IT’S DEBATABLE: In a move that must have thrilled the writers at Saturday Night Live, President Biden threw down the glove yesterday and challenged Donald Trump to debate. In a video released on social media Biden taunted, “Make my day, pal, I’ll even do it twice.”

  Biden could very well lose if the election were held today and he needed to do something to wake up potential voters.

  The two quickly agreed to one on one debates June 27th on CNN and September 10th on ABC News, the first direct confrontations between the two in three years. 

  Trump had said he would debate “anytime and anywhere.” Biden is taking him up on it in a gamble that he can publicly prove he’s not too old and addled for the job, even though Trump is only four years younger. 

  Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. complained that, “They are trying to exclude me from the debate stage because they are afraid I would win.”

  Biden set conditions to which Trump agreed: Debates would bypass the Commission on Presidential Debates, take place before early voting in September, and be conducted with no audience in a television studio with microphones that automatically cut off when a speaker’s time elapses.

ECON 101: The stock market indexes rose to an all-time high yesterday on news that inflation is easing. Evidently investors believe interest rates will be lowered sometime this year.

  Consumer prices in April were up 3.4% from a year ago, according to the Labor Department. Housing costs are still rising but prices have dropped some for household items such as eggs and milk. Overall, though, Americans are shelling out much more money to live than they did two years ago.

POINT BLANK: Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, a cheerleader for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, is in critical condition after an assassination attempt.

  A man with a pistol walked up to Fico at a public appearance and shot him five times. The shooter was quickly grabbed by security officers and Fico was hustled away to a nearby hospital, then rushed by helicopter to a more sophisticated hospital. Deputy Prime Minister Tomáš Taraba said he believes Fico will survive.

  The gunman was identified as a 71-year-old poet and activist.

  Fico has spoken out against American military aid for Ukraine and has blamed “Ukrainian Nazis and fascists” for provoking Vladimir Putin into invading. That’s the same excuse Putin has given for starting the war.

PLACING BLAME: Nearly one in five voters in battleground states says that President Biden is responsible for ending the constitutional right to abortion, a new poll found. They hold that opinion even though Trump appointed the three Supreme Court justices who provided the decisive votes to overturn Roe v. Wade and the national right to have an abortion. 

  The poll says that Trump supporters and voters with less education are most likely to attribute responsibility for abortion bans to Biden. Twelve percent of Democrats hold Biden responsible, according to New York Times/Siena College polls in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin and a Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena poll in Pennsylvania.

SHE DID IT: Lawyers for New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez laid the blame on his wife yesterday for the cash and gold bars found in the couple’s home in a bribery investigation.

  In opening statements for the senator’s federal corruption trial in Manhattan, Attorney Avi Weitzman told a jury that the cash and gold were kept in a locked closet where Nadine Menendez kept her clothing. “He did not know of the gold bars that existed in that closet,” Weitzman said, describing Menendez as an American patriot and “lifelong public servant” who “took no bribes.”

  The 70-year-old Menendez and his wife are charged with accepting gifts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars including cash, gold, home furnishings, and a $60,000 Mercedes in exchange for political favors for people in New Jersey and the governments of Egypt and Qatar.

  Menendez is being tried with two New Jersey businessmen who prosecutors say benefited from the scheme. 

  The senator is now putting out a different story from when he was arrested. He originally said he kept large amounts of cash in a custom he learned from his Cuban immigrant parents.

THE OBIT PAGE: Barry Romo, an Army combat leader in Vietnam who became a leader of the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War and threw his medals onto the Capitol steps during a demonstration, has died of a heart attack in Chicago at age 76. 

  Romo was a veteran of heavy fighting, including in the 1968 Tet offensive, and  was awarded a bronze star. Back in the states, but still in the Army, he became attracted to the group of veterans speaking up about the atrocities they had committed or witnessed in Vietnam.

THE SPIN RACK: The criminal trial of Donald Trump resumes in Manhattan today with his former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen still on the stand. — A barge slammed into a bridge in Galveston, Texas yesterday, spilling oil into the waters closing the only road to Pelican Island, the home of Texas A&M University. The tugboat captain lost control in swift currents.

BELOW THE FOLD: Of all the weighty matters that confront the courts, a judge in Fort Wayne, Indiana was presented with the question of whether a taco is a sandwich.

  The issue was brought by Famous Taco, which wanted to open an outlet in a shopping mall that bans fast food but does allow sandwich shops. So, is a taco a sandwich? Superior Court Judge Craig Bobay chewed in over and decided that tacos and burritos are “Mexican-style sandwiches.” Not only that, “Greek gyros, Indian naan wraps or Vietnamese banh mi” could also be considered sandwiches.

  Judge Bobay did not rule on whether a hot dog could be considered a taco.

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