Your Tuesday Evening Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/briefing/capitol-riot-migrants-serena-williams.html

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Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Tuesday.

1. Extraordinary testimony revealed how Donald Trump demanded to march to the Capitol with his supporters even as the riot was underway.

Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, said that Trump knew his supporters were armed and could turn violent but wanted security precautions lifted — and that he tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential limousine from a Secret Service agent when he was told he could not go to the Capitol.

Among the revelations the Jan. 6 committee presented today:

Hutchinson said Meadows was worried as early as Jan. 2 that Trump’s rally could get out of control, telling her, “Things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6.”

Meadows, as well as Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, both expressed interest in pardons for their roles in the attack, Hutchinson said.

As rioters chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” Trump endorsed the violence; Hutchinson testified that Meadows said of Trump, “He thinks Mike deserves it.”

Hutchinson testified that Trump became enraged when he learned that William Barr, the former attorney general, had publicly shot down his false claims of election fraud. He threw dishes, splattering ketchup on the wall.

“This is the smoking gun,” one expert told The Times, adding that today’s hearing establishes a case for Trump’s criminal culpability on “seditious conspiracy charges.”

2. The White House is under increasing pressure to push back on the Supreme Court ruling on abortion.

President Biden’s health secretary, Xavier Becerra, said he had instructed his agency to take a number of actions, including making sure that federal programs cover medication abortion in cases of rape or incest or when the life of the mother is at risk. But, he warned, there was “no magic bullet” to preserve access to abortion. Many Democrats feel the party’s initial response has been painfully inadequate.

In Texas, a judge temporarily blocked an immediate prohibition on abortions, but the state’s recent ban at about six weeks of pregnancy still applies.

In other health news, F.D.A. advisers recommended updated boosters that target forms of Omicron, and the C.D.C. estimated that the Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 had together become dominant in the U.S.

3. At least 51 people died after a scorching-hot tractor-trailer was abandoned near San Antonio.

It is one of the worst episodes of migrant deaths in the U.S. in recent years. The bodies of at least 46 people were found in or around the truck. At least 16 people, including children, were taken to area hospitals for heat exhaustion and dehydration, where three died.

Three people were taken into custody, including the driver of the tractor-trailer. Mexico’s foreign minister said the dead included 22 Mexicans, seven Guatemalans and two Hondurans.

4. Turkey agreed to lift its veto on Sweden and Finland joining NATO, clearing a major diplomatic hurdle to their memberships.

If Finland and Sweden join the alliance, it would be one of its most significant expansions in decades, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine radically altered Europe’s security calculus.

The move came hours after the Group of 7 leaders agreed to an ambitious plan to cap the price of exported Russian oil by leveraging the West’s financial and shipping influence. But creating the upside-down cartel could take weeks of negotiations, if it happens at all.

In Ukraine, Russian forces struck more civilian targets a day after an attack on a shopping mall in Kremenchuk killed at least 18 people. Jammed radios and other communication breakdowns have taken a toll on Ukrainian forces.

5. Today’s primary elections are full of drama.

Races for governor in Colorado, Illinois and New York could define access to abortion in a post-Roe world. In New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul is trying to win her primary for a chance to become the first woman elected as governor of the state.

In Colorado, Republican voters face primary candidates who are among the most vociferous in their denials of President Biden’s victory. In Illinois, the Trumpist Representative Mary Miller is vying against Rodney Davis, a more moderate Republican. In Mississippi, Michael Guest, a conservative House member, is vulnerable after voting for a bipartisan inquiry into the Capitol riot.

And voters in Oklahoma will be choosing the likely successor to James Inhofe, whose retirement opens a Senate seat in a reliably conservative state. Follow The Times’s live coverage here.

In other election news, President Biden and his administration are irked by calls for him not to run for re-election.

6. Colombia’s national truth commission called for a transformation of its armed forces as part of an expansive report on the country’s decades-long civil war.

The commission investigated human rights violations on all sides of the conflict, which eventually resulted in an estimated 260,000 people killed, most of them civilians, and more than five million forced from their homes during nearly six decades of violence.

The report comes at an inflection point in Colombia, which just elected its first leftist president. Violence has returned in some rural parts of Colombia, even after the 2016 peace accord between the FARC rebel group and the government.

7. The Michigan Supreme Court said indictments in the Flint water crisis cases were invalid.

The court ruled that prosecutors improperly relied on a one-man grand jury to issue indictments against top state officials like former Gov. Rick Snyder. That upended some of the highest-profile prosecutions in recent state history and potentially leaves residents whose tap water turned toxic no path to accountability in criminal court.

State prosecutors said they were reviewing the decision. It was not clear whether they would file new charges related to the crisis, which led to the deaths of at least nine people from Legionnaires’ disease and elevated lead levels in thousands.

In other legal news, Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Manhattan federal court for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to abuse underage girls.

8. Serena Williams lost in the first round of Wimbledon in her first singles match in a year, defeated in a thrilling third-set tiebreaker by Harmony Tan of France.

From the start, Tan kept Williams guessing and stretching. It was a lopsided performance from Williams, the greatest women’s player of her era, as the 40-year-old tried to shake off the rust from a year-old injury and outplay the 115th-ranked Tan.

In the men’s round, Rafael Nadal defeated Francisco Cerúndolo in four sets. Matteo Berrettini, a finalist last year, withdrew after testing positive for the coronavirus.

For tennis fans, “The Tennis Podcast” has become the conscience of the game and how the sport communicates with itself. It all started around a dining room table.

9. A food crawl powered by the crawl stroke.

A group of swimmers in Brooklyn sometimes splashes for miles during “foodie swims” for delicacies like barbecue and pizza.

Capri Djatiasmoro, who is 70 and has been organizing the swims since 2010, swam more than a mile on Sunday for a lobster roll around Coney Island. Between bites she said that people were ravenous after long swims and that “knowing this lobster roll was here for me was good motivation.” Next up: a 10-mile Key lime pie swim from Coney Island to Red Hook.

10. And finally, how to choose a song for karaoke.

Just because you like a song doesn’t mean you should sing it, and many classic songs — like those by Whitney Houston and Journey — should probably be avoided unless you’re a trained vocalist, warns Garvaundo Hamilton, who won the Karaoke World Championships in 2020 and who spends at least four hours a day singing to himself.

And consider taking your drink neat. “Cold beverages aren’t good for your throat,” Hamilton said. But karaoke is meant to be fun: Expect to be supported so long as you’re making a heartfelt effort.

Have a melodious evening.

Brent Lewis compiled photos for this briefing.

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