Manchin raises doubts on safety net bill
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on Monday raised new doubts about an emerging compromise on a $1.85 trillion climate change and social safety-net bill, warning that he had serious reservations about the plan and criticizing liberals in his party for what he called an “all or nothing” stance on it. Manchin’s broadside threatened to upend the Democratic Party’s ambitions to vote this week on President Joe Biden’s top two legislative priorities. Congressional negotiators were closing in on a final deal on the social policy and climate legislation, which progressives have called a prerequisite to supporting a separate, $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
Supreme Court hints it may allow abortion law challenge
After almost three hours of lively arguments Monday at the Supreme Court, a majority of justices seemed inclined to allow abortion providers — but perhaps not the Biden administration — to pursue a federal court challenge to a Texas law that has sharply curtailed abortions in the state. That would represent an important shift from a ruling in September that allowed the law to go into effect. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who were in the majority in that ruling, asked questions suggesting that they thought the novel structure of the Texas law justified allowing the providers to challenge it.
Tight Virginia race becomes referendum on Biden presidency
A closely contested race for governor in Virginia entered its final hours Monday with Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin both hoping for last-minute momentum amid a contest that’s emerging as a referendum on Joe Biden’s presidency.McAuliffe, who served as governor from 2014 to 2018, is scrambling to stave off disaster in a state that has become reliable Democratic territory in recent years. Biden carried Virginia by a comfortable 10 percentage points last year, but Youngkin’s campaign is optimistic about his prospects of becoming the first Republican to win a statewide race since 2009.
Durst charged in wife’s disappearance
Kathie McCormack Durst, the young wife of a real estate scion, returned to the couple’s weekend cottage in South Salem, New York, on the evening of Jan. 31, 1982, and after yet another argument with her husband, she vanished. Now, just weeks after Robert Durst was convicted of murder in another woman’s death in Los Angeles — prosecutors in Westchester, New York, say they can finally prove what many have long suspected. Durst was indicted in White Plains, New York, on Monday on a single count of second-degree murder that accuses him of killing Kathie Durst when she was 29.
By wire sources