The Sunday Subject – June 16, 2024

Hunter Biden was found guilty of lying about his drug use to purchase a gun in 2018.

Hunter Biden will be sentenced at a later date. He is also due to stand trial in September for allegedly failing to pay taxes from 2016 to 2019.

The Supreme Court ruled that a ban on bump stocks was unconstitutional.

The ban, which was introduced by Donald Trump in 2018 after the Las Vegas mass shooting, was shot down by a 6-3 margin, with all conservative judges voting in favor. Bump stocks transform semi-automatic weapons, which require the shooter to pull the trigger to fire each bullet, into nearly automatic ones.

South Africa’s parliament elected Cyril Ramaphosa to a second term as president.

The vote came after the African National Congress, which failed to retain its majority in parliament for the first time since free elections, reached a deal with the Democratic Alliance (the main opposition party) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (a Zulu nationalist party). 

The hard right made gains across Europe after elections to the European Parliament.

The hard right took the most votes, although the European People’s Party (representing the center-right) and the Socialists and Democrats (the center-left) remain the biggest voting blocs. In France Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally party took a third of the vote, more than double that of Renaissance, Emmanuel Macron’s party. In a surprise announcement Macron dissolved the National Assembly and called a snap election. In Germany the Social Democrats, the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, took only 14% in its worst result ever in a national poll, while the opposition Christian Democrats came first and the hard right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came second.

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