Closing summary
The justice department announced charges in three cases alleging Chinese intelligence officers attempted to steal technology, pressured a naturalized US citizen to return to the country and interfered with the prosecution of telecommunications giant Huawei, while warning Beijing against continued wrongdoing in the United States. Meanwhile, a prominent journalist who interviewed Trump 20 times warned he wasn’t only dangerous for democracy, he was also incompetent.
Here’s what else happened today:
Polls show tight races for Senate in Ohio and Wisconsin, and a Democrat in the lead in Pennsylvania as the party hopes to maintain its majority in Congress’ upper chamber.
Supreme court justice Samuel Alito told a top Democratic senator he considered Roe v Wade settled law during his confirmation hearing in 2005 – then voted to overturn it 17 years later.
Areas represented in Congress by 2020 election deniers tend to have seen their white population share decline, and be less well off and well educated than elsewhere, a New York Times analysis found.
Republican senator Lindsey Graham’s subpoena compelling his appearance before a special grand jury investigating the campaign to meddle with Georgia’s election results two years ago is on hold thanks to conservative supreme court justice Clarence Thomas.
Almost 17 years before he wrote the supreme court’s opinion overturning Roe v Wade, Samuel Alito told a prominent Democratic senator he considered the case guaranteeing abortion access nationwide settled law, The New York Times reports.
“I am a believer in precedents”, Alito, then a federal judge, told Edward Kennedy. In a reference to one of the core justifications for the original Roe decision, he told Kennedy, “I recognize there is a right to privacy,” and “I think it’s settled.”
The new details were taken from Kennedy’s private diary, portions of which will be published in the book “Ted Kennedy: A Life” set for release Tuesday, and reported by the Times.
The senator was skeptical of Alito’s repeated statements indicating he wouldn’t try to overturn Roe, and also didn’t buy Alito’s explanation that he had written a memo outlining his opposition to Roe because he was seeking a promotion while working as a lawyer in the administration of Republican president Ronald Reagan. Kennedy voted against confirming Alito to the supreme court, and died in 2009. Last June, Alito helmed the five-justice majority that overturned Roe, and allowed states to ban abortion completely – in an apparent contradiction of what he told Kennedy.
