Republican Rebels Are Breaking the Rule on Rules, Upending How the House Works
About a dozen rebellious House Republicans have decided to leverage their votes on routine procedural measures to win policy concessions, breaking the long-standing code of party discipline and threatening the traditional operation of the House. Unlike the Senate, where consensus is required to move forward on virtually anything, the House operates according to strict majority rule, making party unity critical to the smooth functioning of business. If all Democrats are present and voting “no,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy can afford to lose no more than four Republicans and still win approval of the rules that are required to bring most major legislation to the floor.
Illinois Passes a Ban on Book Bans
Illinois will prohibit book bans in its public schools and libraries, with Gov. J.B. Pritzker calling the bill that he signed Monday the first of its kind. The law, which takes effect next year, was the Democratic-controlled state’s response to a sharp rise in book-banning efforts across the country, especially in Republican-led states, where lawmakers have made it easier to remove library books that political groups deemed objectionable. The law directs public libraries in the state to adopt or write their own versions of a library bill of rights. Libraries that don’t comply could lose state funding, according to the bill.
Judge to Allow Trump’s New Comments in Carroll Defamation Suit
A Manhattan judge on Tuesday granted E. Jean Carroll’s request to revise her defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump to include similar comments he made recently on CNN. Trump had asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of U.S. District Court to stop Carroll’s defamation lawsuit since, he said, he could not have defamed her in 2019 when he denied her allegation of a decades-old rape. That’s because, Trump said, a jury in a separate case recently found him liable only for sexually abusing Carroll and not for raping her, as she had long insisted. Carroll’s revised lawsuit seeks at least $10 million in compensatory damages.
Cormac McCarthy, Literary Loner in a Dark World, Dies at 89
Cormac McCarthy, the formidable and reclusive writer of Appalachia and the American Southwest, whose raggedly ornate early novels about misfits and grotesques gave way to the lush taciturnity of “All the Pretty Horses” and the apocalyptic minimalism of “The Road,” died Tuesday at age 89. McCarthy’s fiction took a dark view of the human condition and was often macabre. He lived quietly and determinately outside the literary mainstream. The mainstream, however, eventually came to him. “All the Pretty Horses” won a National Book Award in 1992, and “The Road” won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007. Both were made into films, as was McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men,” which won the Academy Award for best picture in 2008.
Russian Forces Strike Back Against Ukraine’s Advancing Troops
Russian air forces and artillery weapons struck back against advancing Ukrainian troops Tuesday, hammering them over several southern villages that the Ukrainian army had retaken over the past week in the opening phase of Kyiv’s counteroffensive. The attack reduced one village to ruins and came on the same day that a Russian missile strike killed at least 11 people in Kryvyi Rih, the hometown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Conflicting claims made it difficult to assess the situation on the battlefield, but President Vladimir Putin of Russia acknowledged that his forces had suffered some losses this month, including 54 tanks.
International Aid Teams Still Cannot Reach Flood-Hit Areas Under Russia’s Control
Moscow has failed to provide security guarantees for aid workers seeking to help thousands of people in flooded areas of Russian-occupied territories, the United Nations said Tuesday, hampering humanitarian efforts more than a week after the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine. Ukraine says it offered such guarantees to the United Nations and International Committee for the Red Cross for areas it controls last week, but so far there have been no such agreements from the Kremlin. Russian-controlled areas were some of the worst-hit by flooding, but the full picture of the destruction in those places remains unclear.
Berlusconi Seizes Italy’s Attention Even in Death
Not even death could keep Silvio Berlusconi from center stage. Berlusconi, who loomed over Italian politics as prime minister and power broker for decades, still dominated the country a day after his death Monday at 86. Mourners brought flowers to his palatial villa. His critics debated whether he had transformed Italy for good or ill. His most ardent admirers declared that he was foremost in their thoughts and prayers. Although Berlusconi’s family decided to hold a strictly private gathering for relatives and friends Tuesday, the former leader’s gravitational pull brought cameras of news channels and websites to the elegant iron gates surrounding his villa in Arcore, near Milan.
Colombian Children Rescued in Jungle Had Been Fleeing for Their Lives
The four children who survived an almost unfathomable 40 days in the Colombian jungle after their tiny plane crashed in the Amazon rainforest had boarded the plane because they were fleeing for their lives. Manuel Ranoque, father of the two youngest survivors, explained in an interview that an armed group that forcibly recruited children by threatening violence had seized control of their home region in southern Colombia. Relatives had tried to fly the children out of the territory, to a city where they could live safely. The children’s escape plane crashed, killing their mother and two other adults and sending the quartet on a weekslong survival journey in the Amazon jungle.
U.S. Soldiers Injured in Syria Were Part of Commando Unit
The 22 soldiers who were injured in a helicopter accident in northeastern Syria on Sunday were part of the Army’s highly secretive Delta Force commando unit, which has previously carried out kill-or-capture raids against Islamic State militants in that part of the country, three senior military officials said Tuesday. The Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East and South Asia, said in a brief statement Monday night that “a helicopter mishap” in northeastern Syria had left nearly two dozen service members with injuries. The statement said that 10 of the soldiers had been evacuated to hospitals outside the region and that an inquiry was underway.
U.K. Woman Sentenced to Prison for Abortion in Eighth Month of Pregnancy
A woman’s sentencing to prison this week for illegally using abortion pills to end a 32- to 34-week pregnancy is prompting a debate in England over its abortion laws and whether a woman should ever be prosecuted for the procedure. Adding to the debate is the fact that she was prosecuted under a law more than 160 years old. On Monday, a court in Stoke-on-Trent, a city in central England, sentenced Carla Foster, 44, to 28 months for having caused her miscarriage by taking abortion pills in her eighth month of pregnancy. The sentence includes up to 14 months in prison, after which she could serve on release if she meets certain conditions.
By wire sources