Debate takeaways: Last night’s televised presidential debate will be remembered for Donald Trump’s persistent lying about everything from his description of Capitol police welcoming the mob on Jan. 6 to there being no inflation during his administration even though it was about 6%. It also will be remembered for President Biden failing to duplicate his strong performance in the State of the Union speech. White House staffers said Biden had a cold, but that didn’t explain the numerous stumbles in his delivery and use of incorrect words such as saying billions when he meant to say millions.
Democratic shock: Major newspapers such as The New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal this morning were reporting that many Democrat leaders were shocked by President Biden’s performance in the presidential debate last night. While some are suggesting that it will be several days before polls can reveal how voters reacted to what they saw during the debate, others are suggesting that discussions need to begin now about possible alternatives to President Biden as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate.
Covid virus: Data gathered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that a new wave of Covid is building in the country. At least 38 states are reporting increasing numbers of Covid cases, especially in the south and west. New variants of the Covid virus have ben detected and updated vaccines designed to be effective against the new variants are being developed.
Documents case: Federal Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by to the bench by Donald Trump, says she wants to hold additional hearings to allow Trump’s attorneys to challenge evidence collected by the FBI when it searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Cannon, who has delayed the start of Trump’s classified documents trial, said she wants to examine the language of the search warrant that was used by the government to see precisely what it allowed the FBI agents to do during their search for classified government documents Trump had taken and was refusing to return.
NFL guilty: The National Football League says it will appeal the jury verdict that found the league guilty of violating anti-trust laws in the way it sells its Sunday Ticket package of rights to view NFL games on TV. The jury said the NFL is liable for $4.7 billion in damages, and that could increase to more than $14 billion. The class action lawsuit that resulted in the verdict against the NFL claimed that the NFL forced people to pay for games they did not want to watch in order to be able to watch the ones they wanted to watch.
Uvalde indictments: The former police chief of Uvalde, Texas, has been indicted on 10 counts of felony child endangerment and abandonment as a result of the failure of the police response when a gunman invaded the Robb Elementary School two years ago and killed 19 children and two teachers. Pete Arredondo was booked and released on bail. It also was reported that a former school employee, Adrian Gonzales, also was indicted. It was more than 70 minutes from the time police arrived on-scene until they took action to subdue the gunman.
