In Brief: July 2, 2021

Voting rights ruling increases pressure on Democrats to act

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats are facing renewed pressure to pass legislation that would protect voting rights after a Supreme Court ruling Thursday made it harder to challenge Republican efforts to limit ballot access in many states.

The 6-3 ruling on a case out of Arizona was the second time in a decade that conservatives on the Supreme Court have weakened components of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark Civil Rights-era law. But this opinion was released in a much different political climate, in the aftermath of President Donald Trump’s lie that last year’s election was stolen.

Trump’s fabrications spurred Republicans in states such as Georgia and Florida to pass tougher rules on voting under the cloak of election integrity.

Democrats on Capitol Hill have already tried to respond with a sweeping voting and elections bill that Senate Republicans united to block last week. A separate bill, the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore sections of the Voting Rights Act that the Supreme Court previously weakened, has been similarly dismissed by most Republicans.

Those setbacks, combined with the Supreme Court’s decision, have fueled a sense of urgency among Democrats to act while they still have narrow majorities in the House and Senate. But passing voting legislation at this point would almost certainly require changes to the filibuster, allowing Democrats to act without GOP support.

‘Waiting is unbearable’: Biden consoles Surfside families

SURFSIDE, Fla. — President Joe Biden drew on his own experiences with grief and loss to comfort families affected by the Florida condo collapse, telling them to “never give up hope” even as the search for survivors paused early Thursday, a week after the building came down.

Addressing some of the families touched by the tragedy, Biden spoke in deeply personal terms as he offered his prayers and support in the private meeting.

“I just wish there was something I could do to ease the pain,” he said in a video posted on Instagram by Jacqueline Patoka, a woman who was close to a couple and their daughter who are still missing.

Few public figures connect as powerfully on grief as Biden, who lost his first wife and baby daughter in a car collision and later an adult son to brain cancer. In the first months of his term, he has drawn on that empathy to console those who have lost loved ones, including the more than 600,000 who have died in the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a quiet voice freighted with emotion, Biden on Thursday described his own despair at having to wait to find out about how family fared after a crisis like the one experienced in Surfside. He spent more than three hours privately speaking with those grieving, addressing the group first and then moving family to family to listen to their stories. Biden spoke of wanting to switch places with a lost or missing loved one and lamented that “the waiting, the waiting, is unbearable.”

Boy Scouts of America reaches $850M agreement with victims

DOVER, Del. — The Boy Scouts of America have reached an $850 million agreement with attorneys representing some 60,000 victims of child sex abuse in what could prove to be a pivotal moment in the organization’s bankruptcy case.

The settlement would mark one of the largest sums in U.S. history involving cases of sexual abuse.

Attorneys for the BSA filed court papers late Thursday outlining a restructuring support agreement with attorneys representing abuse victims. The agreement also includes attorneys representing local Boy Scouts councils and lawyers appointed to represent victims who might file future claims.

“After months of intensive negotiations, the debtors have reached resolution with every single official and major creditor constituency in these Chapter 11 cases,” BSA attorneys wrote.

Pelosi names GOP’s Cheney to Jan. 6 riot investigation panel

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday named Republican Rep. Liz Cheney to a new select committee on the violent Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, elevating the most unyielding GOP critic of former President Donald Trump to work alongside seven Democrats on the high-profile investigation.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, will lead the panel, which will investigate what went wrong around the Capitol when hundreds of Trump supporters broke into the building. The rioters brutally beat police, hunted for lawmakers and interrupted the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory over Trump.

Standing with other members of the committee after a meeting together in Pelosi’s office, Cheney said she was “honored” to serve on the committee and that her duty is to the Constitution.

“And that will always be above politics,” Cheney said.

Her appointment came just hours after House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy threatened to strip Republicans of committee assignments if they accepted an appointment from Pelosi to the panel. McCarthy told a closed-door meeting of first-term House GOP members on Wednesday that he, not Pelosi, controls Republicans’ committee assignments, according to a top GOP aide.

From wire sources

The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private meeting.

Richard Branson announces trip to space, ahead of Jeff Bezos

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson is aiming to beat fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos into space by nine days.

Branson’s company announced Thursday evening that its next test flight will be July 11 and that its founder will be among the six people on board. The winged rocket ship will soar from New Mexico — the first carrying a full crew of company employees. It will be only the fourth trip to space for Virgin Galactic.

The news came just hours after Bezos’ Blue Origin said Bezos would be accompanied into space on July 20 by a female aerospace pioneer who’s waited 60 years to rocket away.

Bezos chose July 20 as his West Texas launch date — the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. He assigned himself to the flight just a month ago, the final stretch in a yearslong race to space between the two rich rocketeers.

Amazon’s founder will be on Blue Origin’s debut launch with people on board, accompanied by his brother, the winner of a $28 million charity auction and Wally Funk, one of the last surviving members of the Mercury 13 who was chosen as his “honored guest.” The 13 female pilots passed the same tests as NASA’s original Mercury 7 astronauts back in the early 1960s, but were barred from the corps — and spaceflight — because they were women.

Federal executions halted; Garland orders protocols reviewed

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is halting federal executions after a historic use of capital punishment by the Trump administration, which carried out 13 executions in six months.

Attorney General Merrick Garland made the announcement Thursday night, saying he was imposing a moratorium on federal executions while the Justice Department conducts a review of its policies and procedures. He gave no timetable.

“The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” Garland said. “That obligation has special force in capital cases.”

Garland said the department would review the protocols put in place by former Attorney General William Barr. A federal lawsuit has been filed over the protocols — including the risk of pain and suffering associated with the use of pentobarbital, the drug used for lethal injection.

The decision puts executions on hold for now, but it doesn’t end their use and keeps the door open for another administration to simply restart them. It also doesn’t stop federal prosecutors from seeking the death penalty; the Biden administration recently asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the Boston Marathon bomber’s original death sentence.

Whither #MeToo? Chilling effect of Cosby reversal feared

When Indira Henard, director of the DC Rape Crisis Center, received the text message Wednesday, she thought she wasn’t reading her phone correctly. “Indira oh my god,” said the message from a colleague. “Cosby’s walking out of prison.”

“I put on the news and there it was, and my heart just dropped,” Henard said. “I thought about how all our survivors would be feeling.”

During the afternoon, Henard says the center’s hotline was “off the hook, with survivors needing a place to process, and people asking, ‘What happened? I don’t understand. He got convicted. Why would they do this?’” The center held support sessions Wednesday evening and scheduled emergency sessions Thursday to deal with the news.

When America watched Bill Cosby — once “America’s Dad” — go off to prison nearly three years ago, it was perhaps the most stunning development yet of the nascent #MeToo movement, which had emerged in late 2017 with allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. Advocates and survivors of sexual assault hoped the movement would usher in an era of accountability for harassers and abusers — and in many ways, it did. Victims have been increasingly emboldened in recent years to seek justice, even for years-ago abuse, hoping their allegations would be taken more seriously.

But on Wednesday, as the nation digested the equally stunning sight of Cosby released from prison, some worried it would have a chilling effect on survivors, who often don’t come forward because they don’t believe it will bring justice. And they wondered whether some of the movement’s momentum, already slowed by the pandemic, would be lost amid the feeling that another powerful man had gotten away with it — albeit on a technicality.

Among Iraqis, the name Rumsfeld evokes nation’s destruction

BAGHDAD — When he heard on the news that Donald Rumsfeld had died, Ali Ridha al-Tamimi and his wife sat down with their four children and told them: “This is the person who ruined our country.”

“He destroyed many families. And did it under the cover of liberation,” Tamimi later told The Associated Press. “I will never forgive him for the pain he caused us.”

The heated emotions are shared by many in Iraq, where the name Rumsfeld is synonymous with the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein — and deaths, arrests and torture that followed. The dark chapter in Iraq’s history still echoes in the daily lives of Iraqis today.

Rumsfeld, the defense secretary for President George W. Bush, was one of the architects of the invasion that ousted Saddam on what turned out to be baseless accusations he was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

Americans and their allies failed to plan much for what came next, and disbanded Iraqi security forces as one of their first steps — leading Iraqis to hold Rumsfeld and other American leaders responsible for years of unremitting sectarian bloodletting, extremist attacks and endless car bombings.