Attorney General Merrick Garland spoke at a news conference, as, from left, Lisa O. Monaco, Deputy Attorney General, Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, and Vanita Gupta, associate US attorney general, looked on at the Department of Justice on Friday.ANNA MONEYMAKER/GETTY
“WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department sued Georgia on Friday over a sweeping voting law passed by the state’s Republican-led legislature, the first significant move by the Biden administration to challenge state-level ballot restrictions enacted since the 2020 election.
‘The rights of all eligible citizens to vote are the central pillars of our democracy,’ Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news conference at the Justice Department. ‘They are the rights from which all other rights ultimately flow.’
The complaint accuses the Georgia law of effectively discriminating against Black voters and seeks to show that state lawmakers intended to violate their rights. It says that several of the law’s provisions ‘were passed with a discriminatory purpose,’ Kristen Clarke, the head of the department’s civil rights division, said at the news conference.
The lawsuit, particularly its attempt to prove lawmakers’ intent, is among the most aggressive efforts to expand or preserve voter protections in years. The Supreme Court in 2013 had overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that had allowed the Justice Department to stop states from passing laws viewed as facilitating voter discrimination.
It comes days after congressional Republicans blocked the most ambitious federal voting rights legislation in a generation, dealing a blow to Democrats’ efforts to preserve voting rights. President Joe Biden and Democratic leaders pledged to continue working to steer federal voting rights legislation into law and to escalate pressure on states and Republicans, with Biden planning speeches in key states warning against a threat to the democratic process he has compared to Jim Crow.” Read more at Boston Globe
“MINNEAPOLIS — A Minnesota judge on Friday sentenced Derek Chauvin to 22½ years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, a Black man whose desperate gasps for air beneath the knee of the White officer captured on a viral video changed the American conversation on race and justice.
Chauvin, who was fired after the killing and convicted by a jury in April on charges of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, had faced up to 40 years in prison.
In rendering his sentence, Hennepin County District Judge Peter A. Cahill, who oversaw Chauvin’s trial, offered brief remarks, saying it was not the time to be ‘profound or clever’ from the bench. He said he had based the sentence on the facts of the case and not ‘public opinion.’
‘The sentence is not based on his emotion or sympathy. But at the same time, I want to acknowledge the deep and tremendous pain that all the families are feeling, especially the Floyd family,’ Cahill said. ‘You have our sympathies, and I acknowledge and hear the pain that you’re feeling.’
Derek Chauvin guilty of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd
The killing on May 25, 2020, captured on a gruesome Facebook video, shook the nation and forced a painful reckoning on issues of race and police brutality that continues to play out across a divided America. Chauvin’s conviction, a rarity in a country roiled by multiple high-profile cases of Black people being killed by police, was praised by Floyd’s family and activists as a historic moment of justice and a potential sign of change.” Read more at Washington Post
Search-and-rescue crews look for survivors in the partially collapsed 12-story Champlain Towers South condo building in Surfside, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
“SURFSIDE, Fla. — Hundreds of search-and-rescue workers wielding diamond-tipped drills and sonar scanners probed a smoldering mountain of wreckage Friday during the second full day of the painstaking effort to find signs of life inside a collapsed 12-story condominium tower near Miami Beach.
Working in shifts amid intermittent sun and torrential rain, crews used heavy machinery to delicately lift chunks from the tangled thicket of concrete and rebar that remained of the Champlain Towers South to give rescuers new angles into the rubble. Fires broke out and smoke poured from the building while emergency workers built makeshift tunnels into the building’s interior.
Rescue crews along with engineers, medical teams and other first responders were attacking the waterfront building from above and below to try to save any of the 159 people still missing and unaccounted for, according to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.” Read more at Washington Post
“NEW YORK — The Manhattan district attorney’s office has informed former president Donald Trump’s lawyers that it is considering criminal charges against his family business, the Trump Organization, in connection with fringe benefits the company awarded a top executive, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.
If the case moves ahead, the district attorney, Cyrus Vance, could announce charges against the Trump Organization and the executive, Allen Weisselberg, as soon as next week, the people said. Vance’s prosecutors have been conducting the investigation along with lawyers from the office of the New York state attorney general, Letitia James.
The criminal charges would be the first to emerge from Vance’s long-running investigation into Trump and his business dealings, and raises the startling prospect of a former president having to defend the company he founded and has run for decades.” Read more at Boston Globe
“The Supreme Court on Friday narrowed a lawsuit against a credit reporting company that had flagged thousands of people as potential terrorists or drug dealers, saying only those who can show ‘concrete harm ‘can participate in class-action claims.
In a 5 to 4 decision for TransUnion v. Ramirez, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said only a portion of the more than 8,000 people that TransUnion had labeled potential wrongdoers had the information disclosed to another party. That means they did not experience the kind of injury the Constitution requires for bringing suit in federal court, he wrote.
‘No concrete harm, no standing,’ Kavanaugh wrote.
Kavanaugh wrote for himself and four other conservative justices. But the opinion drew a notable dissent from the court’s most consistent conservative, Clarence Thomas, joined by the court’s three liberals….
The court sided with oil companies and refineries in HollyFrontier Cheyenne Refining v. Renewable Fuels Assn, saying the Environmental Protection Agency has wider latitude in granting exemptions from the existing mandate that they mix ethanol and other renewable fuels into gasoline and diesel.
In a 6 to 3 decision that looked closely at ambiguous wording in the law, the majority said the agency’s power to create exemptions is not limited to refineries that have consistently received such a reprieve….
Special organizations for Native Alaskans are eligible for federal covid-19 relief funds even though they are not officially tribal governments, the court ruled in Yellen v. Confederated Tribes of the Chehalis Reservation.
In a 6 to 3 vote, Sotomayor wrote for the majority that Alaska Native Corporations are considered ‘Indian tribes, regardless of whether they are also federally recognized tribes.’
She said the ruling was confirming only ‘what the federal government has maintained for almost half a century.’
Three groups of Native American tribes had sued in federal court to prevent the corporations from receiving a share of the money from the federal Cares Act set aside for tribes. About $500 million was at stake.” Read more at Washington Post
“Responding to interest from President Donald J. Trump, White House aides drafted a proclamation last year to invoke the Insurrection Act in case Mr. Trump moved to take the extraordinary step of deploying active-duty troops in Washington to quell the protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, two senior Trump administration officials said.
The aides drafted the proclamation on June 1, 2020, during a heated debate inside the administration over how to respond to the protests. Mr. Trump, enraged by the demonstrations, had told the attorney general, William P. Barr, the defense secretary, Mark T. Esper, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, that he wanted thousands of active-duty troops on the streets of the nation’s capital, one of the officials said.
Mr. Trump was talked out of the plan by the three officials. But a separate group of White House staff members wanted to leave open the option for Mr. Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act to call in the military to patrol the streets of the capital.
They decided it would be prudent to have the necessary document vetted and ready in case the unrest in Washington worsened or the city’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, declined to take measures such as a citywide curfew, which she ultimately put in place.” Read more at New York Times
Michael Fanone, left, a Washington police officer, and Officer Harry Dunn of the U.S. Capitol Police leaving a meeting with Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, at the Capitol on Friday.Credit...J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
“WASHINGTON — For weeks, Michael Fanone, a Washington police officer who was seriously injured during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, had asked to meet privately with Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the top House Republican, to discuss the assault, to no avail.
So on Friday, when Officer Fanone finally got his session with Mr. McCarthy at the Capitol, he had a clear request at the ready: for the minority leader to publicly denounce the lies Republican lawmakers have been telling about the deadly attack. He wanted Mr. McCarthy to push them to stop downplaying the storming of the building, blaming left-wing extremists for an assault carried out by former President Donald J. Trump’s right-wing supporters and spreading the baseless conspiracy theory that the F.B.I. secretly planned it.
He came away disappointed.
‘He said he would address it at a personal level, with some of those members,’ Officer Fanone told reporters after the roughly hourlong meeting. ‘I think that as the leader of the House Republican Party, it’s important to hear those denouncements publicly.’
Mr. McCarthy, who phoned Mr. Trump during the riot to plead with him to call off the mob and days later said the president bore responsibility for the rampage, has since swung wildly in the other direction. He later said Mr. Trump was not to blame, led the charge to purge Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming from the party leadership for speaking out against the former president and rallied his party to oppose the formation of an independent commission to investigate the assault.” Read more at New York Times
“President Biden spoke out against the increase in antitransgender bills in state legislatures during the first LGBTQ Pride Month celebration of his presidency.
The president criticized Republicans for attempting to limit the rights of transgender people — especially trans youths. More than 80 antitransgender bills have been introduced in state legislative sessions this year, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization.
‘These are some of the ugliest, most un-American laws I’ve seen,’ Biden said Friday. ‘And I’ve been here a while.’
‘Let’s be clear,’ he added. ‘This is nothing but bullying disguised as legislation.’
The president has been championing the Equality Act, a bill passed in the House that would widely ban discrimination against LGBTQ people, since his earliest days in the White House. In addition to speaking out on the importance of expanding protections for gay and trans people, Biden was marking a sharp pivot from Donald Trump’s presidency. The LGBTQ community repeatedly criticized Trump for not acknowledging the community during June, the annual anniversary of the birth of the modern LGBTQ rights movement.
‘Pride is back at the White House,’ Biden said to applause. ‘For this community, for our nation, for the world, Pride Month represents so much. It stands for courage, the courage of all those in previous generations. … And above all, Pride Month stands for love. You know, being able to love yourself, love whomever you love.’
Biden is naming Jessica Stern as a special diplomatic envoy at the State Department for LGBTQ rights. Her responsibilities will involve ensuring that US diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect LGBTQ rights around the world. Stern is currently executive director of OutRight Action International, which defends human rights and works to prevent abuses of LGBTQ people.
Biden spoke at a White House ceremony moments after signing a law making the Pulse nightclub, the site of the largest mass shooting at the time, a national memorial five years after nearly 50 people were killed at the LGBTQ establishment.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Days after a vote that triggered a tsunami of Catholic debate about Communion and politics, leading U.S. Catholic bishops working on an upcoming document about the sacrament are now de-emphasizing direct confrontation with President Biden or other Catholic politicians who support abortion rights.
Seventy-five percent of members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted during their annual spring meeting on June 17 to go ahead with the drafting of a position paper on the ‘meaning of the Eucharist,’ the core ritual of the Catholic faith, believed to be the presence of Jesus. Before the vote, live on Zoom, dozens of bishops debated the fact that the proposal for the document was a response to the election of Biden, a weekly Mass-attending Catholic who supports abortion rights.
Catholic teaching opposes abortion.” Read more at Washington Post
“RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper on Friday vetoed a measure barring women from getting an abortion specifically because of a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome in a fetus. The proposal advanced by Republicans also sought to prohibit abortions on the basis of race or sex.
Under the measure, physicians would be required to report, with a signed confirmation, that an abortion was not desired for those three reasons. Republicans backing the measure say it would prevent a “modern-day eugenics” by ensuring disabled people wouldn’t need to pass a genetic test in order to be born.
In a veto message, the state’s Democratic governor cited privacy concerns, arguing the bill would have made it difficult for patients to get medical information and have honest conversations with their doctors.” Read more at Boston Globe
“WASHINGTON — The Republican-controlled State Legislature in Arizona voted Thursday to revoke the Democratic secretary of state’s legal authority in election-related lawsuits, handing that power instead to the Republican attorney general.
The move added more discord to the politics of a state already roiled by the widely derided move by Senate Republicans to commission a private firm to recount the vote six months after the November election. And it was the latest in a long series of moves in recent years by Republicans to strip elected Democrats of money and power in states under G.O.P. control.
The measure was part of a grab bag of proposals inserted into major budget legislation, including several actions that appeared to address conspiracy theories alleging manipulated elections that some Republican lawmakers have promoted. One of the items allotted $500,000 for a study of whether social media sites tried to interfere in state elections by promoting Democrats or censoring Republicans.
The State House approved the legislation late Thursday. It now goes to Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, who has the power to accept or reject individual parts of the measure.” Read more at New York Times
“Former President Trump is set to resume his signature campaign rallies Saturday with an appearance in Wellington, Ohio, reviving a tool that helped gin up astonishing levels of enthusiasm for his presidential campaigns.
The event will ostensibly serve to support former White House aide Max Miller, a staunch Trump ally who is waging a primary challenge against Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio), one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach the former president over his role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection. But Trump is also looking to use Saturday’s event and subsequent rallies to solidify his role as leader of the GOP.
Trump has appeared at various events as he resurfaces on the political scene, including speaking in February at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) and earlier this month to the North Carolina GOP. Still, there are few events that are able to harness both the attention of the national media and the adoration of his followers as effectively as his raucous rallies.” Read more at The Hill
“PARIS — Prosecutors in France said Friday that they had dropped their investigation into accusations of rape, sexual assault, and harassment against one of the country’s best-known television news anchors, citing a lack of evidence and an expired statute of limitations.
The news anchor, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, 73, was initially accused in February by Florence Porcel, a 37-year-old writer, of raping her on two occasions, first in 2004, when she was 21 and he had invited her to watch his news show in person after she wrote to him, and again in 2009.
Seven other women stepped forward to accuse Poivre d’Arvor of sexual misconduct, but police elected to shut down their investigation after talking to more than 20 women over four months.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Ringo Starr has dropped a legal claim against a Californian sex toy manufacturer after challenging its bid to trademark the name Ring O. Lawyers for the 80-year-old Beatles drummer had argued that the name was ‘identical in appearance, sound, connotation and pronunciation’ to Ringo’s name—which is already protected by trademark—and he feared the association could damage his legendary reputation. But Starr has now settled with Screaming O, which uses the Ring O name for a line of cock rings. The company agreed to ‘avoid any activity likely to lead to confusion’ and promised to use the name only for adult sex toys and desensitizing aids, keeping a clear gap between the ‘Ring’ and the ‘O.’” [Daily Beast] Read more at BBC News