WASHINGTON, June 29 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday widened the power of states over Native American tribes and undercut its own 2020 ruling that had expanded Native American tribal authority in Oklahoma, handing a victory to Republican officials in that state.

The court ruled 5-4 in favor of Oklahoma over the state’s attempt to prosecute Victor Castro-Huerta, a non-Native American convicted of child neglect in a crime committed against a Native American child – his 5-year-old stepdaughter – on the Cherokee Nation reservation.

The change of course only two years after the previous ruling in a case called McGirt v. Oklahoma was made possible by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the court by Republican former President Donald Trump to replace the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch, as he did in 2020, joined with the court’s liberal bloc in favor of Native American interests, but its expanded conservative majority meant that this time he was in the minority.

A state court threw out Castro-Huerta’s conviction, saying the Supreme Court’s ruling in the McGirt case deprived state authorities of jurisdiction in his case and gave responsibility to federal courts.

As a result of the McGirt ruling, about 3,600 cases every year in Oklahoma were set to fall under federal instead of state jurisdiction.

In the McGirt decision, the Supreme Court recognized about half of Oklahoma – much of the eastern part of the state – as Native American reservation land beyond the jurisdiction of state authorities. That ruling, criticized by Governor Kevin Stitt and other Republicans, meant that many crimes on the land in question involving Native Americans would need to be prosecuted in tribal or federal courts.

The state already prosecutes crimes committed in the affected land in which no Native Americans are involved. Tribal courts handle crimes committed by and against Native Americans.

Tribes had welcomed the McGirt ruling as a recognition of their sovereignty. The Supreme Court in January rejected Oklahoma’s request to outright overturn it.

Castro-Huerta was convicted in state court of neglecting his stepdaughter, who has cerebral palsy and is legally blind, and sentenced to 35 years in prison. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals last year threw out that conviction because of the 2020 precedent. Castro-Huerta by then was already indicted for the same underlying offense by federal authorities, transferred to federal custody and pleaded guilty to child neglect.

He has not yet been sentenced.

There are 574 federally recognized tribes in total, although some states have very little tribal land. The population of Native Americans and Alaska Natives combined in the United States is 3.7 million, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
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A rare Republican who supports abortion rights found success in Colorado in the first primary elections held since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, while New York’s first female governor positioned herself to become a major voice in the post-Roe landscape.

In Illinois, Democrats helped boost a Republican gubernatorial candidate loyal to former President Donald Trump in the hopes that he would be the easier candidate to beat in November. And in at least two states, election deniers were defeated, even as pro-Trump lightning rods elsewhere won.

Takeaways from the latest round of primary elections:

Abortion on the ballot

The abortion debate consumed the nation this week, but there was no race where it mattered more than Colorado’s Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, where businessman Joe O’Dea became one of the only abortion-rights-supporting Republican in the nation to win a statewide primary this year.

O’Dea beat back a stiff challenge from state Rep. Ron Hanks, a Trump loyalist who opposed abortion with no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother.

O’Dea will face Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet in November, and if he wins, he would become just the third Senate Republican — and the only male — to support abortion rights.

He said he backs a ban on late-term abortions and government funding of abortions but that the decision to terminate a pregnancy in the initial months is “between a person and their God.”

Democrats had spent at least $2.5 million on ads designed to boost O’Dea’s opponent by promoting, among other things, that he was “too conservative” for backing a complete abortion ban.

Democrats hoped that the Roe decision would give them an advantage in several swing states, including Colorado. But, at least for now, O’Dea’s victory would seem to complicate the Democrats’ plans.

A win for Trump or for the democrats?

In the final weeks of a campaign, Trump once again attached himself to a Republican who was leading the race. This time, it was farmer Darren Bailey in Illinois, who easily cruised to the GOP nomination in the governor’s race.

But while Trump can add Bailey to his endorsement record, Democrats are betting that his victory may be short-lived.

Bailey now goes on to face Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker in the November general election, which is just what Pritzker and his allies wanted. Pritzker, the billionaire heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, and the Democratic Governors Association spent heavily on advertising to help Bailey win the GOP nomination. Among other things, the ads reminded the state’s Democratic-leaning electorate that he is “100% pro-life.”

It’s a risky gamble. While Bailey may look like an easier opponent in the general election, it’s feasible that he could ride a red wave — if it materializes — to the Illinois governor’s mansion. Pritzker’s predecessor in office was a Republican.

Bailey showed off political acumen by besting the early Republican front-runner Richard Irvin, the mayor of Illinois’ second-largest city, Aurora. Irvin lost despite being the beneficiary of a staggering $50 million investment from billionaire Ken Griffin. Irvin, who is Black, refused to say whether he voted for Trump and largely avoided talking about abortion, delivering the kind of moderate message that could have cut across ideological lines in a general election.

Instead, Republicans nominated Bailey, a Trump loyalist who reads from Bible verses in campaign videos and proudly touts his anti-abortion policies in a state Trump lost by 17 percentage points in 2020.

Hochul’s opportunity

The scandals of the men around her did not derail New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, who overcame primary challengers on the right and left to win her first election test as the state’s chief executive.

Now, Hochul, New York’s first female governor, is positioned to emerge as a leading voice in the Democratic Party as it navigates the post-Roe landscape.

The low-profile Hochul stepped into one of the nation’s most prominent governorships last fall after Andrew Cuomo resigned in the midst of a sexual harassment scandal. She had promised to restore New Yorkers’ faith in their government, only for her handpicked lieutenant governor to be arrested this spring in a federal corruption probe.

Hochul was either “consistently shamefully out of the loop, or shamefully enabling through her inaction,” charged one of her primary challengers, New York City’s elected public advocate, Jumaane Williams.

The attack ultimately didn’t land in the primary. But don’t expect such criticism to disappear as the race for New York governor enters its next phase.

Rep. Lee Zeldin emerged from a crowded Republican field to earn the GOP nomination for governor. He defeated Andrew Giuliani, the son of New York City’s former mayor Rudy Giuliani, among others.

And while Hochul has a serious reelection test ahead, look for her to step into the national spotlight as the abortion debate rages.

The Democratic governor said in recent days that New York would be a “safe harbor” for those seeking abortions.

Election deniers go down

They celebrated their allegiance to Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories on the campaign trail. But on Tuesday night, a handful of these so-called election deniers had nothing to cheer about.

In Colorado, Republican voters did not reward secretary of state candidate Tina Peters for championing Trump’s lies about election fraud. She was bested by Pam Anderson, a former county clerk who previously led the state clerks’ association and defends the state’s mail-in elections system.

Some officials in both parties worried that Peters would win the primary. That’s even after Peters, the Mesa County clerk, was indicted for a security breach spurred by conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election. The state GOP had called on her to suspend her campaign.

Now, Anderson, not Peters, will take on incumbent Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who’s led the national fight against 2020 election deniers.

Elsewhere in Colorado, Senate candidate Hanks had also promoted lies about the last presidential election. In addition to being an outspoken opponent of abortion rights, he had attended the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

And in Mississippi, Trump loyalist Michael Cassidy lost a runoff election to incumbent Rep. Michael Guest, who had voted to create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack. Cassidy said in campaign speeches that Guest had done nothing to stop “the persecution of Jan. 6 political prisoners.”

Lighting rods win

Two Republicans familiar with controversy tested for the first time whether Republican voters deemed them too extreme to go back to Congress. They both prevailed.

First-term Rep. Mary Miller, who campaigned alongside Trump over the weekend, defeated five-term Rep. Rodney Davis, who was considered more moderate. The primary victory all but ensures Miller will return to Congress for another term given the heavy Republican advantage in her 15th Congressional District, which is the most Republican district in the state.

Miller won just days after describing the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade as a victory for white life.'' A spokesperson later said she had intended to say the decision was a victory for aright to life.”

Miller is no stranger to provocative statements. Soon after joining the House, Miller quoted Adolf Hitler, saying he was right to say that “whoever has the youth has the future.”

And in Colorado, Trump loyalist Lauren Boebert defeated a moderate state representative who had run a primary campaign focused on Boebert’s extremism. It didn’t work.

Boebert’s controversial moves are many. She vowed to carry a handgun on the House floor. She faced calls for her censure last year after being caught on video making Islamophobic comments about Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar. And she heckled President Joe Biden in his first State of the Union address.

But after winning her primary, she is almost certain to return to Congress for another two years. Her GOP-leaning 3rd Congressional District in western Colorado became even more Republican after redistricting.

A Roe shift in Nebraska?

Nebraska’s low-profile special election to fill the remainder of former Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s term was not supposed to be close. Republicans have held the district for nearly 60 years.

Yet Republican Mike Flood defeated Democrat Patty Pansing Brooks by only 4 percentage points on Tuesday.

The specific cause of the margin wasn’t immediately unclear, although there was evidence of higher turnout in one Democratic-leaning county that could be related to the Roe decision.

Heading into election day, Flood appeared to have a strong edge in the district, which includes Lincoln, parts of suburban Omaha and dozens of smaller, more conservative towns. The district has nearly 68,000 more Republicans than Democrats and hasn’t elected a Democrat to the House since 1964.

What happened? Lancaster County, home to the state capital and the University of Nebraska, offers some clues.

In 2020, Fortenberry won the district by nearly 22 percentage points, but he lost Lancaster County by less than 1 percentage point. In Tuesday’s special election, the Republican Flood lost Lancaster County by more than 13 percentage points.

In the end, the swing wasn’t enough to move a heavily-Republican district, but Democrats could look to the results for hope that the Roe decision will be a significant motivator for the Democratic base.

Incidentally, Fortenberry was sentenced to two years of probation on Tuesday for lying to the FBI. Flood and Pansing Brooks are expected to face off again in the November general election.
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Seven-time champion Serena Williams suffered a second straight Wimbledon first-round exit as she was stunned by French debutant Harmony Tan in a late-night Centre Court epic on Tuesday.

A year after the American retired, injured from what many feared would be her last Wimbledon match, her return had been eagerly anticipated. But the 115th-ranked Tan ripped up the script with a nerve-shredding 7-5 1-6 7-6(7) win.

With the Centre Court roof closed for the final two sets and the time approaching the 11 p.m. Wimbledon curfew, Tan had one match point snatched away when the 40-year-old Williams served at 5-6 in a rollercoaster deciding set.

A weary Williams then appeared close to victory as she built a 4-0 lead in the super tiebreak.

But Tan, who had never played in a Wimbledon main draw match before let alone against one of the game’s greats on a show court, was not done.

Sticking to the slice and slow ball shots that had flummoxed Williams throughout an absorbing duel, she clawed her way into a 9-7 lead before sealing victory as Williams netted a forehand.

Williams, who had not played a singles match since retiring hurt against Aliaksandra Sasnovich here last year, went through every emotion in 3 hours and 11 minutes of drama and put her fans through the wringer, too.

But in the end, a lack of match sharpness proved too much as another quest for a 24th Grand Slam title hit the buffers and the question is will she ever get another chance.

Tan, who had only ever won two Grand Slam main draw matches compared to the 98 won at Wimbledon alone by Williams, could hardly believe what she had done after clinching by far the biggest victory of her modest career.

“I’m so emotional now. Serena is a superstar and when I was young I was watching her so many times on the TV,” the 24-year-old said on court. “For my first Wimbledon, it’s wow. Just wow.

“When I saw the draw I was really scared. Because it’s Serena Williams, she’s a legend. I thought if I could win one or two games it was really good for me.”

‘Better than last year’

While defeat, which by ranking of opponent was the worst of her Wimbledon career, was a bitter pill to swallow, Williams said it was easier to accept than last year.

“It was definitely a very long battle and fight and it’s definitely better than last year. That’s a start,” Williams told reporters. “I think physically I did pretty good. I think the last couple of points I was really suffering there.”

Asked if she would be back at Wimbledon, Williams was coy.

“That’s a question I can’t answer. I don’t know. Who knows? Who knows where I’ll pop up?”
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This week, the Group of Seven leaders launched a $600 billion global infrastructure initiative they say will compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Telfs, Austria, with reporting from Patsy Widakuswara in Washington.
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Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson told U.S. lawmakers Tuesday that then-President Donald Trump became increasingly angry and volatile about his 2020 reelection loss, testifying that he agreed with rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 last year when they called for then-Vice President Mike Pence be hanged for refusing to block the election outcome. 

 

Hutchinson said that as some of the thousands of Trump supporters at the Capitol chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” Trump told her boss, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, “Mike deserves it.”  

 

She quoted Meadows as saying that Trump “doesn’t think (the anti-Pence protesters were) doing anything wrong.” 

 

Trump supporters had erected a gallows on the National Mall within eyesight of the Capitol, although Pence’s security detail rushed him to safety as the mayhem raged. Some rioters came within about 12 meters of reaching him. 

 

Later, Trump tweeted that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage” to block Congress from certifying that Democrat Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the 2020 election. But it was not until more than an hour later that Trump finally told his supporters in a video message to leave the Capitol, after earlier ignoring pleas from family members, including his daughter Ivanka, a White House aide, and other advisers to publicly call off the riot.    

WATCH THE HEARING:

Hutchinson, who worked in an office just steps from Trump’s Oval Office, said she learned from Anthony Ornato, a Meadows aide responsible for coordinating Trump’s security detail, that the then-president, after a rally near the White House before the mayhem at the Capitol, attempted to grab the wheel of his limousine from a Secret Service agent and demanded to go to the Capitol to join his supporters. 

Trump had told thousands of supporters at the rally that he would join them in walking to the Capitol, but his security detail had determined it was too dangerous and instead drove him back to the White House. 

 

Hutchinson said she was told by Ornato that, once in the limousine, Trump was “under the impression … he thought they were going to the Capitol” and was “very, very angry” when he realized they were not. 

 

“I’m the ‘effing’ president, take me to the Capitol,” Trump demanded, according to Ornato’s recounting of the incident to Hutchinson. 

 

She testified that Ornato told her Trump grabbed the steering wheel but was pushed away by his chief security agent, Bobby Engel. 

 

“Sir, you need to take your hand off of the steering wheel, we’re going back to the West Wing, we’re not going to the Capitol,” Hutchinson said, quoting Ornato’s retelling of what Engel told Trump. 

 

“Mr. Trump then used his free hand to lunge toward Engel and when Mr. Ornato recounted the story to me, he motioned to his clavicles,” Hutchinson testified. 

Earlier that day, according to Hutchinson, Trump had been informed that many of the supporters whom he was urging to march to the Capitol were armed and equipped with body armor. Hutchinson said the president was angered that the Secret Service was using magnetometers to check for weapons at the entrance to the rally and confiscating those it found. Trump reportedly said he wasn’t in any danger and complained that keeping people out of the rally made the crowd look smaller. 

 

More than a month before, on Dec. 1, 2020, then Attorney General William Barr, the country’s top law enforcement official, had told the Associated Press that Justice Department investigators had not found evidence of election fraud sufficient to overturn Biden’s victory. Trump lost more than five dozen election lawsuits claiming fraud. 

 

Hutchinson said Trump was furious when told of Barr’s remark to the AP reporter. She learned of his anger when she encountered a White House valet cleaning Trump’s private dining room next to the Oval Office. 

 

Trump, she said, had thrown his lunch against a wall, shattering a plate and splattering ketchup on the wall. 

 

Hutchinson said that both Meadows and a Trump attorney, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, sought pardons for their roles in trying to keep Trump in power.  

 

But Trump, while pardoning other aides for their possible crimes before leaving office, did not act on the requests from Meadows or Giuliani, nor on similar demands from a half-dozen Republican congressmen Hutchinson said had requested pardons.   

 

Hutchinson’s testimony came in the House of Representatives committee’s sixth hearing this month, with two more set for mid-July. 

 

One of those hearings is set to detail the involvement of right-wing extremists in the insurrection at the Capitol and the other to explore what Trump was doing at the White House as he watched the riot unfold on television for more than three hours, ignoring all entreaties to tell the rioters to leave the Capitol.   

Previously, an array of witnesses, in taped testimony and in person before the panel, have described how Trump and his allies sought to pressure Pence, the Justice Department and state officials to upend the congressional certification of the election results on January 6, 2021.  

 

At the rally before the insurrection at the Capitol, Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell” to block congressional approval of Biden’s victory.   

 

About 2,000 of Trump’s supporters stormed past law enforcement officials into the Capitol, ransacking congressional offices, vandalizing the building and scuffling with police. More than 800 have subsequently been charged with offenses and more than 300 have pleaded guilty or been convicted in trials. Sentences have ranged from a few weeks in prison to more than four years.  

 

In the United States, presidents are effectively chosen in separate elections in each of the 50 states, not through the national popular vote. Each state’s number of electoral votes is dependent on its population, with the biggest states holding the most sway. The rioters who stormed the Capitol tried to keep lawmakers from certifying Biden’s eventual 306-232 victory in the Electoral College.   

 

At the heart of Trump’s effort to stay in power was an audacious plan espoused by Giuliani and conservative lawyer John Eastman to get legislatures in states Trump narrowly lost to appoint new electors supporting him to replace the official ones favoring Biden. 

 

While the House committee cannot bring criminal charges, the Department of Justice is closely monitoring the hearings to determine whether anyone, Trump included, should be charged with illegally trying to reverse the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. 

Last week, FBI agents raided the Washington-area home of a former assistant attorney general, Jeffrey Clark, who wanted Trump to name him attorney general in the last month of his presidency so he could advance Trump’s erroneous claims of vote fraud, which were at odds with Barr’s conclusion.  

 

Trump appeared willing to make the Clark appointment but backed off when top Justice Department officials said Clark, an environmental lawyer, was not qualified to be the country’s top law enforcement official and threatened to quit en masse if he were named.  

 

In addition, FBI agents, in a separate encounter in the southwestern state of New Mexico, seized the cell phone of Eastman.  

 

A prosecutor in Atlanta, the capital of the state of Georgia, has convened a grand jury to probe Trump’s effort to overturn the vote in that state. Trump asked the state’s top election official, Brad Raffensperger, to find him 11,780 votes — one more than Biden defeated him by — out of 5 million ballots.     

 

The investigative panel has heard testimony that key Trump aides told him he had lost the election and that there were minimal voting irregularities, not enough to overturn Biden’s Electoral College victory.     

 

In addition, Trump was told it would be illegal for Pence to unilaterally block Biden’s victory as Pence presided over the congressional Electoral College vote count. Trump privately and publicly demanded the vice president block certification of Biden’s victory and to this day contends he was cheated out of another White House term. 
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Authorities in the southern U.S. state of Texas found 46 migrants dead inside a tractor-trailer truck Monday.

San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told reporters another 16 people were taken to the hospital for treatment of heat-related injuries, including four children.

The truck was found next to railroad tracks in a remote area on the southern outskirts of San Antonio. High temperatures in the city topped 39 degrees Celsius (103 degrees Fahrenheit) Monday with high humidity.

San Antonio police said they could not yet say where the people inside the truck were from. Federal authorities were in charge of the investigation.

Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard tweeted that, according to the Mexican consul who went to the area, there were two Guatemalans among those taken to the hospital.

Ebrard said the trailer had U.S. license plates, and that the incident was highly likely the work of human traffickers.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg called the situation “nothing short of a horrific human tragedy.”

“It’s tragic,” Nirenberg told reporters. “There are, that we know of, 46 individuals who are no longer with us who had families, who were likely trying to find a better life.”

In 2017, 10 migrants died after being trapped in a tractor-trailer that San Antonio police discovered in a Walmart parking lot. The driver of that truck was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the smuggling operation.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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