#1: Abortion Illegal In Texas:
Texas Attorney General Kenneth Paxton announced that his state will close all its agency’s offices on Friday in celebration of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade. The holiday will be “in honor of the nearly 70 million unborn babies killed in the womb since 1973,” according to a release from the attorney general’s office. He declared that abortion is now illegal in Texas and he will continue to support pro-life laws in Texas.
#2: Hutchinson Defends Her Testimony:
CNN reported on Wednesday that Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, released a statement in response to Secret Service pushback to her January 6 Committee testimony on Tuesday.
“Ms. Hutchinson stands by all of the testimony she provided yesterday, under oath, to the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” Hutchinson’s counsel Judy Hunt and William Jordan said in the statement.
#3: Paris ISIS Terrorist Sentenced to Life:
Salah Abdeslam, 32, was found guilty on Wednesday of carrying out a series of deadly gun-and-bomb terrorist attacks across Paris in November 2015, He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
ISIS had claimed responsibility for the attacks, which killed 130 people and wounded 494 in Paris, in various locations, including bars, restaurants, a concert hall, and a soccer match.
Abdeslam was arrested in 2016. In the trial, he said he was “an Islamic State soldier,” but later apologized to victims and denied killing anyone. “I made mistakes, it’s true, but I’m not a murderer, I’m not a killer,” he said.
#4: Justice Breyer Retires; Justice Jackson In:
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer notified the White House on Wednesday that his retirement will be effective Thursday, June 30, at noon ET. He told President Biden in a letter that it was a “great honor” to be a judge and to participate in the “effort to maintain our Constitution and the Rule of Law.”
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will take her oaths on Thursday. She will be the first female African-American justice on the court.
Judge Jackson will face new challenges on the court’s most conflicted cases related to women’s rights, the Second Amendment, and same-sex marriage.
#5: Sandals Resort Victims of Carbon Monoxide:
Three Americans found dead in May at a Sandals resort in the Bahamas were found to have died due to carbon monoxide poisoning.
“At this juncture of the investigation, we can officially confirm that all three of the victims died as a result of asphyxiation due to carbon monoxide poisoning,” the Royal Bahamas Police Force announced in a news release.
The American vacationers, Michael Phillips, 68, and his wife, Robbie Phillips, 65, from Tennessee, and Vincent Paul Chiarella, 64, from Florida, all died in one evening. Chiarella’s wife, Donnis, 65, survived and was airlifted to a hospital in Nassau and eventually to Florida.
