Good morning, this is for Cower with the Daily Beast. It's Wednesday May 5th, and these are the top stories that Chi Chi Team is watching right now. During a debate about whether and how the concept of systemic racism would be taught in schools, Tennessee State Representative Justin Lafferty made some baffling comments on Tuesday about the 1787-3-5th's compromise. The law dictated that someone who was enslaved was only 3-5th's a person.
Lafferty, a Republican, stood before several of his black colleagues in the State House and defended the policy, which is one of the most racist in American history. In fact, Lafferty defended the members of the 1787 Constitutional Convention who created the policy, saying that it was for the purpose of ending slavery, quote, well before Abraham Lincoln, well before the Civil War. But that simply is not true. The legal American slave system continued for another 80 years after the 3-5th's compromise, and historians have widely agreed that the policy only gave slave holding states more power.
Nonetheless, that did not seem to stop Lafferty's Republican colleagues from standing up to applaud his speech. This is sickening and insulting. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio called Senator Rand Paul, quote, kind of a lunatic during the visit to a COVID vaccination site on Tuesday. Brown, a Democrat, was asked about colleagues who do not wear masks, and the Senator did not miss his words.
He continued saying Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, quote, thinks he wants to be different, but it does not serve the public interest. Paul tried to make a comeback at Brown, calling him a vaccine denier who, quote, should refrain from name calling and perhaps try to get informed. But here's the thing, Brown is not a vaccine denier. In fact, he's been vaccinated and has been urging his constituents to get inoculated as well.
However, Paul claims that he's immune from COVID-19 since he already had the virus. Although many experts still advise wearing a mask or getting the vaccine after infection. Police in San Francisco say they now have a suspect in custody after a ninth attack on two Asian women on Tuesday sparked a manhunt. Both victims have been transported to a hospital.
Police say while they have no evidence the attack was a hate crime, they are not yet ruling it out. Well, there that goes. The Paycheck Protection Program, set up by the federal government to help small businesses amid the COVID-19 pandemic, is out of funding. It's not even accepting most new applications.
Congress had set aside nearly $300 billion for the most recent sequence of loans, but now the money has been exhausted. The news comes nearly four weeks before the program's May 31 application deadline. According to government data, the PPP has given out $780 billion in forgivable loans after having responded to 10.7 million applications. However, with vaccinations on the rise and COVID-19 case numbers down, lawmakers have been less willing to allocate more funds to the program.
Authorities say a Utah woman who was reported missing after she vanished while camping in November was found alive on Monday. The woman was discovered when law enforcement officers went looking for a drone that had crashed during an aerial search. As the officers approached her tent, the woman unzipped it and stepped outside. According to the Utah County Sheriff's Sergeant, the woman had no injuries, though she was underweight from subsisting mainly on grass, moss, and water.
According to the Sheriff's Office, the woman may have been suffering from mental health issues, and seemingly chose to remain in the area for months. That's all for this morning. Check back every weekday morning and afternoon for more of the news you need to know. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts.