Abortion Uproar: The leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision that would end abortion rights established in the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade case immediately set off howls of celebration and execration on both side of the abortion debate. A crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the court yesterday.

  Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed that the document is real and in a statement decried its leaking as a “betrayal of the confidences of the Court” as well as  “a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here.” 

  It seems evident that someone who supports abortion rights leaked the document. House Minority leader Kevin McCarthy called it “a clearly coordinated campaign to intimidate” the justices.

  Roberts said the decision is not final, but five out of nine justices voted to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Court said in a public statement, that the draft decision “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.” They want the public to believe that the Court is just test driving an opinion on the most divisive issue in the country. 

  The decision is in regard to a Mississippi law that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The draft decision does not outlaw abortion, but rather leaves it up to the individual states to determine their own law.

  The draft written by Justice Samuel Alito says, “Our nation’s historical understanding of ordered liberty does not prevent the people’s elected representatives from deciding how abortion should be regulated.” It also says, the decision  “allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power.”

  The vast majority of Americans favor abortion rights, according to a CNN poll finding that that just 30 percent of Americans wanted the court to overturn Roe, while 69 percent were opposed.

  President Biden called on Congress to pass abortion rights into federal law and said the court decision, if it holds, could trigger a series of decisions limiting individual rights.

  “It basically says all the decisions related to your private life, who you marry, whether or not you decide to conceive a child or not, whether or not you can have an abortion, a range of other decisions,” could all be on the court docket, he said.

The War Room: Even while they are stalled on the ground, Russian forces reached out with missiles yesterday attacking vital transportation targets in the western city of Lviv, demonstrating again that they can hit anywhere they want.

  But the Russians are not winning. “You have exploded the myth of Putin’s invincibility and you have written one of the most glorious chapters in military history and in the life of your country,” Brutish Prime Minister Boris  Johnson told Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and his legislature in a video address. 

  Among other countries pouring in weapons, including neighboring Poland, Johnson  announced that Britain would provide $375 million worth of additional weapons to Ukraine, including electronic warfare gear, a radar system, and GPS-jamming equipment. 

  French President Emmanuel Macron took another stab at getting Russia’s Vladimir Putin to call off his dogs, again to no avail.

  The Russians resumed shelling of the ruined Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol and the roughly 200 civilians still taking shelter there after about 130 evacuees were safely evacuated to Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles west. Those survivors told reporters about the two months in tunnels and bunkers with little food or water under Russian bombardment.

 Trumpolitics: The Donald Trump supported candidate JD Vance won the Republican primary for the US Senate from Ohio in one of the first big tests of the former president’s power in the next round of elections. Vance was behind in the polls before Trump endorsed him.

  It’s the first political outing for Vance, the author of the bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” who then made millions in finance. He has since become an extreme Trump right winger, saying the 2020 election was stolen and that President Biden was flooding Ohio with illegal drugs. 

 Vance took 32 percent of the vote but the other two candidates won a total of more than 47 percent and they are all Trumpies to varying degrees.

  In next week’s Nebraska’s race to replace Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts, Trump has endorsed a candidate who faces more than a dozen accusations of sexual misconduct

Trump said, “I defend my people when I know they’re good.”

The Obit Page: Actor David Birney, star of the television series “Bridget Loves Bernie” and “St. Elsewhere” as well as Broadway’s “Amadeus,” has died at home in Santa Monica, Calif., after a five-year decline with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 83.

The Spin Rack: New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that she had chosen Rep. Antonio Delgado, a black Democrat from the Hudson Valley, as her new lieutenant governor. Hochul is running for her first full term after replacing the disgraced Andrew Cuomo. Hochul had to replace her first appointed Lt. Gov., Brian Benjamin, who was indicted on federal bribery charges last month. — A body in a barrel dating back to the 1980s has been found in Nevada’s Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the country. As the water drops under drought and climate change, the suspicion is that it won’t be the last corpse that turns up. 

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