a job. Yet, 45 million “credit invisible” Americans have thin credit files, and millions more are living with poor credit, locking them out of mainstream financial services and exposing them to predatory actors.   

Some argue that the path to building credit should only be through traditional financial products, including credit cards. But we believe a consumer’s real creditworthiness should include more than just one type of payment, and we argue for another path: buy now pay later, a product with zero to low fees for consumers, more transparency, and greater potential for building a solid credit record, but only if credit bureaus can modernize their systems.  

Imagine a young person trying to build a credit history for the first time. Credit cards often come with a high limit that makes it easy to overspend, compounding double-digit interest rates, and excessive late fees. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) estimates that credit card companies made $14 billion in late fees alone in 2019 and just launched a new review of credit card penalty policies. Furthermore, Americans pay about $1,000 per year in interest on revolving credit card debt. This is not a formula for success for our youngest consumers.  

Today, thanks to innovation from financial technology companies, people have an alternative. The traditional pay-in-four buy now pay later (BNPL) model allows consumers to split a payment over four installments, often with little to no interest and low fees, over six to eight weeks. Unlike a credit card company, which can earn hefty sums even when a consumer misses a payment, BNPLs earn their money primarily from merchant fees. Consumers cannot continue using the service if they fail to make a payment. And, instead of starting a new customer with, for example, a $10,000 limit, BNPLs offer limited credit initially based on a single transaction, usually less than $250, and then extend it after the customer repeatedly makes on-time payments.   

But, the current credit scoring system only records one of these payment options (the credit card) as a positive transaction — and that’s a problem. Credit bureaus would currently see short-term payments on a BNPL as a negative, because the consumer maximized their available credit, and lower a consumer’s credit rating rather than reflecting the positive nature of short-term successful repayment.  

That’s why the BNPLs I represent at the Financial Technology Association — Afterpay, Klarna, Sezzle, and Zip — are in active conversations with the credit reporting agencies to modernize their scoring models to account for BNPL payments properly. The CFPB agrees that BNPL data could provide a fuller picture of consumer creditworthiness. The Bureau recently urged BNPLs and credit bureaus to collaborate on a uniform reporting scheme and asked the bureaus to build models that account for BNPL’s unique characteristics.  

Of course, limiting innovation because legacy credit score providers like FICO and Vantage are unable or unwilling to process this BNPL data in a consumer-friendly way is hardly what’s best for American consumers. Credit scoring algorithms should serve consumers, not the other way around.  

It’s increasingly clear that our credit reporting and scoring system needs upgrading. Legacy score-providers rely on limited data that might reinforce historical inequities while failing to consider data points — like rent and utilities — that would benefit underserved communities. These limitations mean that credit scores are not fit-for-purpose for a growing and increasingly diverse population. For example, six out of ten Black Americans have a low or missing FICO score compared to just over three in ten white Americans.  

Reform is needed, but relying on revolving debt products — with their extensive fees, high-interest rates, and debt traps — is not the answer. When used responsibly, alternative payment options like buy now pay later are a powerful tool to help people manage their finances and build a solid credit history. We should encourage innovation and update archaic credit scoring models to empower more people with fair and responsible access to credit.  

Penny Lee is the chief executive officer of the Financial Technology Association, a trade association representing industry leaders who are shaping the future of finance.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Missouri state rep resigns after federal conviction for COVID-19 fraud scheme

A Missouri state lawmaker resigned on Friday after a jury found her guilty on 22 counts for fraudulently accepting hundreds of thousands of pandemic-era federal stimulus dollars and other offenses.

Missouri state Rep. Tricia Derges (R) was convicted on Tuesday after she applied for nearly $900,000 in CARES Act funds for what she said were COVID-19 testing costs incurred by nonprofit Lift Up, but the organization never provided any testing services, according to a press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Derges was also found guilty on Tuesday in separate schemes in which she fraudulently marketed a stem cell treatment and illegally prescribed drugs to patients.

“It has truly been an honor to serve the citizens of the 140th District,” Derges wrote in her resignation letter, where she made no mention of the charges. “They are some of the finest people I have ever met. To be a part of the process that helped bring positive change to our community and to assist with many of the personal struggles of my constituents is something I will forever treasure.”

The DOJ said Lift Up’s medical clinic closed from the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 until June that year, and Derges supported her funding claim by providing COVID-19 test receipts for her for-profit Ozark Valley Medical Clinic. 

The clinic had already charged clients $167 per test, according to the DOJ, but a county commission paid Derges’s nonprofit $296,574 in CARES Act funds based on the fraudulent request. Derges then transferred the funds to her for-profit clinic.

“She violated her position of trust to selfishly enrich herself at the expense of others,” said U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore in a statement. “But a jury of her peers, in a unanimous verdict, saw through her smokescreen of excuses and ridiculous claims, and now she will be held accountable for her criminal behavior.”

Derges was found guilty of three counts of wire fraud in the scheme.

The jury convicted Derges on another seven counts of wire fraud for charging patients a combined amount of nearly $200,000 for what she fraudulently marketed as a stem cell treatment at her for-profit clinic. The jury additionally found her guilty on two counts of making false statements for telling federal agents the treatment contained stem cells when she knew it did not, in addition to other untrue information.

The jury also found Derges guilty of 10 counts of illegally drugs over the internet without a valid prescription. The DOJ said Derges, a licensed assistant physician, wrote electronic prescriptions for Oxycodone and Adderall without conducting in-person medical evaluations of the patients.

Derges now awaits sentencing, with the charges she was convicted on carrying a maximum combined sentence of 410 years in prison.

Source: TEST FEED1

Police respond to July 4 parade amid reports of shooting

CHICAGO (AP) — Police are responding to an incident at a July Fourth parade in a Chicago suburb, authorities said Monday, amid reports of a shooting.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the parade began around 10 a.m. but was suddenly halted 10 minutes later after shots were fired. Several witnesses told the newspaper that they heard gunfire.

Hundreds of parade-goers — some visibly bloodied — fled the parade route, leaving behind chairs, baby strollers and blankets.

A Sun-Times reporter saw blankets placed over three bloodied bodies.

Police told people: “Everybody disburse, please. It is not safe to be here.”

Debbie Glickman, a Highland Park resident, said she was on a parade float with coworkers and the group was prepared to turn onto the main route when she saw people running away from the area.

“People started saying ‘There’s a shooter, there’s a shooter, there a shooter,’” Glickman told the Associated Press. “So we just ran. We just ran. It’s like mass chaos down there.”

She didn’t hear any noises or see anyone who appeared to be injured.

“I’m so freaked out,” she said. “It’s just so sad.”

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office said on Twitter that it is assisting Highland Park Police “with a shooting in the area of the Independence Day parade route.”

The sheriff’s office directed an AP reporter to contact Highland Park Police. The Police Department said no one was immediately available to discuss the incident.

City leaders said on Twitter that “Police are responding to an incident in downtown Highland Park. Fourth Fest has been canceled. Please avoid downtown Highland Park. More information will be shared as it becomes available.”

Source: TEST FEED1