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𝗗𝗔𝗩 𝗟𝗢𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝟭𝟬𝟱 𝗜𝗡𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗟𝗟𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗢𝗙 𝗙𝗟𝗔𝗚𝗦 𝗔𝗧 𝗘𝗟𝗞 𝗦𝗣𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗚𝗦 𝗖𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗬
𝗕𝘆 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘂𝘀 𝗗𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗮𝗻
MONTICELLO, KY (GWN) – Wayne County DAV Local Chapter 105 reveals that a new applicant requested membership placement in Local 105 at the May 2022 meeting. New applicant has been transferred from Florida with 100% disability from US Navy. Commander Jeff Morgan and DAV local 105 will continue to advocate for those who have bravely worn our nation’s uniform and will continue advancing the cause for every veteran in Wayne County, and surrounding counties in our district.
New schedules were also made during the May 2022 meeting. Local Veterans can expect US Flags to be placed as memorials around veteran graves at Elk Springs Cemetery. Veterans were requested to meet at the cemetery on May 26 to install the flags. Tools will be necessary such as a large screwdriver or lug wrench to make holes in the right areas. Other groups will be placing flags at cemeteries throughout Wayne County.
Additionally, a concert will be held at Performance Feeds LLC, 22 Cardinal Avenue in Monticello on behalf of local veterans. Concert begins at 12 noon with local singing groups performing. Everyone is invited to attend the concert and enjoy this event.
Local Chapter 105 is always quite active with new events during the spring and summer months. The annual Roadblock Fundraiser will be held on Saturday, May 28, 2022, at the intersection of Highway 90 and 1275. Buckets handled by veterans will be provided at each corner of the intersection to receive donations. Commander Jeff Morgan asks for those wishing to donate arrive at the intersection between the hours of 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Commander Morgan also request everyone drive safely through the intersection to prevent accidents. There will also be a police cruiser in the area, as well.
Also included in the Memorial Day Program on Monday May 30, 2022, is a program at the Wayne County High School Gymnasium. The program begins at 10 a.m. with Clay Chaplin singing group. Along with Bell Tones, and others who will be performing. Commander Jeff Morgan will speak bringing opening statements. Folding the Flag, 21 Gun Salute, and recipient for Jr ROTC Scholarship Program will be announced. The event will relocate to the Aspire Center in case of rain. A news crew from channel 36 will bring it live on television, as well.
Inclusive of these events will be a Veteran Banner folded and sent to France for the local soldier, Jesse Patton, who was killed in that area. To honor this brave vet banner will be sent to area the soldier was killed.
Local DAV meetings, events, and activities take place all during the year. For more information, you may call Commander Jeff Morgan at 606-307-8719 or visit a meeting on the first Monday of each month at the Wayne County Senior Citizens Building, across from the Judicial Center on Columbia Avenue in Monticello, Kentucky
Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Alito writes in an initial majority draft circulated inside the court.
Abortion rights supporters and anti-abortion demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 1, 2021. | Drew Angerer/Getty Images
05/02/2022 08:32 PM EDT
Updated: 05/03/2022 02:14 PM EDT
The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.
The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision — Planned Parenthood v. Casey — that largely maintained the right. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” he writes in the document, labeled as the “Opinion of the Court.” “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/21835435-scotus-initial-draft/?embed=1&responsive=1&title=1
Deliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid. Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. The court’s holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months.
The immediate impact of the ruling as drafted in February would be to end a half-century guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion. It’s unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft.
No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending. The unprecedented revelation is bound to intensify the debate over what was already the most controversial case on the docket this term.
The draft opinion offers an extraordinary window into the justices’ deliberations in one of the most consequential cases before the court in the last five decades. Some court-watchers predicted that the conservative majority would slice away at abortion rights without flatly overturning a 49-year-old precedent. The draft shows that the court is looking to reject Roe’s logic and legal protections.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
Justice Samuel Alito in an initial draft majority opinion
A person familiar with the court’s deliberations said that four of the other Republican-appointed justices — Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — had voted with Alito in the conference held among the justices after hearing oral arguments in December, and that line-up remains unchanged as of this week.
The three Democratic-appointed justices — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — are working on one or more dissents, according to the person. How Chief Justice John Roberts will ultimately vote, and whether he will join an already written opinion or draft his own, is unclear.
The document, labeled as a first draft of the majority opinion, includes a notation that it was circulated among the justices on Feb. 10. If the Alito draft is adopted, it would rule in favor of Mississippi in the closely watched case over that state’s attempt to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Roberts confirmed the authenticity of the draft opinion and said he was ordering an investigation into the disclosure.
“To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed. The work of the Court will not be affected in any way,” Roberts pledged in a written statement. “This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here.”
Roberts also stressed that the draft opinion “does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.” The court spokesperson had declined comment pre-publication.
10 key passages from Alito’s draft opinion, which would overturn Roe v. Wade
BY JOSH GERSTEIN
POLITICO received a copy of the draft opinion from a person familiar with the court’s proceedings in the Mississippi case along with other details supporting the authenticity of the document. The draft opinion runs 98 pages, including a 31-page appendix of historical state abortion laws. The document is replete with citations to previous court decisions, books and other authorities, and includes 118 footnotes. The appearances and timing of this draft are consistent with court practice.
The disclosure of Alito’s draft majority opinion — a rare breach of Supreme Court secrecy and tradition around its deliberations — comes as all sides in the abortion debate are girding for the ruling. Speculation about the looming decision has been intense since the December oral arguments indicated a majority was inclined to support the Mississippi law.
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Under long-standing court procedures, justices hold preliminary votes on cases shortly after argument and assign a member of the majority to write a draft of the court’s opinion. The draft is often amended in consultation with other justices, and in some cases the justices change their votes altogether, creating the possibility that the current alignment on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization could change.
The chief justice typically assigns majority opinions when he is in the majority. When he is not, that decision is typically made by the most senior justice in the majority.
‘Exceptionally weak’
A George W. Bush appointee who joined the court in 2006, Alito argues that the 1973 abortion rights ruling was an ill-conceived and deeply flawed decision that invented a right mentioned nowhere in the Constitution and unwisely sought to wrench the contentious issue away from the political branches of government.
Alito’s draft ruling would overturn a decision by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that found the Mississippi law ran afoul of Supreme Court precedent by seeking to effectively ban abortions before viability.
Roe’s “survey of history ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant to the plainly incorrect,” Alito continues, adding that its reasoning was “exceptionally weak,” and that the original decision has had “damaging consequences.”
“The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions,” Alito writes.
Alito approvingly quotes a broad range of critics of the Roe decision. He also points to liberal icons such as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, who at certain points in their careers took issue with the reasoning in Roe or its impact on the political process.
Alito’s skewering of Roe and the endorsement of at least four other justices for that unsparing critique is also a measure of the court’s rightward turn in recent decades. Roe was decided 7-2 in 1973, with five Republican appointees joining two justices nominated by Democratic presidents.
The overturning of Roe would almost immediately lead to stricter limits on abortion access in large swaths of the South and Midwest, with about half of the states set to immediately impose broad abortion bans. Any state could still legally allow the procedure.
Read Justice Alito’s initial draft abortion opinion which would overturn Roe v. Wade
BY POLITICO STAFF
“The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion,” the draft concludes. “Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”
The draft contains the type of caustic rhetorical flourishes Alito is known for and that has caused Roberts, his fellow Bush appointee, some discomfort in the past.
At times, Alito’s draft opinion takes an almost mocking tone as it skewers the majority opinion in Roe, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, a Richard Nixon appointee who died in 1999.
“Roe expressed the ‘feel[ing]’ that the Fourteenth Amendment was the provision that did the work, but its message seemed to be that the abortion right could be found somewhere in the Constitution and that specifying its exact location was not of paramount importance,” Alito writes.
Alito declares that one of the central tenets of Roe, the “viability” distinction between fetuses not capable of living outside the womb and those which can, “makes no sense.”
How rare is a Supreme Court breach? Very rare
BY JOSH GERSTEIN
In several passages, he describes doctors and nurses who terminate pregnancies as “abortionists.”
When Roberts voted with liberal jurists in 2020 to block a Louisiana law imposing heavier regulations on abortion clinics, his solo concurrence used the more neutral term “abortion providers.” In contrast, Justice Clarence Thomas used the word “abortionist” 25 times in a solo dissent in the same case.
Alito’s use of the phrase “egregiously wrong” to describe Roe echoes language Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart used in December in defending his state’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The phrase was also contained in an opinion Kavanaugh wrote as part of a 2020 ruling that jury convictions in criminal cases must be unanimous.
In that opinion, Kavanaugh labeled two well-known Supreme Court decisions “egregiously wrong when decided”: the 1944 ruling upholding the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II, Korematsu v. United States, and the 1896 decision that blessed racial segregation under the rubric of “separate but equal,” Plessy v. Ferguson.
The high court has never formally overturned Korematsu, but did repudiate the decision in a 2018 ruling by Roberts that upheld then-President Donald Trump’s travel ban policy.
The legacy of Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy remained the law of the land for nearly six decades until the court overturned it with the Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation ruling in 1954.
Quoting Kavanaugh, Alito writes of Plessy: “It was ‘egregiously wrong,’ on the day it was decided.”
Alito’s draft opinion includes, in small type, a list of about two pages’ worth of decisions in which the justices overruled prior precedents — in many instances reaching results praised by liberals.
The implication that allowing states to outlaw abortion is on par with ending legal racial segregation has been hotly disputed. But the comparison underscores the conservative justices’ belief that Roe is so flawed that the justices should disregard their usual hesitations about overturning precedent and wholeheartedly renounce it.
Alito’s draft opinion ventures even further into this racially sensitive territory by observing in a footnote that some early proponents of abortion rights also had unsavory views in favor of eugenics.
“Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population,” Alito writes. “It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are black.”
Alito writes that by raising the point he isn’t casting aspersions on anyone. “For our part, we do not question the motives of either those who have supported and those who have opposed laws restricting abortion,” he writes.
Alito also addresses concern about the impact the decision could have on public discourse. “We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work,” Alito writes. “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”
In the main opinion in the 1992 Casey decision, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and Davis Souter warned that the court would pay a “terrible price” for overruling Roe, despite criticism of the decision from some in the public and the legal community.
“While it has engendered disapproval, it has not been unworkable,” the three justices wrote then. “An entire generation has come of age free to assume Roe‘s concept of liberty in defining the capacity of women to act in society, and to make reproductive decisions; no erosion of principle going to liberty or personal autonomy has left Roe‘s central holding a doctrinal remnant.”
When Dobbs was argued in December,Roberts seemed out of sync with the other conservative justices, as he has been in a number of cases including one challenging the Affordable Care Act.
At the argument session last fall, Roberts seemed to be searching for a way to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban without completely abandoning the Roe framework.
“Viability, it seems to me, doesn’t have anything to do with choice. But, if it really is an issue about choice, why is 15 weeks not enough time?” Roberts asked during the arguments. “The thing that is at issue before us today is 15 weeks.”
Nods to conservative colleagues
While Alito’s draft opinion doesn’t cater much to Roberts’ views, portions of it seem intended to address the specific interests of other justices. One passage argues that social attitudes toward out-of-wedlock pregnancies “have changed drastically” since the 1970s and that increased demand for adoption makes abortion less necessary.
Those points dovetail with issues that Barrett — a Trump appointee and the court’s newest member — raised at the December arguments. She suggested laws allowing people to surrender newborn babies on a no-questions-asked basis mean carrying a pregnancy to term doesn’t oblige one to engage in child rearing.
“Why don’t the safe haven laws take care of that problem?” asked Barrett, who adopted two of her seven children.
Much of Alito’s draft is devoted to arguing that widespread criminalization of abortion during the 19th and early 20th century belies the notion that a right to abortion is implied in the Constitution.
The conservative justice attached to his draft a 31-page appendix listing laws passed to criminalize abortion during that period. Alito claims “an unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion on pain of criminal punishment…from the earliest days of the common law until 1973.”
“Until the latter part of the 20th century, there was no support in American law for a constitutional right to obtain an abortion. Zero. None. No state constitutional provision had recognized such a right,” Alito adds.
Alito’s draft argues that rights protected by the Constitution but not explicitly mentioned in it — so-called unenumerated rights — must be strongly rooted in U.S. history and tradition. That form of analysis seems at odds with several of the court’s recent decisions, including many of its rulings backing gay rights.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision….”
Justice Samuel Alito in an initial draft majority opinion
Liberal justices seem likely to take issue with Alito’s assertion in the draft opinion that overturning Roe would not jeopardize other rights the courts have grounded in privacy, such as the right to contraception, to engage in private consensual sexual activity and to marry someone of the same sex.
“We emphasize that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right,” Alito writes. “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”
Alito’s draft opinion rejects the idea that abortion bans reflect the subjugation of women in American society. “Women are not without electoral or political power,” he writes. “The percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.”
The Supreme Court remains one of Washington’s most secretive institutions, priding itself on protecting the confidentiality of its internal deliberations.
“At the Supreme Court, those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know,” Ginsburg was fond of saying.
That tight-lipped reputation has eroded somewhat in recent decades due to a series of books by law clerks, law professors and investigative journalists. Some of these authors clearly had access to draft opinions such as the one obtained by POLITICO, but their books emerged well after the cases in question were resolved.
The justices held their final arguments of the current term on Wednesday. The court has set a series of sessions over the next two months to release rulings in its still-unresolved cases, including the Mississippi abortion case.
READ MORE HERE: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473
Ukraine is relying on its secret weapon in the war against Russia: Trains
Rail has played a pivotal role for both sides of the war, and it may help explain the failure of Russian forces to win control of the country.
Ukrainian train guards wait on the platform at Lviv railway station
KYIV, Ukraine — The passenger train from Kyiv to Sumy was running Thursday morning with just a six-minute delay. The 200-mile route crosses territory scarred by more than two months of ground battles and aerial bombardment since Russia’s invasion began.
Despite what appear to be concerted efforts by the Russian military this week to disable the vital Ukrainian rail network, this journey and dozens of others are providing a crucial means of military support and civilian escape through the country.
Rail also acts as a symbol of Ukraine’s defiance and the limits of Russia’s military power. After cities and towns were reduced to rubble, with thousands killed, the trains are still running.
Ukraine has one of the largest rail networks in the world, with 12,400 miles of track. Rail is one of the country’s largest employers, with more than 260,000 staff members.
Before the war, it played a minor role in Ukraine’s agriculture and mining industries, but it has become a crutch for commodity industries as Russia maintains a blockade on the Black Sea. The movement of grain now is essential to maintain the country’s reputation as “Europe’s breadbasket.”
But the trains are no longer just for commodities and long journeys, as the network now moves military ordnance, refugees and humanitarian aid. Increasingly, it is transporting families back to areas previously held by Russian troops.
It delivers foreign leaders, too: Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Kyiv on Sunday, arriving by train from Poland, as have several other Western officials.
Rail has played a pivotal role for both sides of the war, and it may help explain the failure of Russian forces to win control of the country. Russia was unable to fully use the railways in the early stages of the invasion, experts say, leading to logistical problems and images of Russian trucks stuck in winter mud.
“The railways have played a massively important role in the conflict so far, insofar as it’s the way the Russian motorized ground forces move their troops around,” said Emily Ferris, a Russia expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank in London. “All of the problems they’ve had in the north are because they weren’t able to control the logistical hubs.”
Until recently, Russian forces had stopped short of targeting railway infrastructure in Ukraine in the hope they would take control of it themselves, said Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, the CEO of Ukrainian Railways’ passenger trains business.
“The Russian military depends heavily on rail logistics, and one of the reasons why they’re rather inefficient is the fact that they don’t have reliable supply lines at the moment,” he said.
Seemingly unable to take control of the rail network, Russia instead now appears to be intent on trying to disable it.
“Two weeks back, it appears that there were more and more deliberate attacks on rail infrastructure,” Pertsovskyi said.
Missiles rained down on five Ukrainian train stations and regional railway hubs Monday night, mostly in western and central areas, killing a railway worker and wounding four others, the Ukrainian rail authority said. The Russian Defense Ministry said in a briefing Monday that the railway station attacks were designed to stop the shipment of “foreign weapons and military equipment” to Ukrainian troops in the eastern Donbas region.
It’s there that Russian forces are now focused, with a crucial battle for eastern Ukraine that could be decided by Kyiv’s ability to mobilize equipment and weapons — much of which is being sent by allies to aid the defensive stand — by road and rail.
Russia wants to stop the inbound military aid from Western countries that are beginning to resupply the Ukrainians, said Gen. Philip Breedlove, a retired four-star Air Force general and former supreme allied commander of NATO, speaking by phone from Florida.
But that’s not the whole story.
“It’s also just another step in Russia’s ongoing war against the Ukrainian civilian population, on innocents,” said Breedlove, now the chair of the Frontier Europe Initiative at the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
“I believe the Russians are attacking, on purpose, civilian structures that move people around and protect people,” he said. “They want Ukrainians to lose confidence in the civilian transportation infrastructure.”
The Russians are “scattering these little attacks around” to keep killing a “few people in this town, kill a few people in that town, kill a few people over here,” to maintain pressure and civilian fear, Breedlove said.
Other experts agree that the airstrikes on railway targets also underscore the slow progress of Russia’s campaign and signal that the conflict has entered a dangerous new phase. Perhaps the first glimpse of that was the deadly attack on a train station in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region on April 8, in which at least 30 people died and 100 others were injured, Ukrainian officials said.
“In general, it’s part of a wider pattern to target Ukrainian infrastructure and civilians and to degrade their physical capacity to resist but also their morale — which doesn’t seem to be working,” said Ruth Deyermond, an expert in Russian security policy at King’s College London.
“Once it became clear that the Russian army wasn’t going to walk in and take Kyiv or Kharkiv or other cities, they moved to the second phase, which was trying to reduce parts of Ukraine to rubble, exactly as they did in Chechnya in the 1990s — it’s part of a long-standing pattern,” she said.
So far, every time a railroad is damaged, it just keeps getting repaired.
In some cases, Pertsovskyi said, damaged train lines can be fixed in a few hours. Destroyed or damaged bridges are harder to address, but “the bottom line is that even though the attacks are constant and intensifying, we still are able to run the system,” he said.
Actually destroying the rail infrastructure, he said, is “not an easy task, because the system is quite reliable.”
The railway system Russia has relied upon may not have proven so resilient.
Satellite pictures showed trains laden with military hardware making their way to the Ukrainian border in the weeks of buildup to the invasion — including through Belarus.
But the rail link from Belarus to Ukraine was severed, the head of the Ukrainian rail network said in March, leaving Russian forces even more reliant on their limited number of trucks, which were prime targets for small-scale ambush attacks, Ferris said.
“Controlling the railways is key here,” she said. “The Ukrainians know that, and they tried quite hard when they saw Russian advances on certain cities and villages … to bomb things like the bridges and cut off rail connections to stop the Russians where they were.”
The next logical step for Russia’s plan to create a corridor across Ukraine’s south is to take the Black Sea port of Odesa. A bridge linking the region with the rest of Ukraine and neighboring Romania was shelled twice this week, a possible effort to cut it off from military supplies.
But as in the north, Russian forces may find victory here easier said than done.
“The Russian army has done very badly and suffered tremendous losses,” Deyermond said. “Now they’re talking about the south and Donbas — but even there it’s very hard to see how they have the capacity to do that.
“Will they make significant military gains?” she said. “Possibly, but are they going to be able to hold them? That seems much less likely.”
Phil McCausland reported from Kyiv, and Patrick Smith reported from London.
READ MORE HERE: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ukraine-war-russia-trains-rail-network-strikes-military-supply-rcna26023
Wayne County Local DAV Chapter 105 Annual Roadblock Fundraiser
WAYNE COUNTY LOCAL DAV CHAPTER 105 ANNUAL ROADBLOCK FUNDRAISER
By Cornelius Duncan
Monticello, KY (GWN) – As part of its Memorial Day Program, and new approach to raise money for operating cost, as well as, fulfilling other obligations for local veterans the Wayne County local DAV Chapter 105 will soon begin fundraising efforts with their annual Roadblock Fundraiser at the main intersection of highway 90 and 1275.
DAV Memorial Day Program begins on Thursday May 26, 2022, with local DAV veterans placing American Flags at grave sites. Roadblock Fundraiser will begin on Saturday May 28, 2022, with local DAV veterans providing buckets in the middle, and at each corner of the intersection to receive donations.
As a thank you for their service and showing care for our local veterans, Commander Jeff Morgan, calls for those wishing to donate arrive at the above location between 9am and 3pm. This will be the perfect time to show appreciation and gratitude for sacrifices that have been made by veterans, as well as, receive a blessing through your donation. Your donation could be the necessary bridge to DAV for a veteran and their family. A gesture of love can have an immeasurable impact on veterans’ lives. You can be assured there will be no shortage of achievements and victories to count when giving to the cause of your local DAV.
Local DAV Commander Jeff Morgan will officiate the Memorial Day Program on Monday May 30, 2022. Commander Jeff Morgan was recently voted into the District Commander position with leadership in several counties in Kentucky. Commander Morgan will officiate the Memorial Day Program.
DAV meetings, events, and activities take place all during the year. For more information, call DAV Commander Jeff Morgan, at 606-307-8719 or visit our meeting on the first Monday of each month at the Senior Citizens Building across from the Judicial Center on Columbia Avenue in Monticello, Kentucky.
WAYNE COUNTY LOCAL DAV CHAPTER 105 SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
WAYNE COUNTY LOCAL DAV CHAPTER 105 SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
By Cornelius Duncan
Monticello, KY (GWN) – After recent hiatus due to COVID-19 pandemic the Wayne County local DAV is proudly encouraging education advancement with the local ROTC program for Wayne County High School ROTC members. The scholarship will be given to an outstanding ROTC member and good standing student with a 3.0 GPA average.
The local Disabled American Veterans Education Scholarship Program was established to provide education scholarships for local Wayne County students attending an accredited college, university, or vocational school in Kentucky. Those full-time students who meet the established guidelines may qualify for a scholarship of $500.00. Part-time students who meet the established guidelines may also qualify for a scholarship. Students who receive other scholarship awards on graduation day will not qualify for this award. ROTC recipients whose names will be announced at the DAV Memorial Day Program will have an opportunity to expand their educational goals and strengthen their self-esteem through participation in the local DAV Scholarship Program.
Funding for this program comes from a designated portion of paid mandates that has been the generous support of our donors who have provided the opportunity for this continued education assistance. Funds for the scholarship will also be sent to college admittance during August 2022. We can all truly make a difference to these outstanding students by encouraging and donating to this cause.
If you would like to donate toward this important endeavor please contact Representative Lea Hammond at the new DAV office in the basement of Monticello City Hall on Wednesdays between 9 am and 3 pm. DAV Commander Jeff Morgan is always available by calling 606-307-8719. All local veterans are encouraged to attend DAV monthly meetings on the first Monday of each month at 6:30 pm at the Wayne County Senior Citizens Building located across from the Judicial Center on Columbia Avenue in Monticello, Kentucky.
Live Updates /
Russia-Ukraine war: U.S. says Putin ‘failing’ to reach war goals, looks for Moscow to be weakened militarily
The comments from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin came after their secretive trip to Kyiv, the highest-level American visit since Russia invaded.
Then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Bridget Brink at a news conference in Azerbaijan on Feb. 7, 2018.
By NBC News
The United States will deliver more military aid and return a diplomatic presence to Ukraine in a show of support as the war enters a new phase at the start of its third month.
The pledges, which came as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made a secretive trip to Kyiv, will seek to bolster faith in Ukraine’s defenses as Russia launches its new offensive in the country’s south and east.
Speaking after they met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and others in the country’s capital, the American officials offered robust support for Kyiv’s cause. Blinken said that “Russia is failing” to achieve its war aims, while Austin said that Washington wants “to see Russia weakened” militarily so it can’t do things like invade its democratic neighbor in the future.
With the U.S. and its allies seemingly emboldened by Russia’s struggles in the war, the West saw a further boost to the cause with the re-election of French President Emmanuel Macron. Zelenskyy congratulated Macron, calling the centrist leader “a true friend of Ukraine” after he held off the challenge of the far-right Marine Le Pen, who threatened to upend NATO and urged closer ties with the Kremlin.
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State Department approves potential sale of $165 million in non-standard ammunition
Jacob Fulton and Courtney Kube
19m ago / 11:14 AM EDT
The State Department announced its approval of a possible sale of around $165 million of non-standard ammunition to Ukraine.
Certification for the sale was delivered to Congress on Sunday. The potential deal would include 120mm mortar rounds, BM-21 GRAD Rockets and VOG-25 grenades, among other forms of ammunition.
The Secretary of State and the State Department determined through review that the sale is justified given the state of emergency in the region, and would support American foreign policy goals.
Additionally, the department said the sale would not alter the region’s basic military dynamic as it currently stands.
READ MORE HERE: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/russia-ukraine-war-live-updates-us-diplomats-support-kyiv-meeting-rcna25788
Joe Biden claimed in his speech that he served as a “full professor” at the University of Pennsylvania
Politician Robby Starbuck, who is running for Congress in Tennessee’s upcoming Republican primary, remarked: “Oh man. The music makes it 10x worse.
“This man is unfit to be President. Period.”
He confused Libya and Syria and in another, he mistakenly called Vice President Kamala Harris “president”.
He also appeared to mix up Ukrainians with Iranians as Russia’s war rumbles on.
Mr Biden’s approval rating stand at 33 percent among American adults in a new poll released on Wednesday.
This is the second time Mr Biden has been rated this low in a Quinnipiac University Poll, with the first time occurring in January.
This is just the latest in a series of blunders made by the president.
Harmeet Dhillon, former vice chairwoman of the California Republican Party said on Twitter: “Where are the White House and Biden family handlers whose job it is to make him look good?”
US President Joe Biden turned around on stage with no one behind him and shook hands with thin air after he finished a speech on the nation’s supply crisis on Thursday.
The embarrassing moment came after the 79-year-old claimed in his address that he had served as a “full professor” at the University of Pennsylvania, despite never having taught a class there.
The handshake blunder, caught on tape, showed the president turning to his right when he extended his hand and appeared to mumble something.
After a moment, he realised there was no one there and walked off the platform to music.
President Joe Biden looked lost again Thursday after finishing a speech on the nation’s ongoing supply chain crisis when he turned around and stuck his hand out as if to shake hands – but there was no one else on stage.
If this was happening to a Republican president, Congress would already have called for a complete medical workup after having activated the 25th Amendment, business in Washington would come to a complete and total standstill until the problem was resolved. But because this is a Democrat president, Congress has nothing to say and the fake news media is not interested in reporting on this on any level. Joe Biden is not functioning as president, so the question is, who is calling the shots?
“While the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; The kingdom is departed from thee.” Daniel 4:31 (KJB)
Can you imagine whey they are thinking in China right now, or how Putin over in Russia is viewing all this? America’s enemies know how weak we are right now, this is why Putin waited until Biden was president to invade Ukraine. If Biden’s behaviour doesn’t trigger the 25th Amendment, they there is no reason to have the 25th Amendment. He is speaking nonsense and interacting with people who aren’t there, this is the face America wants to present to the world? The New World Order is running America right now, running it right into ruin so the global order can come in.
A confused looking Biden sticks out his hand and appears to shake thin air after falsely claiming in speech that he had also been a ‘full professor’ at UPenn for four years
FROM THE DAILY MAIL UK: The 79-year-old president claimed before the handshake fiasco that he had served as a ‘full professor’ at the University of Pennsylvania despite never teaching a class at the school, in yet another gaffe that has Republicans questioning Biden’s cognitive abilities.
Last week, Biden looked disoriented during an event that saw former President Barack Obama visit the White House for the first time since leaving office. Footage from the Thursday event shows Biden ending the speech in Greensboro, North Carolina, with the signoff ‘God bless you all’ before turning to his right and seemingly saying something to the empty space behind him and miming a handshake. The Democrat proceeds to frantically look around the stage with a bewildered look on his face before beginning to wander aimlessly around the crowded auditorium. He then bizarrely turned his back to the audience, looking lost on the stage as music rolled, marking the speech’s conclusion.
The strange behavior from Biden – the latest of several brain lapses by the president in recent years – instantly sparked a firestorm online, with many, including Texas Senator Cruz, 51, pointing to the politician’s most recent display of possible cognitive deterioration.
In a post published minutes after the speech’s conclusion, Cruz re-shared the clip of Biden – the oldest-ever US president – with a caption that included a wide-eyed emoji.
Others called Biden’s actions at the end of the speech ‘elder abuse’ and questioned his mental state.
‘Where are the White House and Biden family handlers whose job it is to make him look good?’ wrote Harmeet K. Dhillon, former vice chairwoman of the California Republican Party following the display.
‘This is truly bizarre,’ the Republican lawyer went on, ‘unless they WANT him to look like a dementia patient.’
Politician Robby Starbuck, who is running for Congress in Tennessee’s upcoming Republican primary, remarked: ‘Oh man. The music makes it 10x worse. This man is unfit to be President. Period.’ READ MORE
Report From Ukraine National Guard Claim Russia May Have Used Chemical Weapon
Photo by SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP via Getty Images
On Monday President Volodymyr Zelensky estimated a death toll of “tens of thousands” in the city of Mariupol. Officials say Russia may have used chemical weapons in the hardest-hit city in Ukraine.
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“About an hour ago, Russian occupation forces used a poisonous substance of unknown origin against Ukrainian military and civilians in the city of Mariupol, which was dropped from an enemy UAV,” posted the Azoz Regiment, a unit of Ukraine’s National Guard, on Telegram.
“The victims have respiratory failure, vestibulo-atactic syndrome. The consequences of using an unknown substance are being clarified” added the post.
Petro Andryushchenko, an aide to Mariupol’s mayor said on his Telegram channel, as reported by Newsweek, that the reports of chemical weapons use had not been confirmed.
“Mariupol has been destroyed, there are tens of thousands of dead, but even despite this, the Russians are not stopping their offensive,” Zelensky told South Korea’s parliament Monday, while asking for more support and aid.
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In his nightly address, Zelensky called on world leaders to impose stronger sanctions on Moscow to deter such an act. “I would like to remind world leaders that the possible use of chemical weapons by the Russian military has already been discussed,” said the president, who gave no indication that chemical weapons had already been used. “And already at that time it meant that it was necessary to react to the Russian aggression much harsher and faster.”
The New York Post reports:
Vadim Boychenko, Mariupol’s mayor, said Monday that bodies lay “carpeted through the streets of our city.” He estimated the death toll could be as high as 20,000.
Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Iryna Venediktova, also warned of “mounting evidence” that her nation will still “witness unprecedented and horrific” war crimes.
Venediktova told ITV News that more than 90% of Mariupol’s infrastructure has been wiped out, and at least 1,222 bodies were found in the regions around the capital, Kyiv.
Venediktova said that so far, her office has identified at least 500 invading troops responsible for at least 5,600 war crimes.