Supreme Court rejects Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Biden administration had overstepped its authority with its plan to wipe out more than $400 billion in student debt, dashing the hopes of tens of millions of borrowers and imposing new restrictions on presidential power. More than 45 million people across the country owe $1.6 trillion in federal loans for college, according to government data, and the proposed debt cancellation, announced by President Joe Biden last summer, would have been one of the most expensive executive actions in U.S. history.
Indiana Supreme Court upholds abortion ban
A ruling by Indiana’s highest court Friday cleared the way for a ban in the state on most abortions from conception. The court said that the state constitution guarantees a limited right to abortion, but not a fundamental one — that means allowing abortion only when it is necessary to save a woman’s life or protect her from a serious health risk. The court’s decision removes the temporary injunction on a near-total ban on abortion that the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed last August, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Supreme Court backs web designer opposed to same-sex marriage
The Supreme Court sided Friday with a web designer in Colorado who said she had a First Amendment right to refuse to design wedding websites for same-sex couples despite a state law that forbids discrimination against gay people. Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said that the First Amendment protected the designer, Lorie Smith, from being compelled to express views she opposed. The case, though framed as a clash between free speech and gay rights, was the latest in a series of decisions in favor of religious people and groups, notably conservative Christians.
State Department report on Afghanistan exit urges ‘worst case’ thinking
The State Department should plan better for worst-case scenarios, strengthen its crisis-management capabilities and ensure that top officials hear “the broadest possible range of views,” including ones that challenge their assumptions and decisions. Those were among the key findings of a State Department review of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in summer 2021, which contributed to the sudden collapse of the Afghan government and required a massive airlift to rescue roughly 125,000 U.S. citizens and Afghans who had assisted the United States. Also, chaos in Kabul, the capital, surrounded an emergency exit that included a terrorist bombing at the airport that killed up to 170 civilians and 13 U.S. troops.
As the South stews, temperatures to rise in the West, too
Ahead of a typically busy Fourth of July holiday period, the extreme heat in the South has been an early test in a region already resigned to high temperatures, heavy humidity and long summers. Temperatures recorded across the month showed that it was a much hotter June than usual, a pattern that is likely to continue as climate change. Out West, an arid heat will take hold in the afternoons and push temperatures to above-average levels. And from the Gulf Coast to the Carolinas, high temperatures could hit the mid-90s to the low 100s this weekend.
Brazil bars Bolsonaro from office for election fraud claims
Brazilian election officials on Friday blocked former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking public office until 2030, removing a top contender from the next presidential contest and dealing a significant blow to the country’s far-right movement. Brazil’s electoral court ruled that Bolsonaro had violated Brazil’s election laws when, less than three months before last year’s vote, he called diplomats to the presidential palace and made baseless claims that the nation’s voting systems were likely to be rigged against him. Five of the court’s seven judges voted that Bolsonaro had abused his power as president when he convened the meeting with diplomats and broadcast it on state television.
Bracing for more unrest, Macron urges parents to keep youths at home
French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday urgently appealed to parents as the country braced for another night of unrest over the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old, with French officials saying that the protests were driven mostly by angry young people and coordinated on social media. Macron’s government is struggling to contain the rage unleashed by the killing, in which a police officer fatally shot a teenage driver during a traffic stop in Nanterre, west of Paris, on Tuesday. Anger over the shooting tapped into decadeslong complaints about police violence and persistent feelings of neglect and racial discrimination in France’s poorer urban suburbs.
Shot to protect against Polio and five other diseases is approved by Gavi
The governing board of Gavi, the international organization that provides vaccines to developing countries, added a new shot to its roster this week that could help to eradicate polio worldwide and prevent its resurgence. The new vaccine does not contain the live viruses that are in the polio vaccines currently used in some low- and middle-income countries. It adds what is known as an inactivated polio component into a multifaceted shot that is already being used to protect young children against five other dangerous infections. A similar shot is already available in the United States and some European countries.
Dismissing rebellion as ‘minor,’ Kremlin dismantles Prigozhin’s empire
The mercenary rebellion that shook Russia was merely “a minor trouble,” the foreign minister said Friday, warning the West not to think that President Vladimir Putin’s grip on power had weakened, even as the Kremlin continued to move against the leader of the mutiny. Speaking at a news conference, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov asserted that Russia would emerge “stronger and more resilient” after the short-lived putsch June 23 and 24 by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner group troops, who have played a vital role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Lavrov dismissed the rebellion, which drove an armored column to within 125 miles of Moscow before turning back, as insignificant.
Group accuses Ukraine of using prohibited land mines
Ukrainian soldiers fired artillery rockets containing antipersonnel land mines into a Russian-controlled area of eastern Ukraine last year, in apparent violation of international agreements banning the use of such weapons, a human rights group said in a report Friday. Human Rights Watch called the mines “inherently indiscriminate weapons” because of their inability to distinguish enemy soldiers from noncombatants. It urged the Ukrainian government to “act on its expressed commitment not to use banned antipersonnel land mines, investigate the military’s use of these weapons, and hold those responsible to account.” The group has issued several reports about land mine use by Russian and Ukrainian forces since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
By wire sources