“The house is on fire”: Texas GOP plots its next chapter amid civil war, depleted staff, funding drops

In one of his last speeches as chair of the Republican Party of Texas, Matt Rinaldi declared victory.

“We’ve changed the game,” he told members of the Texas GOP’s executive committee in February. “The biggest con that has been propagated against grassroots Republicans is that you have no other job other than to be a cheerleading society for anyone with an R next to their name.”

Texas Tribune

Groups claim South Florida districts are racially gerrymandered for Hispanics in lawsuit

Progressive civic groups have challenged how four congressional districts and seven state House districts in South Florida were drawn by the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature, claiming they were racially gerrymandered for Hispanics who are too diverse in Florida to be considered a protected minority.

AP News

How Uvalde’s GOP congressman is navigating a tense runoff and plotting to take out right-wing ‘anarchists’

Rep. Tony Gonzales called his GOP opponent in Texas a “neo-Nazi” and an “anarchist” intent on “burning the place down” — and said Republican hardliners seeking to oust him are a bunch of “scumbags” and MAGA wannabes.

CNN

Sotomayor admits some Supreme Court decisions have driven her to tears

“There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried,” Sotomayor said Friday at an event honoring her at Harvard University.

The Hill

‘There is no other choice’: Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy endorses Joe Biden over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Several members of the Kennedy family endorsed Biden over RFK Jr. at a Biden rally in Philadelphia last month.

“We want to make crystal clear our feeling that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to four more years,” Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and the younger sister of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said at the event.

USA Today

These 11 LGBTQ federal judges are making history – and are all appointed by Joe Biden

“These judges are exceptionally well-qualified. They come from every walk of life, and collectively, they form the most diverse group of judicial appointees ever put forward by a president – 64% are women and 62% are people of color,” said Biden.

“Before their appointment to the bench, they worked in every field of law—from labor lawyers fighting for working people to civil rights lawyers fighting to protect the right to vote.”

LGBTQ Nation

‘Where’s your red line?’: Tlaib hits Biden, others on Gaza war at Detroit Palestinian conference

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib slammed President Joe Biden and some of her congressional colleagues in a speech to the People’s Conference for Palestine in downtown Detroit, urging them to do more to stop what she calls the “genocide” in Gaza.

Detroit News

Louisiana governor signs bill to classify abortion pills as controlled substances into law

Louisiana became the first state to classify two abortion-inducing medications as controlled substances, making possession of the pills without a prescription a crime. 

Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed legislation that reclassifies misoprostol and mifepristone — a two-step regimen used to terminate early pregnancies — as Schedule IV drugs into law on Friday after it passed the state legislature earlier this week. 

CBS News

A 19th century flag disrupts leadership at an Illinois museum and prompts a state investigation

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is once again under the spotlight after a manager failed to consult a collections committee before purchasing a 21-star flag whose description as a rare banner marking Illinois’ 1818 admission to the Union is disputed.

AP News

Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe

Hansen’s superiors had given her the same explanation that they gave journalists, she finally said — that factory workers were fine, so people with lower levels would be, too. Her specialty was the detection of chemicals, not their harms. “You’ve got literally the medical director of 3M saying, ‘We studied this, there are no effects,’” she told me. “I wasn’t about to challenge that.” Her income had helped to support a family of five. Perhaps, I wondered aloud, she hadn’t really wanted to know whether her company was poisoning the public.

ProPublica

Top Mexican cartel criminal El Nini, once among America’s most wanted, extradited to the US

“El Nini played a prominent role in the notorious Sinaloa cartel, one of the deadliest drug trafficking enterprises in the world. The United States has charged him for his role in illicit fentanyl trafficking and for murdering, torturing, and kidnapping numerous rivals, witnesses, and others,” Biden said, thanking Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

CNN

Clinton says women abandoned her because she wasn’t ‘perfect’

“They left me because they just couldn’t take a risk on me, because as a woman, I’m supposed to be perfect,” Clinton said in an interview with The New Times, published Saturday. “They were willing to take a risk on [former President Trump] — who had a long list of, let’s call them flaws, to illustrate his imperfection — because he was a man, and they could envision a man as president and commander in chief.”

The Hill

Michael Smolens: Democrats try to limit political damage from border migration

Crossings have been increasing in various border regions for some time, but popular migration routes have continued to shift west from Arizona and Texas, according to Alexandra Mendoza of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

The San Diego Tribune

This Latinx non-binary artist is honoring their LGBTQ+ ancestors with a sexual Renaissance

Standing over a makeshift altar — made of a wooden box topped with crystals, a bouquet of white flowers, and four books written by queer authors — the artists point their pink-gloved hands in the shape of a downward triangle.

“This is a sign of resistance,” the non-binary Hispanic artist Michael Espinoza tells the onlookers, before reading sections from each book. This a ritual, Espinoza says, for “binding the sadness of Our queer bodies to the queer literary bodies” of queer artists who lost their lives to persecution, erasure, disease, suicide, closets, and forgetting.

Queerty

Trump mocks Libertarians at their own convention 

Trump attempted to make an appeal to Libertarians during their national convention on Saturday, at one point even suggesting that they should nominate him as their candidate for the 2024 election. That suggestion was quickly met with boos from the audience.

“Only do that if you want to win,” he told the crowd, speaking about nominating him. “If you want to lose don’t do that. Keep getting your 3 percent every four years.”

The Hill

Macron calls Franco-German ties ‘indispensable’ as state visit starts

Emmanuel Macron began the first state visit to Germany by a French president in 24 years with warm words for his hosts.

“Franco-German relations are indispensable and important for Europe,” said Macron at the start of his three-day state visit to Germany on Sunday.

dpa International

Colombia begins exploring ‘holy grail of shipwrecks’

The Colombian government has started exploring a sunk 18th Century Spanish galleon dubbed the “holy grail of shipwrecks”.

The South American nation has also declared a protected archaeological area around the San José galleon – which was sunk by the British Royal Navy in 1708 in the Caribbean Sea.

BBC

Princess Anne visits Norway site of secret operation to stop Nazi atomic bomb

The Princess spent two days in Norway, with a visit to the site of the little-known Operation Gunnerside where she laid flowers at the memorial.

The Telegraph

Saudi Arabia appoints first ambassador to Syria since 2012

Saudi Arabia on Sunday announced the appointment of its first ambassador to Syria since severing ties with Damascus in 12 years, marking an ongoing thawing in relations since the war-torn country was readmitted to the Arab League over a year ago.

AP News

UK Tories pledge to bring back national service for 18-year-olds

“This new, mandatory national service will provide life-changing opportunities for our young people, offering them the chance to learn real world skills, do new things and contribute to their community and our country,” he said in a statement.

The New Arab

A foreign force was set to arrive in Haiti this week. What happened?

After months of planning and discussion, the deployment of an international force to violence-wracked Haiti has been delayed again, puncturing hopes that a vanguard of Kenyan police would arrive this week.

CNN

Ukraine’s Zelensky appeals for Biden and Xi to join Swiss peace talks

“We do not want the UN Charter to be burnt down just like these books, and I hope you don’t want to either,” said Zelensky against the backdrop of a printing plant destroyed by a Russian missile attack in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv.

dpa International

Burkina Faso extends military rule by five years

Burkina Faso’s military government has announced it will extend junta rule for another five years.

The country’s ruler, Capt Ibrahim Traoré, will also be able to contest the next presidential election, the state-owned broadcaster says.

BBC

Thousands of Armenians protest over territory transfer to Azerbaijan

Anti-government rally demands PM Nikol Pashinyan’s resignation after agreeing to return 4 border villages to neighbour country

The Telegraph

Sudan hospital death toll reaches alarming heights amid raging war

At least 134 people have died at a single hospital in the Darfur city of El-Fasher in western Sudan, Doctors without Borders (MSF) said on Sunday, including one MSF team member.

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