26-Year-Old Texas Woman Charged with Murder Due to Self-Induced Abortion (UPDATE)

Texas District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez released a statement revealing he plans on filing a motion Monday to dismiss the murder charge against Liz Herrera in connection to “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion,” NBC News reports.

Complex

Abortion access under renewed threat in Oklahoma and Missouri

While abortion rights advocates could secure several victories in US states in the coming days, they’re sounding the alarm about an Oklahoma bill that would ban nearly all abortions that’s likely to be signed into law. Here are some of this week’s moves in state legislatures and by state leaders you may have missed.

CNN

More Americans than ever identify as LGBTQ. Exhibits, archives showcase community’s history.

Amari McGee has an ambitious goal for 2022: visiting every LGBTQ museum or relevant exhibit in the United States.

USA Today

Puerto Rico struggles to emerge from outage as anger builds

Shuttered businesses. Sleepless nights. Canceled classes. Hundreds of thousands of people across Puerto Rico remained without power on Friday, nearly two days after a fire at a main power plant sparked an island-wide outage.

AP News

U.S. schools pull more than 1,000 book titles in ‘unparalleled’ censorship bid, report finds

More than a thousand book titles, most addressing racism and LGBTQ issues, have been banned from U.S. classrooms and school libraries in the last nine months, many under pressure from conservative parents and officials, the writers’ organization PEN America said on Thursday.

Reuters

Republicans Found the ‘Election Fraud’… at Their Own Convention

Two Republican delegates in Salt Lake County, Utah, lost their delegate titles because they were caught trying to vote more than once at a party convention

Rolling Stone

Jan. 6 panel has enough evidence to refer Trump for criminal charges, Cheney says

“It’s definitely clear that what President Trump was doing. What a number of people around him were doing. That they knew it was unlawful. They did it anyway,” said the vice chair of the committee.

NBC News

Trans sports ban vetoed by Kentucky governor

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed a bill Wednesday that would ban transgender women and girls from playing on school sports teams that correspond with their gender identity from grades six and up into college.

ABC News

Senator urges Democrats to ‘scream from the rooftops’ against Republicans

Brian Schatz from Hawaii, who denounced Josh Hawley on the Senate floor over Ukraine, tells own side to make more noise

The Guardian

Fraud Endorses Quack

Mehmet Oz spent years on television making questionable claims while promoting his own brand. Donald Trump liked what he saw

Rolling Stone

68 attendees of high profile D.C. dinner test positive for Covid

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo were among the guests who attended the annual Gridiron dinner.

NBC News

Trump-backed Vernon Jones says civil rights don’t apply to gay people because ‘they can actually change’ to become straight

“I don’t know what you are unless you tell me what you are if you’re gay, but when I walk into that room, you can tell that I’m Black,” Jones said. “I’m Black from cradle to grave. Let’s not get that confused, but they can actually change.”

Business Insider

Maryland lawmakers override governor’s veto of abortion access

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of a measure to expand access to abortion in the state was overridden on Saturday by the General Assembly, which is controlled by Democrats.

CBS News

U.S. Congress votes to strip Russia of ‘most favored’ trade status, ban its oil

The U.S. Congress voted to impose further economic pain on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, passing one measure to remove its “most favored nation” trade status and another to ban oil imports.

Reuters

U.S. moves to ground Aeroflot, two other Russian airlines

The Commerce Department took its first enforcement actions under the stringent export controls the Biden administration announced last month in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Politico

Libraries around the world are helping safeguard Ukrainian books and culture

Our library’s Ukrainian holdings — whether they were published in Ukraine under Austrian, Polish or Russian rule, in independence, or in refugee centres and diaspora communities — offer a perspective on Ukraine’s distinct history that sets it apart from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s belief that Ukraine was “entirely created by Russia.”

The Conversation

Can We Be Worthy of Ukraine?

“Don’t forget about Ukraine,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said last Sunday at the end of an interview with CBS. “We have the same values, we have the same color of blood, and we are fighting for freedom and we will win.”

The Atlantic

Austrian leader to meet Putin in Moscow, hoping to build bridges

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, he said, adding he hoped to help build bridges between Russia and Ukraine and stop the “war of aggression”.

Reuters

Finland gears up for historic Nato decision

Finland is preparing for a potentially historic decision “before midsummer” on whether to apply to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation as a deterrent against Russian aggression.

The Straits Times

Mexicans vote on whether president stays or goes

Mexicans voted Sunday on whether their popular president should end his six-year term barely midway through or continue to the end.

AP News

Witnessing atrocities in real time in Ukraine is changing everything

Daily on-the-ground evidence makes it more straightforward for the International Criminal Court to indict Vladimir Putin with war crimes

The Guardian

Massive demonstrations in Sri Lanka as protesters seek president’s resignation: ‘Go home Gota’

’They have just ruined our country. We don’t want them in government anymore. They are thieves,’ angry protester says

The Independent

Sweden Democrats leader wants party to change on NATO membership if Finland applies to join alliance

The leader of Sweden’s second-biggest opposition party will, should neighbour Finland apply to join NATO, suggest that his party change its stance towards favouring a Swedish membership, he told daily Svenska Dagbladet.

Reuters

Ukraine war is testing evangelicals’ love of Putin as a conservative hero

Evangelicals have been developing a political and emotional alliance with Russia for almost 20 years. Will it last?

Salon

Imran Khan has been ousted as Pakistan’s prime minister

Imran Khan was ousted from his position as prime minister of Pakistan after 174 legislators voted against him in a no-confidence motion early on Sunday morning.

NPR

Meet the Teens Fighting Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” Bill

Teen Vogue talked to four high school students and one teacher about the fight against the Don’t Say Gay bill.

Teen Vogue

A Day After Ketanji Brown’s Confirmation, Maine Could Get Its First Black Justice In High Court

Judge Rick Lawrence’s confirmation hearing comes a day after the U.S. Senate confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court

The Root

Remembering Dora Richter, One of the First Women to Receive Gender-Affirming Surgery

Her life story — and the reason we know so little about her — is a chilling reminder of what’s at stake when the far right attacks us today.

them.