News
June 30, 2022 – 5:00 pm (ET)
PBS NewsHour – June 29, 2022 (07:06)
NATO formalized its invitation to Sweden and Finland to join its alliance Wednesday, a historic expansion of the defense bloc that directly undercuts Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aims as his war in Ukraine grinds ahead.
The group collectively decided to approve countries’ applications to join after Turkey dropped its objections Tuesday, paving the way for NATO’s most consequential enlargement in decades.
“The accession of Finland and Sweden will make them safer, NATO stronger, and the Euro-Atlantic area more secure. The security of Finland and Sweden is of direct importance to the Alliance, including during the accession process,” the statement said.
The decision will now go to the 30 member states’ parliaments and legislatures for final ratification. NATO’s leaders said they expected the process to move quickly, allowing for an unprecedentedly swift accession and a show of unity against Putin.
PBS NewsHour – June 29, 2022 (08:52)
A year and a half after the deadly U.S. Capitol insurrection, the most memorable recounting of former President Donald Trump’s behavior that day came from a young woman who had graduated from college just a few years earlier.
Cassidy Hutchinson gave two hours of testimony on national television that cast Trump as enraged by efforts to keep his armed supporters from attending his speech before many marched to the Capitol and her boss at the time, chief of staff Mark Meadows, as unwilling to confront Trump and staring unresponsively at his cellphone during key moments.
Having once shed tears of joy after getting a White House internship, Hutchinson, now in her mid-20s, described how she grew disgusted by Trump’s refusal to stop the rioters. And in a single afternoon, she went from being a former junior White House staffer, to high-profile star witness, with the scrutiny that comes with it.
“We were watching the Capitol building get defaced over a lie,” she said.
When the January 6 House select committee announced Monday that it would be holding an emergency hearing the following day with a surprise witness, John Dean sounded a note of warning. Dean, the former White House counsel who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice during the Watergate scandal, noted there had only been one surprise witness during the Watergate hearings: Nixon aide Alex Butterfield, who revealed the existence of the secret taping system in the Oval Office.
“The January 6 Committee is dealing with a very high historical standard in springing a surprise hearing and witness tomorrow,” Dean tweeted. “If it is not really important information it’s going to hurt the credibility of this committee! Cancel now if you can’t match!”
Match it the committee did. The explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, not only provided lurid details of Trump’s indifference toward the violence at the Capitol and his rage at not being allowed to be present with the rioters, but also the careful efforts by the president’s team to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
Hutchinson, a young woman in her 20s, stood out for her willingness both to cooperate with the committee and to reveal damning details in her testimony against the notoriously volatile and vengeful president. She displayed a courage that men twice her age, with far more power and protection, have failed to summon.
June 29, 2022 – 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm (ET)
