Weekly Review
The Supreme Court—which has declined to hear challenges to NSA data collection, gender-based draft registration, workplace religious accommodations, and the secrecy of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s opinions—heard arguments on upholding a Mississippi law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy and could overturn Roe v. Wade.1 2 3 4 5 “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor during the proceedings. “We’ve never seen abortion rights move large numbers of Democrats in national elections, but we’ve also not seen in half a century the rolling back of those rights we’re likely to see next year,” David Axelrod said of the U.S. midterm elections.6 The parents of a 15-year-old boy who fatally shot four people and wounded seven others at his high school with a handgun his father had bought him on Black Friday were charged with and pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter after they were caught hiding inside an art studio.7 8 “Merry Christmas! ps. Santa, please bring ammo,” tweeted Representative Thomas Massie alongside a photo of his family holding guns.9 Joe Biden, whose administration declined to sign an international agreement banning killer robots, met with the CEOs of Mattel, Kroger, Best Buy, and other large retailers to discuss supply chain issues.10 11 “Thank you. You’ve been really—really cooperative,” the president said to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon.12 The cause of a pervasive stench in Carson, California, was identified as a fire at a warehouse that contained wellness and beauty products.13
The former Kansas senator and presidential candidate Bob Dole, who supported the 1964 Civil Rights and 1965 Voting Right acts but actively opposed affirmative action, died at 98.14 15 The French presidential candidate and right-wing comedy pundit Éric Zemmour, who has railed against immigration, Islam, birth control, and Alfred Dreyfus’s innocence, delivered a nearly hour and a half long speech after being freed from a protester’s headlock.16 17 18 “If I stand before you today, I feel above all gratefulness and humility,” said Angela Merkel during a ceremony that marked the end of her tenure as German chancellor and included a military marching band playing Nina Hagen’s “You Forgot the Color Film.”19 The speaker for the House of Commons called for a police investigation at the Palace of Westminster after cocaine was reportedly detected in 11 of the 12 bathrooms there.20 Barbados cut all ties with Queen Elizabeth.21 It was revealed that the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein gave Ghislaine Maxwell, a friend and former classmate of Prince Andrew’s, at least $30.7 million during the years they were together, and that Maxwell had given household staff a manual that instructed them to “Remember that you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, except to answer any question directed toward you.”22 23 In an interview, Sarah Ferguson said that she was “maybe the most persecuted woman in the history of the royal family.”24
No arrests were made in connection to a 200-child brawl at a trampoline park in Tampa, Florida.25 In Houston, a plumber found envelopes containing $200,000 in cash and $400,000 in checks that were stolen in 2014 behind a toilet in Joel Osteen’s church.26 Colombian authorities intercepted hundreds of insects and tarantulas being smuggled to Germany.27 “If you cannot tell by my voice, the boys had one hell of a weekend,” said a Minnesota man who contracted the COVID-19 omicron variant at an anime convention in New York City.28 29 In New Hampshire, where, at most, 9 percent of all hospital beds are available, a man who placed razor blades inside supermarket pizza dough was sentenced to nearly five years in prison.30 31 “Don’t let one incident hold you back,” said a U.K. teen who was mauled by a crocodile in Zambia.32—Violet Lucca
