Picture:Women's March Cleveland at one of its reproductive rights marches in Cleveland, led by Black women. Photo by Cleveland Plain Dealer/Cleveland.com Photojournalist David Petkiewicz

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com

Staff article

WASHINGTON, D.C.-The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in a case that reached the country's highest court that could end the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) longtime approval of mifepristone, the nation's most widely used abortion bill.

Primarily at issue is whether the FDA's two-decades long approval of the pill is safe with justices seemingly skeptical of such assertion during Tuesday's proceedings in Washington, D.C., pundits said afterwards. And whether the justices can step in for federal agencies to determine the safety of the pill is at issue too, lawyers for proponents of the pill argued to the nine-member, 6-3 conservative-leaning court comprised of three former President Donald Trump appointees.

The justices focused on whether the group of anti-abortion doctors who brought the lawsuit even had legal standing to bring the claim, with the  plaintiffs represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom arguing that the FDA failed to adequately evaluate the drug’s alleged safety risks.

Whether the doctors could show that they were directly injured merely because they object to abortion also raised skepticism among the justices.

The case is being watched nationwide, particularly by women's rights activists in key states.

Abortion rights groups in Ohio where voters enshrined the legal right to abortion and other reproductive measures into the Ohio Constitution via the passage of an Issue 1 referendum at the ballot box  last November say they are fed up and intend to further voice their displeasure at the ballot box this November.

"After this same anti-female U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June of 2022 and handed authority over the issue to the states, women won at the ballot box on Issue 1 in Ohio only to continue to face continual attacks on our constitutional right to abortion access at the state and national levels by the GOP," said Women's March Cleveland head organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, a seasoned Black Cleveland activist, organizer and local journalist. "Northeast Ohio women and women across this land must rise up before the November presidential election and take to the streets to protest the attack on choice and our reproductive freedoms in general."

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.

CLEVELAND, OhIo – Congresswoman Shontel Brown (OH-11) (pictured), a Warrensville Hts., Ohio Democrat who's 11th congressional district includes Cleveland, will host U.S. Agriculture Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small on Mon., March 25 in Cleveland for two events highlighting the importance of urban agriculture and supporting the next generation of Black and minority farmers.

Congresswoman Brown and Deputy Secretary Torres Small, a mexixan-American and and attorney by trade, will visit the Ben Franklin School Community Garden and the Ohio Aerospace Institute (OAI), which received federal funding secured by Congresswoman Brown for their new Precision Urban Agriculture Initiative. The technology project will be utilized for advanced technology, including drones, to support urban farmers. At OAI, Rep. Brown, one of three Black women in Congress from Ohio, will also host a round-table with local urban farmers and other stakeholders.

A member of the House Committee on Agriculture, Brown is reintroducing the Thriving Community Gardens Act, which encourages schools to develop and operate community gardens.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there are roughly 40,000 active Black farmers in America and they own less than one percent of the nation's farmland as compared to roughly 95 percent of farmland owned by their white counterparts.

Brown's event in Cleveland next week comes as President Joe Biden will square off with former President Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republican nomination for president, for the 2024 presidential election in November.

Biden is, no doubt, courting the Black vote, and won the critical South Carolina  primary with the help of Black voters in 2020. He went on to oust Trump from office in a heated election and hopes to reengage Black voters in this election cycle.

Polls show that some Blacks remain discontented with the Democratic Party and want concrete solutions to the issues facing Black America. They include systemic poverty, voting rights, housing, healthcare, education, and economic advancement.

"I am honored to welcome U.S. Agriculture Deputy Secretary Xochitl Torres Small to Cleveland. The Biden-Harris administration believes in urban agriculture and supporting Black farmers, and so do I," the congresswoman said. "Earlier this month, I secured community Project Funding for the Ohio Aerospace Institute's Precision Urban Agriculture Initiative and I am excited to highlight this important project and the other exciting work being done in Cleveland."

Brown went on to say that "this is an important opportunity to connect local urban farmers and stakeholders with one of our nation's top agriculture officials and have an important conversation about growing the next generation of urban farmers."

WHAT: Visit to Ben Franklin School Community Garden
WHERE: 1905 Spring Road, Cleveland, OH 44109
WHO: Congresswoman Brown, Deputy Secretary Torres Small, CMSD faculty and students
WHEN: Monday March 25, 1:00 – 2:00 PM

WHAT: Visit to Ohio Aerospace Institute and Roundtable on Future of Urban Agriculture
WHERE: 2280 Cedar Point Road, Cleveland OH 44142
WHO: Congresswoman Brown, Deputy Secretary Torres Small, OAI officials, Local Urban Farmers and Agriculture Stakeholders

WHEN: Monday March 25 2:15 – 4:00 PM

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor

CLEVELAND, Oho-Ohio and Cuyahoga County voters took to the polls on Tuesday for the closely-watched primary election, which came with few surprises in predicted races such as the U.S. Senate race in Ohio and a judicial contest involving controversial County Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo and her Democratic primary opponent, Carl Mazzone. He trounced her following opposition to her candidacy from Cleveland area community activists and her own county Democratic Party, not to mention the lack of an endorsement from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper.

Activists elated over Russo's numbing loss said Tuesday that "it shows the power of community organizing and an organized vote at the ballot box, and is a message to other unfair judges that their unfair actions and malfeasance against the Black community and other vulnerable groups have noticeable and sometimes career damaging consequences."

"What goes around, often comes around," one activist said.

Voter turnout on Tuesday in Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold that includes the largely Black city of Cleveland, was 21 percent.

With the Plain Dealer's endorsement in hand, coupled with support from several of Russo's foe's, Mazzone, 40, beat Judge Russo 61 percent to her 39 percent, according to unofficial results of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. He does not face a Republican opponent in November.

Notably, Veteran Common Pleas Judge Nancy Margaret Russo, 67 and under fire from community activists, lost by a large margin to Mazzone for the seat that came open following Judge Daniel Gaul's suspension last year from the bench for misconduct, Mazzone an assistance county prosecutor under County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley.

Also on the ballot, O'Malley easily beat out challenger Matthew Ahn and has no Republican opponent for the general election. And while he lost the endorsement from the state Democratic Party, he was endorsed by the Plain Dealer.

On the bench since 1997 and rarely without controversy, Judge Russo's current six-year term ends in January of 2027, and she will be too old  to run again since state law has an age limit of 70 for judges in Ohio, unless completing an elected term or serving as a stand-in retired judge.

Russo is the second common pleas judge targeted by activists for alleged impropriety in recent years, behind Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell, who lost three bids for the Ohio Supreme Court with the help of Black Cleveland activists and Black leaders upset over his bench acquittal of a former White Cleveland cop (Michael Brelo) of voluntary manslaughter charges for viciously gunning down two unarmed Blacks in 2012 following a car chase. O'Donnell ran unopposed Tuesday, though still under scrutiny from activists and Black people for his prejudicial behavior on the bench.

Turning to the U.S. Senate race in Ohio , GOP front-runner candidate and businessman Bernie Moreno pulled through with former President Donald Trump's powerful endorsement, winning the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate over state Sen. Matt Dolan and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and hoping to unseat Democratic opponent U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown.

Sen Brown is a popular Cleveland Democrat and three-term U.S. senator who ran unopposed in Tuesday's Democratic primary and is the target of GOP operatives nationwide as Congressional Republicans seek to change the Democrats' razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate by outdoing them in the November election.

All eyes are on Ohio this year, a state Trump won in 2016 and again in 2020.

Both President Joe Biden and former President Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republican nomination for president, won overwhelmingly in Ohio's primary Tuesday and are headed for a rematch of the 2020 election that Biden won to oust Trump from office.

Pundits say the November election between the trump-endorsed Moreno and Sen. Sherrod Brown is sure to be exciting after Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022 by the U.S. Supreme Court with Trump's urging  and women's rights groups and Democrats won on Nov 7 on the Issue 1 referendum in Ohio, which gave Ohio women the legal right to abortion access and other reproductive rights.

Democratic women's rights activists behind the success of Issue 1 in Ohio are, no doubt, targeting Moreno for taking a stance against Issue 1 and for campaigning during this year's  primary election cycle for a national  ban on abortion, the GOP's next anti-reproductive rights scheme, they say, and in response to states like Ohio legalizing abortion at the statewide ballot box.

Trump told reporters on Tuesday that he will consider supporting a 15-week federal ban on abortion.

In other closely watched races relative to Tuesday's primary, there were no surprises regarding state legislative and congressional races, with  11th Congressional District Congresswoman Shontel Brown, who is Black  and a Warrensville Hts. Democrat, running unopposed and facing little known opposition in November. Her heavily Democratic district includes Cleveland.

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Melody Stewart, the first Black and first Black woman elected to the state's highest court, was unopposed and appellate judge Lisa Forbes won over appellate judge Terrie Jamison, who is Black, in the fight for another state Supreme Court seat. Democratic Justice Michael Donnelly also was unopposed, and all of three Dems who won will face a Republican in November with Ohio the only state in the nation that can turn its majority Republican state Supreme Court predominately Democratic this year.

Black County Juvenile Court Judge Alison Nelson Floyd won over her Democratic opponent Joseph O'Malley, and Magistrate Joy Kennedy, also Black, ran unopposed for the common pleas seat open due to the retirement of Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold, a Black longtime common pleas judge. Kennedy faces a Republican in November.

Black Common Pleas Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams was unopposed in the primary and so was Judge Lauren Moore, who is Black too and  seeks an elevation by voters from the majority Black Cleveland Municipal Court bench to the 8th District Court of Appeals, a policy making appeals court. Neither Collier-Williams nor Moore face an opponent in November.

Sources say that this year's election will do little, if anything at all, to change what Blacks endure as a people from county judges and prosecutors, collectively.

Data explicitly show that Black adults and juveniles in Cuyahoga County are disproportionately indicted, prosecuted, and imprisoned in comparison to their White counterparts, and that racism and public corruption routinely plague the 34-member largely White general division common pleas court and the county prosecutor's office.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest, and the most read independent digital news in Ohio. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.