Hearing for Fla. suspect is canceled
PARKLAND,Fla. — A Tuesday morning hearing in the criminal case against the suspect accused in the Florida high school shooting has been canceled.
Prosecutors are seeking to obtain hair samples, fingerprints, DNA and photographs of Nikolas Cruz, 19. The hearing was removed from the court docket and no explanation was immediately available.
Mr. Cruz, who has been charged with 17 counts of murder, was not expected to appear in court because he waived his right to attend the hearing. He is being held without bail at the Broward County Jail.
Online sex trafficking
WASHINGTON— The House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that gives prosecutors, state attorneys general and sex trafficking victims a clearer route to pursue legal action against websites that host advertisements for prostitutes, which advocates have long argued are a hive for trafficking children.
The bill now goes to the Senate, which already has passed a similar version out of committee. If approved, it would go to the White House, where supporters are hopeful that President Donald Trump will sign it.
The legislation arose as Congress learned that its current anti-trafficking laws could not be applied to websites like Backpage.com, which host thousands of ads daily for female and male prostitutes, some of which are children being trafficked by adults. Backpage has successfully cited the Communications Decency Act, which protects websites from liability for material posted by third parties, to evade both criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits.
Social Security budget cut
For the elderly and disabled who complain about poor Social Security assistance now, these might be the good old days.
President Donald Trump’s proposed fiscal 2019 Social Security Administration (SSA) budget would cut staffing, a recipe for long waits in agency offices and on the telephone for those trying to navigate the often difficult world of old-age, disability, survivor and Medicare benefits. Retirement and survivor benefits would not be hit.
Declining service is nothing new, but under Mr. Trump, there would be fewer federal employees to deal with an increasing number of people of retirement age. His budget request calls for almost 1,000 fewer full-time-equivalent work years in 2019 than this year. A full-time-equivalent work year is the amount of work a full-time employee would do in one year. The amount of overtime allowed staffers to keep up with demand would be less than a third of that in 2017 and just over half the 2018 estimate.
Sen. Corker not running
WASHINGTON— Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, will not run for re-election after all, according to an interview his chief of staff gave Politico on Tuesday.
“He’s always believed and served as though he were only going to be in the Senate for two terms,” chief of staff Todd Womack said in the interview.
After some high-profile feuding with President Donald Trump last summer, Mr. Corker announced in late September that he would not run for a third term.
Also in the nation...
President Donald Trump on Tuesday named Brad Parscale, who served as his digital strategist in 2016, as his campaign manager to helm the 2020 reelection effort.