Friday, June 24 top stories
It is Friday, June 24. Here are today’s top stories.
Supreme Court overturns Roe v Wade
This morning the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v Wade, which means there is no longer a constitutional right for women to have an abortion in America. Now abortion laws will be decided on the state level.
The ruling was not a surprise because a draft opinion on the case was leaked about two months ago, but now it’s a reality.
The court’s vote was 6-3 along conservative lines.
In today’s decision on the case, formally called Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, said “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start… It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
The justices who dissented: Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan said “Whatever the exact scope of the coming laws, one result of today’s decision is certain: the curtailment of women’s rights… Yesterday the Constitution guaranteed that a woman confronted with an unplanned pregnancy could (within reasonable limits) make her own decision about whether to bear a child, with all the life-transforming consequences that act involves… But no longer.”
CBS News provided a real-time view of the scene outside of the Supreme Court this morning when the decision was issued. It showed groups of picket-holders either celebrating the Supreme Court’s decision or protesting against it.
CBS News explained that with the reversal of Roe, “roughly 26 states are likely to or will restrict abortion with the Supreme Court’s decision.”
Here is a bit of history on the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case and how we got here.
In 2018, Mississippi’s legislature and governor passed and signed into law an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mississippi also made it a crime to perform an abortion after a fetal heartbeat has been detected with an exception only if the pregnant person’s health is at risk.
The state’s only abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, filed a lawsuit against Mississippi’s health department and its officer Thomas Dobbs to block the law because it violated Roe and another landmark Supreme Court decision called Casey — which said states couldn’t make it difficult for women to have an abortion before about 20 weeks of pregnancy.
A federal district court sided with the clinic and blocked Mississippi’s 15-week ban because it violated Roe and Casey. The case went to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who affirmed the district court’s decision in an opinion issued February 20, 2020 that said, “… if a ban on abortion after 15 weeks is unconstitutional, then it follows that a ban on abortion at an earlier stage of pregnancy is also unconstitutional.”
In September 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg unexpectedly passed away, giving Trump a third opportunity to nominate a conservative justice. Amy Coney Barrett was the pick and started serving October 2020. The court then agreed to take up the Mississippi case and here we are with Roe and Casey overturned, a big win for the conservative agenda and a big loss for progressives.
Chief Justice John Roberts did not fully agree with the other five conservative justices’ decision — he said he agreed that the “viability line established by Roe and Casey,” which was about 20 weeks, should be discarded but did not agree to completely overturn Roe and Casey.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a separate opinion today that he believes the Court should reconsider three cases that gave Americans the right to have contraceptives (birth control), the right to have gay sex, and the right for same-sex couples to marry.
Senate, House passes gun safety bill
The Senate passed a gun safety bill on Thursday in a 65-33 vote that saw 15 Republicans joining all Democrats.
The bill is called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It includes enhanced background checks on gun buyers who are 21 and younger, prevents convicted domestic abusers from purchasing guns regardless of whether they are married or not, increased funding for mental health and school safety, and encourages states to implement red flag laws.
Today the House passed the bill to send it to President Biden’s desk. Biden said he would sign it. It has been almost 30 years since Congress passed a bill on gun policy.
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Highlights of Jan 6. Committee hearing
On Thursday the Jan 6. House Committee held its fifth hearing. The focus was on Donald Trump’s attempts to get the Department of Justice involved to overturn his election loss.
The hearing showed that after Attorney General William Barr resigned in December 2020 the then-acting AG Jeffrey Rosen told Trump that the Department of Justice (DOJ) couldn’t and wouldn’t snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election. Trump told Rosen to just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to him and Republican Congressmen.
The hearing showed that Trump wanted to replace Rosen with a DOJ environmental lawyer named Jeffrey Clark as acting attorney general. Clark told Trump allies that he would take actions to reverse the election results.
The committee showed that Clark planned to, when he became acting AG, to write a letter to Georgia state officials to inform them that the DOJ has found possible fraud in the 2020 election. Clark then would have recommended Georgia’s legislature to convene in a special session to pick a new slate of elector certificates and electors — which would wipe out Biden’s victory in Georgia and hand it to Trump.
A group of White House lawyers and other top DOJ officials intervened in a meeting in the Oval Office on January 3 with a warning that appointing Clark would cause a constitutional crisis and for there to be so many resignations at the DOJ that it would be like a graveyard. The meeting lasted for a few hours before Trump decided to not go forward with installing Clark.
The committee showed that Trump often asked the DOJ to investigate bizarre claims of election fraud, such as the idea that Italian satellites were changing votes in America or that immigration agents seized a truck full of shredded ballots. A DOJ official said they looked into the claims and found that there was nothing there.
Trump wanted to appoint a special counsel to investigate election fraud and considered appointing Sidney Powell, who is well-known in QAnon groups as the one who would release the Kraken. But that didn’t happen.
The committee showed that after the Jan 6. Insurrection on the Capitol, at least five House Republicans asked Trump to grant pardons because they feared facing criminal consequences.
One year since Surfside condo collapse
Today is the one-year anniversary of the Surfside, Florida condo collapse that killed 98 people. There was a ceremony today to honor those who died at the Champlain Towers South in which the names of each victim was read aloud.
AP News said the disaster was the “largest non-hurricane emergency response in Florida history. It drew rescue crews from across the U.S. and as far away as Israel to help local teams dig through the pile and search for victims.”
First Lady Jill Biden and Florida Gov. DeSantis attended the ceremony and honored first responders.
The land where the condo once stood was sold for $120 million to a Dubai developer.
The investigation into what caused the collapse is still ongoing and may take a few years.
On Thursday a judge approved a $1 billion settlement for the victims.
UN says Israeli soldiers killed Palestinian journalist
The UN human rights body said today that Israeli soldiers’ bullets is what killed Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11. Akleh was a well-known reporter for Al Jazeera and was reporting on an Israeli military raid in the West Bank when she was shot and killed. The Israeli government initially pointed the blame on Palestinian gunmen before backtracking and saying they do not know and would open an investigation.
The UN held an independent investigation to come to this conclusion. They said all the information they have gathered shows that several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets were fired towards the journalists from the direction of the Israeli security forces.
Akleh was 51 years old. There was outrage across the Middle East over her death. The Palestinian Authority said it’s submitted the case to the International Criminal court.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-abortion-rights/
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/24/gun-control-bill-bipartisan-senate
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/23/senate-passes-gun-deal/7702792001/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/23/us/politics/jan-6-hearling-takeaways.html
https://www.instagram.com/p/CfMd5c4tSvk/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY%3D
https://www.axios.com/2022/06/24/shireen-abu-akleh-killing-israel-un-human-rights