Abortion Denied: The Supreme Court is poised to overturn the right to abortion.

  A leaked early draft of a Court decision on the right established in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case indicates that the court has voted to reverse Roe and throw the issue to state legislators.

  As a result, about half the states are expected to ban abortion, mostly in the South and Midwest. 

  The leaked draft of the decision was published online last night by Politico and protesters immediately flocked to the Supreme Court building.

  Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito wrote,  “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.” Alito says in the opinion, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

  He says that the right to abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution and “The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.” 

  Neither is the right to drive a car.

  The leaked decision says five conservative justices voted to overturn Roe with Chief Justice John G. Roberts still undecided. 

  If this is the ultimate decision it may come as a shock to defenders of the right to abortion, but not a surprise. The Republican party has been working for years to stack the court with conservatives and this is one of the decisions they were expected to produce. President Donald Trump, who appointed three justices, had promised he would appoint people who would overturn Roe.

The War Room: Evacuations from the destroyed Ukrainian city of Mariupol continue, but many are still trapped under the city’s giant steel production complex. As many as 100,000 civilians are believed to still be in the now-unlivable city.

  Ukrainian forces have released aerial video of two Russian swift patrol boats getting blown up by drone strikes off Snake Island in the Black Sea. The “Raptor” patrol boats, capable of going 50 mph, have a crew of three and can carry up to 20 more people.

Voter Fraud: A special grand jury has been seated in Georgia to investigate attempts to overturn results of the 2020 election in that state, and even to send unelected members of the Electoral College to Washington. 

  A tape recording reveals President Trump pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to “find” votes. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have,” Trump says. “There’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, that you’ve recalculated.”

Shoot ‘Em: President Trump wanted the army to shoot demonstrators gathering outside the White House in protest of the shooting of George Floyd, according to a new book by Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

  In the memoir to be released May 10th,  Esper quotes Trump asking,  “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”

  Esper, who had previously been Secretary of the Army, was fired by Trump after the 2020 election. 

  Esper writes that the moment in the first week of June 2020, “was surreal, sitting in front of the Resolute desk, inside the Oval Office, with this idea weighing heavily in the air, and the president red faced and complaining loudly about the protests under way in Washington, DC.” 

  Esper says, ” This wasn’t a difficult decision.” 

Croak: One-fifth of all reptile species face the risk of extinction, with crocodiles and turtles most threatened, according to a new study, involving 961 scientists in 24 countries.

  The study that took 15 years says habitat loss driven by logging, agriculture, urbanization, and the presence of invasive species are the main threats to reptiles. 

Love on the Run: A national manhunt is under way for an escaped Alabama inmate charged with two counts of murder and the Lauderdale County corrections supervisor Vicky White, who appears to have run away with him.

  Casey White, 38, — no relation to Vicky White — is charged with the fatal stabbing of a 59-year-old woman. He has already been serving time for home invasion, carjacking, and leading police on a chase.

  Authorities say that last week Vicky White told colleagues she was taking Casey White to a court-ordered mental evaluation. It turned out no such thing was on the schedule. She had already turned in her retirement papers after 17 years on the job.

  Casey White, meanwhile, might be easy to spot. He’s six foot nine and his head is shaved.

The Spin Rack: Thomas Webster, a former Marine and 20-year veteran of the NYPD, was convicted yesterday in federal court of assaulting a DC police officer with a flagpole during the January 6th insurrection. Webster was seen on video hitting Officer Noah Rathbun with a flagpole, then tackling him to the ground,  grabbing his gas mask, and choking him. He claimed self-defense. — Mike Lindell, the pro-Trump My Pillow guy has been kicked off Twitter for the second time only three hours after re-joining the platform on Sunday. Lindell was originally banned from Twitter for spreading the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, and he was banned the second time for trying to do a runaround on the original ban.  — The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Monday that Boston violated the First Amendment rights of a group seeking to briefly raise a Christian flag on a flagpole outside City Hall as a part of a city program celebrating Boston’s greater community. The court noted that Boston has allowed other groups to raise their flag and could not discriminate against the Christians because of religion. — Russian women’s soccer teams and clubs have been barred from all European competitions for the 2022-23 season.

Book Shelf: The daily beast reports that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who was a globe-trotting functionary for the bleach blonde president, is about to publish a memoir about how good he was at his job.