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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Friday, June 24th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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It's official. The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to an abortion. In what we have long expected, the justices ruled along the ideological lines, with conservatives in the majority saying, quote, "The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives." The three liberal justices dissented.
This is a ruling that will reshape American life. As the decision was released, both protests and cheers broke out outside the Supreme Court. Here are anti-abortion activists celebrating.
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[ANTI-ABORTION ACTIVISTS CHEERING]
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And here, pro-abortion rights activists saying they won't stop fighting.
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Pro-Abortion Activist: We will aid and abet abortion! We will aid and abet abortion!
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Here's legal analyst Joan Biskupic speaking to "CNN" just as the decision came out.
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Joan Biskupic: It's so startling. Even though we had seen a glimpse of it on May 2nd when the draft had leaked, it still is so amazing to look at this right now and think of 50 years of Supreme Court precedent - this was a Constitutional right that the 1973 court declared - suddenly evaporate in this moment. And to also think about how different the Supreme Court is in America.
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Now, this ruling doesn't make abortion illegal, it just doesn't protect it, which leaves it up to the states to decide what to do next. Thirteen states have trigger laws on the books to ban abortion within 30 days of this decision. These laws make exceptions, for instance, where the life of the mother is at risk. But most of them have no exceptions for rape or incest. Oklahoma has already banned all abortions, starting at the point of fertilization. For a lot of conservatives, today's ruling is the culmination of a decades-long effort to train and appoint conservative judges to the nation's highest courts.
It's also a huge victory for the anti-abortion movement that's been fighting to overturn Roe and for President Trump, who reshaped the court during his presidency and appointed three conservative justices. Here again is Biskupic.
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Joan Biskupic: It will be years and years before the court even thinks about going back, if it ever does. This is a ruling for the ages.
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The fight to end abortion doesn't end here. It moves to the state-level now. Some states are already considering prohibiting people from travelling out of state to get the procedure. Others are enshrining the right to an abortion in their state constitutions to make sure it never gets stripped away.
Half a century after Roe, the battle over one of the most polarizing issues in American life continues.
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Whether you think that abortions should be legal or not, there's been one thing that people on both sides of this issue have long agreed on: that the women who seek abortions should not be criminalized.
Reporting from "Slate" serves as a warning that things could be different after today's ruling. A few years before the 1973 Roe decision, Shirley Wheeler was found guilty of manslaughter for having an abortion. She's believed to be the first American woman to be held criminally responsible for this. Susan Matthews reported on her story for the latest season of the podcast "Slow Burn."
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Susan Matthews: One of the things that you hear today is that if Roe is overturned, if abortion laws are put into place, the woman isn't going to be punished. So, one of the things that I thought was really interesting about Shirley's story is that it just kind of shows that you can't guarantee that.
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Shirley was originally from North Carolina, but she got her abortion in Florida. And she refused to tell police who performed the procedure. So, instead of trying to go after the provider, the police went after her. A jury found her guilty, and she ended up being given a very unusual sentence.
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Susan Matthews: Two years of probation. And the terms of that probation are that she either has to get married or she has to go home to North Carolina.
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Go home or get married. That got a lot of people's attention.
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Susan Matthews: And it's that sentence that I think really makes her story explode. And it makes women all over kind of perk up and think about the court system and how it's treating them.
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Shirley ended up becoming an important voice in the reproductive rights movement. There isn't a lot of audio that exists of her from that time, but "Slate" uncovered this footage of her speaking at a rally shortly after her sentence.
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Shirley Wheeler: The state of Florida is the criminal, not me.
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Wheeler: I am appealing my conviction because I would hate to see another one of my sisters go through the living hell that I have. Thank you.
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Susan told us Shirley's story is a warning about the criminalization of women in a post-Roe world.
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Susan Matthews: This argument that it's not the woman who will be held responsible is just a lie. It's not true. So the issue is, is that once you start to assign rights to a fetus, it just opens the door to so many situations in which the woman's body is no longer her own.
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If you want to hear my full conversation with Susan Matthews about Shirley Wheeler and the past, present and future of abortion rights, check out this weekend's episode of "In Conversation." Just search for "Apple News In Conversation" in the Apple News app or in the Podcasts app.
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Now, let's pivot from SCOTUS news and talk about what happened in yesterday's January 6th hearing. We heard testimony from top Department of Justice officials from Trump's final days in office. They spoke about how he pushed the Justice Department to help him try to overturn the election he lost. Former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen said Trump called him almost every day. He wanted the DOJ to do things like appoint a special counsel to investigate voter fraud, make supportive public statements, and pressure state legislatures.
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Jeffrey Rosen: The Justice Department declined all of those requests that I was just referencing because we did not think that they were appropriate based on the facts and the law as we understood them.
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Still, Trump continued to call on the DOJ to get involved. And so did a number of Republican members of Congress. The committee played a montage of GOP lawmakers claiming Trump won in the weeks after the election. Videotaped testimony also said that several elected officials who spread Trump's lies asked for pardons. Louie Gohmert, Andy Biggs, Scott Perry, Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks. Some have denied seeking pardons for themselves.
With this new evidence, the committee painted a picture of how Trump was trying to get every branch of government to help overturn his loss. He had Republican members of Congress on his side and he wanted more from the DOJ. Trump called former Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue at home. Donoghue testified, reading from his notes a direct quote that he'd jotted down from Trump telling him what he wanted him to say about the election results.
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Richard Donoghue: "What I'm just asking you to do is just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen."
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Rosen and Donoghue stood firm, so Trump tried to appoint someone who would play along. He was ready to put a lower-level DOJ official named Jeffrey Clark in charge of the entire Justice Department. You can expect to hear Clark's name a lot more in the days ahead. Federal agents searched his home this week. Clark called the search "politicized."
Now, keep in mind the fake electors plot that we talked about earlier this week. At one point, Clark drafted a letter to key states saying that the Justice Department had concerns about voting results. It said that states should consider creating separate slates of pro-Trump electors. The top Justice Department officials refused to send this letter. Acting deputy AG Donoghue testified about explaining to Clark why it was wrong.
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Richard Donoghue: For the department to insert itself into the political process this way, I think would have had grave consequences for the country. It may very well have spiraled us into a constitutional crisis. And I wanted to make sure that he understood the gravity of the situation because he didn't seem to really appreciate it.
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Yesterday, we also heard evidence that the administration knew that this letter was illegal. In video testimony, former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann remembers what he told Clark about his plans.
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Eric Herschmann: Congratulations. You just admitted your first step or act you'd take as Attorney General would be committing a felony and violating Rule 6(e).
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Despite all of this, Trump came very close to putting Clark in charge of the Justice Department. Call logs show that he was referred to as, quote, "Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Clark." Trump only backed down after Rosen and Donoghue said there would be a wave of resignations if Trump installed him. By the way, the committee did speak with Jeffrey Clark. In deposition, he pleaded the Fifth more than 125 times.
For Rosen, who served under multiple Republican presidents, there was something much bigger at stake than party loyalty or election results. Trump was trying to turn the justice system into a political weapon. But Rosen and others were not having it.
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Jeffrey Rosen: It's just so important that the Justice Department adhere to the facts and the law. That's what it's there to do. And that's what our constitutional role was. And so, if the Justice Department gets out of the role that it's supposed to play, that's really bad for our country. And I don't know of a simpler way to say that. And when you damage our fundamental institutions, it's not easy to repair them.
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You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And that includes coverage of the bipartisan Senate gun bill, the most significant gun legislation we've seen in decades. I'll be back with the news on Monday.
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