One in eight US adults say they have a disability in census poll
For the second month in a row, more than one in eight American adults report having a disability.
Almost 34 million Americans age 16 years and over have a disability, according to the Current Population Survey, a monthly poll of households conducted by the Census Bureau. The figure is up by more than 4.9 million over the past three years.
During the pandemic period, the share of U.S. women in the workforce with a disability has generally been outpacing the figure for men.
Last month, that gap narrowed. A record 3.6 million men had a disability in July, while the number of women reporting one fell by 81,000 from the peak of 3.35 million reached the previous month.
The survey defines a person with a disability who has at least one of the following conditions: is deaf or has serious difficulty hearing; is blind or has serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses; has serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition; has serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs; has difficulty dressing or bathing; or has difficulty doing errands alone such as visiting a doctor’s office or shopping because of a physical, mental, or emotional condition.
—Bloomberg News
Texas judge gives abortion exemption to women with complicated pregnancies
DALLAS — Texas women with complicated pregnancies, including those with fatal fetal diagnoses, are exempt from the state’s abortion bans after a Travis County court issued a temporary injunction Friday evening.
Travis County Judge Jessica Mangrum issued the decision two weeks after four Texas women testified about abortions they were denied or forced to delay under the state’s ban on the procedure.
Texas’ abortion ban, which went into effect last August, outlawed abortions in all cases except for those that threatened the life of a pregnant patient. The law did not grant an exception for cases where the fetus was diagnosed with a fatal genetic or birth defect.
Doctors cannot be prosecuted for using their own “good-faith judgment,” Mangrum said in the ruling.
The case, Zurawski v. State of Texas, is one of the first major lawsuits to challenge Texas’ abortion bans. And the ruling could have major implications for national health care policy going forward.
—The Dallas Morning News
Trump pleads not guilty from afar to second round of charges in classified documents case
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump removed the need to fly to Florida next week when he pleaded not guilty Friday in a paper filing to three new charges brought against him in a superseding indictment related to his handling of classified documents after he left office.
In doing so, he waived a court appearance in Fort Pierce, Florida, that was scheduled for Aug. 10 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Shaniek Mills Maynard.
Trump, 77, personally appeared in a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to plead not guilty to a third federal indictment brought against him by prosecutors. The long-awaited indictment brought by special counsel Jack Smith, whose office also brought the documents case, alleges the former president orchestrated an illegal attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to President Joe Biden.
Following that plea, Trump boarded his private jetliner and flew back to New Jersey, where he is spending the summer.
The not-guilty plea entered in the South Florida federal court in the classified documents case and posted to the case docket on Friday took the form of a one-page filing titled, “Waiver of Appearance for Arraignment.”
“I have received a copy of the Indictment and the plea ls NOT GUILTY to the charged offense(s),” the filing reads. “I am aware that I have the right under Rule 10 of the Federal Rues of Criminal Procedure to be present In court for my arraignment. I waive my right to appear in court at my arraignment.”
The document was signed and dated Friday by Trump and by his Florida-based attorney, Christopher Kise.
—South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Russia sentences Putin foe Navalny to 19 more years in jail
A Russian court sentenced opposition leader Alexey Navalny to another 19 years in prison after convicting him of “extremism,” a decision he had earlier described as “Stalinist.”
The closed hearing Friday held inside a strict-regime prison found President Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic guilty of charges of founding an “extremist” group and six other related counts. The judge ordered the new term also to be served in a strict-regime prison.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell condemned the “politically motivated” verdict. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken echoed that view and called for Navalny’s release in a social media post. The conviction is “a blatant miscarriage of justice,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on social media.
Navalny, 47, had predicted “a huge sentence, what they call a ‘Stalinist’ sentence” in a statement on his website the day before the verdict. He said he also expected prosecutors to open a case accusing him of “terrorism” soon as well, aimed at keeping him in prison for a further 10 years.
He’s already serving a nine-year term for fraud and contempt of court that was imposed after he returned to Russia in early 2021. Navalny had received treatment in Germany for a nerve-agent poisoning in Siberia that he and Western governments blamed on the Kremlin. Russian authorities denied responsibility.
—Bloomberg News
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This story was originally published August 4, 2023, 5:19 PM.