Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will begin March 21 and end March 24, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Wednesday.
“As I have said from the time that Justice Breyer announced his retirement, the Committee will undertake a fair and timely process to consider Judge Jackson’s nomination,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, D-Ill., wrote. “I look forward to Judge Jackson’s appearance before the Committee and to respectful and dignified hearings.”
If approved by the Senate, the current federal appellate judge will make history as the first Black woman to sit on the country’s top court.
At her 2021 confirmation hearing for the appellate court, she said, “I’ve experienced life in perhaps a different way than some of my colleagues because of who I am, and that might be valuable — I hope it would be valuable if I was confirmed.”
During the 2020 presidential campaign, U.S. President Joe Biden promised to nominate an African American woman to the highest court.
Jackson, a liberal whose nomination is supported by progressive groups, would replace another liberal, Justice Stephen Breyer, who intends to retire at the end of the current Supreme Court term.
A bill to protect the right to have an abortion in the United States died in the Senate on Monday after it failed to garner enough Republican support to pass a procedural vote.
While the Women’s Health Protection Act was expected to fail, Democratic leaders were under pressure from constituents to put it to a vote anyway in a show of support for federal abortion rights, as the U.S. Supreme Court could soon upend those rights.
Reproductive rights advocates see federal legislation as possibly the best chance to codify the right to terminate pregnancy in the United States, particularly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices signaled, they could soon cut constitutional protections.
The bill would have needed several Republicans’ support to reach the necessary 60-vote threshold to overcome a filibuster. The vote was 48-46. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, voted against the bill, as did Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, moderate Republicans who have supported limited abortion rights.
“Abortion is a fundamental right and women’s decisions over women’s health care belong to women, not to extremist right-wing legislators,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters ahead of Monday’s vote.
Abortion opponents characterized the bill as radical and said it would nullify state laws that have been passed to restrict abortions.
“It’s extreme. It’s an egregious violation of the most fundamental of all human rights, and that is the right to life,” Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana said of the bill in debate on Monday.
The Women’s Health Protection Act, co-sponsored by 48 Senate Democrats, stated that healthcare providers should be able to provide abortions without a number of barriers, including restrictions on abortions prior to fetal viability, which many states currently have in place. It proposed that the U.S. attorney general could sue any state or government official who violated its terms.
Abortion rights advocates said the fact that the Senate was holding the vote at all was a victory, since it forced senators to go on the record for their constituents to judge.
Abortion is poised to be a key campaign issue for members of Congress running for re-election in 2022.
“Every American deserves to know where their senator stands on an issue as important as the right to choose,” Schumer told reporters.
The right to have an abortion prior to fetal viability, typically around 23 or 24 weeks, has been protected under the Constitution since the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade.
In December, the Supreme Court signaled its willingness to undermine Roe v. Wade and permit a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks. The court’s decision in that case is expected in late spring.
Some 26 states would move to immediately ban abortion if Roe is overturned, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy research group.
Today’s candidate for the Senate michel maya it was before Alianza Verde and he was aspiring in the past to be mayor of Cali.
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Today’s Senate candidate Michel Maya was before Alianza Verde and was aspiring in the past to be mayor of Cali.
He joined Dignidad, a movement founded by Senator Jorge Robledo, but wants to win a seat in the Senate, as a candidate for the new Centro Esperanza coalition.
(Also read: In Llano Verde, a neighborhood of Cali, they seek to combat the recruitment of minors
He said that he wants to work on a great development plan for the Valley and the Colombian Pacific, promoting a special free zone for Buenaventura, of the Páez Law type, which will allow investment and socioeconomic development to be generated in the largest municipality in the department.
In Centro Esperanza, a union of forces, also enters to support the presenter and journalist Mabel Larawho is running for the Senate as head of the list in the New Liberalism and with the presidential candidate Juan Manuel Galán.
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Esau Urrutia he also wants to reach the Senate of the Republic. The former Secretary of Territorial Development and Social Welfare of Cali for the U.
“Hand in hand with people with great transformations that people need,” says the applicant, who is also a journalist and worked for the media in Valle del Cauca.
Norma Stolen, who came to the House of Representatives for the U Party four years ago, wants to continue in Congress, but this time he wants to do it from the Senate. He continues with the U, with the support of José Rítter López, who in this case did not run as a candidate for the corporation. His son, Julián David López, is head of the U list for the House of Representatives. John Jairo Hoyos will seek to repeat a seat in the House of Representatives.
(You may be interested in: Debate over the causes of death of the murdered athlete’s brother
Daniel Garcia, who was dismissed by the Attorney General’s Office as director of Coldeportes, now occupies number 99 on the list of candidates for the Senate by the Democratic Center. He created a video controversy with Óscar Iván Zuluaga, questioning the mayor of Cali, Jorge Iván Ospina.
The majority of senators from Valle del Cauca who came to Congress in 2018 are going for continuity in this corporation, after the elections on March 13.
Alexander Lopez, for the Democratic Pole and who returns to the contest, but for the Historical Pact, he accompanied the Afro-Pacific peoples, especially of Buenaventura, and the indigenous people in claiming their rights; the protection of more than two million children in programs of the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF).
(Also read: In Llano Verde, a neighborhood of Cali, they seek to combat the recruitment of minors)
He also indicated that he sought to mark out the bill to reduce pensioners’ health contributions from 12 to 4 percent. In addition to the agreement to formalize more than 3,000 workers; for Basic Income for more than 11 million people. He also indicated that he negotiated commitments for the bunker of the Prosecutor’s Office in Cali, the completion of the Buga-Buenaventura dual carriageway and the award of the Malla Vial project.
Wilson Arias also returns for the Senate. Four years ago he did it for Polo and now he is going for the Historic Agreement. He argued that it is necessary to continue working for Colombians in an ethical and fair protest against banking entities, to denounce their cases of alleged abuses, in which announcements of relief would be resulting.
Roy Barreras assumed the protection of life and the construction of peace with social justice as his watchwords. He is the author of the bills for the Right to Food; for a regulatory framework for cannabis for adult use, and for land transportation benefits due to the crisis arising from the pandemic.
John Milton Rodriguez He assured that he has managed to impact more than 1,000,000 people in his community through different social assistance programs for children, youth and adults since 2003.
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Democratic Center Senator Gabriel Velasco wants to repeat Last year, among the initiatives, one stood out to generate new job opportunities and social progress, to combat illegal invasions and sought changes to Article 81 of the National Code of Police and Coexistence and introduce a prudential term for carrying out preventive actions. , in the event of a de facto route that intends to disturb possession.
of buga, John Harold Suarez (Democratic Center) hopes to repeat with efforts such as humanitarian assistance in a pandemic, that the Uceva was included in Zero Enrollment; for 43 million pesos for the modernization of the Seine Tuluá.
He also indicated that he wanted the High Mountain Battalion to continue in the mountains of Tulu, while promoting the Law of Honors for 450 years of Buga, with an investment of 150 million pesos.
Senator for the Democratic Center Maria Fernanda Cabal He assured that he filed the bill to strengthen the state monopoly on weapons, regulate the carrying and possession of weapons for civilian use and dictate other provisions.
Senator Carlos Fernando Motoa, for Radical Change, aspires to return for the fourth time. He pointed out that he was the author and rapporteur of the laws of electronic clinical history and of the one that established the compensation of maternity leave for women who are in the subsidized regime.
(You may be interested in: Debate over the causes of death of the brother of a murdered athlete)
The senator Jose Luis Perez, in his first period, he was the author of the Flag Laws, which manages to promote the registration or registration of ships and naval artifacts of international traffic in Colombia. He also said that he worked on the law for the substitution of animal-drawn vehicles in Colombia.
Carlos Abraham Jimenez, from Cambio Radical, has been a congressman in the House of Representatives since 2010 and in 2018 he was elected senator. He has authored 42 bills and rapporteur on 46. Jose Ritter Lopez, from the La U party, was the co-author of Law 1949 of 2019, which granted effective sanctioning tools to Supersalud to disable EPS that provide poor services. Also of Law 2158 of 2021 that recognizes, promotes and protects the viche / biche, as well as the ancestral customs of its producers.
Jorge Torres Victoria or Pablo Catatumbo came to the Senate four years ago by Commons. He said that progress was made in six projects, related to the Structure of the National System of Protected Areas, traditional mining and traditional panela production.
A bipartisan effort in the U.S. Senate has come together to produce what the chairman of the body’s Foreign Relations Committee has dubbed “the mother of all sanctions” to be levied against Russia in the event of a new invasion of Ukraine.
According to committee chairman Robert Menendez, senators are on the cusp of agreeing to a package of measures meant to make the financial cost of aggression in Ukraine extremely high for high-ranking government officials and ordinary Russians.
The bill being considered, Menendez said in an interview Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” show, involves “massive sanctions against the most significant Russian banks, crippling to their economy, meaningful in terms of consequences to the average Russian in their accounts and pensions.”
FILE – Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., speaks on Capitol Hill, Jan. 27, 2021.
In addition, Menendez said he expects the Senate to approve additional “lethal assistance to Ukraine” in the form of weapons, as well as economic sanctions on key sectors of the Russian economy, and a bar on Russia’s ability to sell its sovereign debt in international markets.
The Senate is considering taking action against Russia, because Moscow currently has well over 100,000 troops positioned along Ukraine’s northern, eastern and southern borders. In 2014, Russia invaded Crimea, a region of Ukraine, and took control of it. At the same time, it began providing support to a pro-Russian insurgency in Ukraine’s Donbass region, which has perpetuated a long, low-intensity conflict in that region for the past several years.
Bipartisan resolve
Menendez was joined by Senator James Risch, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a show of bipartisan resolve. Risch said he is not convinced that Russia has decided it actually will invade Ukraine, and said that is why telegraphing the economic price Moscow will pay in advance is important.
FILE – Sen. James Risch, R-ID, speaks in Washington, April 10, 2019.
“Well, I don’t think that decision has been made yet,” Risch said. “There’s a lot of us that believe that if (Russian President Vladimir) Putin sees weakness, if he sees bumbling, ineptitude, if he sees indecision, he will take advantage of that. I don’t think he’s made a decision to do that yet.
“What (Senator Menendez) and I and our coalition of bipartisan senators are attempting to do is to project the resolve that we have as Americans to see that he doesn’t do that. To provide the strength, project the strength and convince him that this would be a very, very bad idea and it’s going to be extremely painful.”
Russia well-positioned to resist
Not all experts agree that the sanctions the U.S. is contemplating will be as punishing to Russia and to the Putin regime as lawmakers think.
Kristine Berzina, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told VOA that Russia has been living with some degree of sanctions, as well as the threat of more sanctions, for most of the past decade and has taken steps to create an economic buffer.
“Russia has tremendous currency reserves set up so that it can make good on its sovereign debt, and it can suffer through some economic hardships,” she said.
To the extent that new sanctions cause short-term pain while Moscow figures out how best to work around them, she said that it’s during that early period under sanctions when Putin would benefit most from calls for patriotic sacrifice from the Russian people.
“The short term really is also the moment in which Putin will have the most support from his people, because then the likelihood is that an attack would be portrayed as some kind of defensive measure against the ‘encirclement’ by NATO and the refusal to meet what they would consider reasonable demands to turn back history,” Berzina told VOA.
Battle at U.N.
The preparation of sanctions took place as representatives from the U.S. and Russia clashed harshly in a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday morning. The meeting was convened at the request of the U.S. in order to discuss what the U.S. and its NATO allies have described as threatening behavior by Russia toward Ukraine.
Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya attends a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the situation between Russia and Ukraine, at the United Nations Headquarters in Manhattan, New York City, Jan. 31, 2022.
Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya, in remarks to the Security Council, accused the United States of “whipping up hysteria” about Russia’s intentions toward Ukraine. In the same remarks, he suggested that the U.S., with its increasingly strident warnings about Russia’s intentions, is actually “provoking escalation.”
Russia was not alone in suggesting that the U.S. has overstated the danger of a Russian invasion. Even senior officials in Ukraine have asked representatives of the U.S. to tone down their warnings.
Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Western governments to avoid causing panic within Ukraine, saying that the potential “destabilization of the situation” inside Ukraine is currently the greatest threat facing his country.
In a statement released after the Security Council meeting ended, U.S. President Joe Biden said, “If Russia is sincere about addressing our respective security concerns through dialogue, the United States and our Allies and partners will continue to engage in good faith. If instead Russia chooses to walk away from diplomacy and attack Ukraine, Russia will bear the responsibility, and it will face swift and severe consequences.”
