The U.S. at a glance ... NEWS^7
Washington, D.C.
Resurrecting Burisma: Sen. Ron Johnson
(R-Wis.) announced plans this week to
subpoena the first witness in a probe into
the Ukrainian gas company Burisma,
escalating an investigation Democrats
say is meant to smear former Vice
President Joe Biden just as he becomes
the clear front-runner in the party’s pri-
mary battle. Johnson, chairman of the
Senate Homeland Security Committee,
wants to call Andrii Telizhenko, a for-
mer Ukrainian diplomat who worked
as a consultant for Blue Star Strategies,
a Democratic firm that represented
Burisma in the U.S. Biden’s son Hunter
earned $50,000 a month to serve on
Burisma’s board beginning in 2014, while
his father ran point on Ukraine policy.
Republicans claim Blue Star leveraged
Hunter’s name to curry favor with State
Department officials, and Telizhenko, 29,
has pushed the uncorroborated theory
that Ukraine worked to boost Hillary
Clinton in the 2016 election.Washington, D.C.
A court divided: The
Supreme Court appeared
divided this week in the
first major abortion case
since President Trump’s
appointees, Neil Gorsuch
and Brett Kavanaugh,
joined the bench. Gorsuch
was uncharacteristically
silent during oral argu-
ments concerning a 2014 Louisiana law
that requires abortion clinic doctors to
have “admitting privileges” at a hospital
within 30 miles. Two of Louisiana’s three
abortion clinics say they’d be forced to
close if the law took effect. The case
appeared to hinge on the vote of Chief
Justice John Roberts, who dissented in
2016 when the court struck down a
virtually identical law in Texas. Roberts
suggested he might be bound by that
precedent. The court’s three female jus-tices indicated they view
Louisiana’s law as an
attack on abortion access,
not as a safeguard for
women’s health.
The justices also
agreed this week to
review a Republican-led
effort to invalidate the
Affordable Care Act,
thrusting the fate of the
health-care law into the spotlight ahead
of November’s elections. Oral arguments
will likely come this fall, with a decision
in spring or summer 2021; in January,
the court declined to fast-track the case
to allow a pre-election ruling. The Trump
administration backs a lawsuit from
Texas and other GOP-controlled states
that argues that after Congress eliminated
the tax penalty for failing to obtain health
insurance, the entire law—including
protections for those with pre-existing
conditions and extensions for
family plans—was invalidated.
A district judge in Texas
agreed, and a coalition of 20
Democratic-controlled states led
by California appealed. This is
the third time the Supreme Court will
be asked to rule on the ACA’s constitu-
tionality. In two previous challenges,
Roberts voted to uphold the law.Milwaukee
Brewery shooting: A longtime employee
at the Molson Coors brewery fatally shot
five co-
workers
last week
before
killing
himself.
Anthony
Ferrill, 51,
worked
for
17 years as an electrician at the campus
famous for its red “Home of the High
Life” Miller beer sign. Ferrill showed
up in his company uniform with two
handguns, one equipped with a silencer,
and killed co-workers ages 33 to 57.
Although police were silent on a motive,
a co-worker says Ferrill was involved in
a long-running dispute with colleagues,
contending he was discriminated against
because he was African-American.
Colleagues say a noose was found
on Ferrill’s locker five years ago,
leading managers to call a
brewery-wide meeting. Racial
tension and taunts were said to
be common at the workplace.
“The culture of the company
was very, very toxic,” one for-
mer colleague of Ferrill’s told
The Washington Post.Nashville
Twister terror: Tornadoes with winds up
to 165 mph
roared
through
four coun-
ties this
week, kill-
ing at least
24 people
and leav-
ing some
of the worst wreckage in Tennessee his-
tory. A nighttime tornado hit downtown
Nashville, destroying at least 48 buildings;
although the iconic Basement East music
venue was left with just one wall standing,
most of the city’s landmarks and tourist
attractions were spared. The worst wreck-
age was to the east, in Putnam County,
where at least 100 homes were destroyed
or badly damaged. Some of those killed
died in their beds, and at least five of
the victims were children under age 13.
Days after the storms, dozens of people
remained missing. At their peak, about
50,000 customers were without power.
More than a dozen polling stations were
damaged, forcing Super Tuesday voters to
wait in long lines at backup sites.Baltimore
Children’s crook: Former
Baltimore Mayor
Catherine Pugh was sen-
tenced to three years in
prison last week for
defrauding a hospi-
tal system and the
city through mas-
sive sales of her children’s book series.
Pugh, elected in 2015, pleaded guilty last
November to using her self-published
Healthy Holly books to net more than
$850,000 illegally. She sold 100,000 cop-
ies in a no-bid deal for $500,000 to the
University of Maryland Medical System,
on whose board of directors she sat,
and used other sales to launder illegal
campaign contributions and evade taxes.
She failed to print thousands of promised
books, double-sold thousands more,
and left many copies in a warehouse.
At her sentencing, a tearful Pugh said,
“I beg for forgiveness.” In addition to
her prison term, Pugh, 69, must forfeit
nearly $670,000, including a house she
renovated with book sales revenue. She
agreed that all unsold Healthy Holly
Reuters, AP (3) books will be destroyed.
A conflict-plagued workplaceEx-mayor PughSalvaging the remainsProtesters make their case.