--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Tuesday, June 28th. I'm Shamita 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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--:-- Shamita Basu: When the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to an abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion that the court should also reconsider other rulings that he called demonstrably erroneous.
--:-- Amy Howe: So there is a line of cases involving a right to privacy, the right to use contraception, the right to same-sex intimacy, the right to same-sex marriage. And many people are concerned that with the court's decision overruling Roe v. Wade, that those cases could also be in danger.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Justice Thomas is targeting a legal concept called substantive due process. It basically allows courts to protect rights even if they're not spelled out in the Constitution.
--:-- Amy Howe: Howe explains how some worry that the logic in the abortion case could be used to roll back other rights. They would say, for example, applying the same reasoning that the court applied in Dobbs, there's not necessarily a history of a right to same-sex marriage or a right to same-sex intimacy and would use the same language to strike down those rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, Justice Samuel Alito specifically said in his majority opinion that it should not be used to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion. But the court's three liberal justices wrote a dissent warning about what could happen to other rulings, saying, quote, no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.
--:-- Amy Howe: Beyond the latest abortion case and its implications, court watchers like Howe are focused on how the newest conservative justices are using their voting power to change the court.
--:-- Shamita Basu: We've seen two major cases already involving religion, one striking down a main law that barred public funding from going to private schools that provide religious instruction. And then another one on Monday involving a high school football coach who was fired for praying at midfield after the games.
--:-- Amy Howe: And in both of those cases the court unquestionably moved the law to the right. The court's conservatives also showed their power in a recent ruling expanding gun rights.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And Howe says future cases that the court has lined up suggests that they're eager to do more. They will hear oral arguments in the fall in the challenge to consideration of race in undergraduate admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
--:-- Amy Howe: They have already agreed to take up a lawsuit brought by a graphic designer who does not want to, because of her Christian beliefs, create wedding websites for same-sex couples.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So the court is continuing to tee up these high-profile and potentially controversial decisions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Supreme Court is also set to rule this week on Biden versus Texas. This is the case that's about whether the Biden administration has to maintain the remain in Mexico policy from the Trump era. It kept asylum seekers from Central America out of the United States while their cases were being processed.
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--:-- Shamita Basu: A fatal case of migrant smuggling is a reminder of just how relevant that court's ruling will be. 46 people were found dead inside a tractor trailer in San Antonio yesterday.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This is believed to be the deadliest human smuggling incident of its kind in American history. Temperatures inside the truck were extreme. San Antonio is experiencing its hottest June on record.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Some survivors, including children, were taken to hospitals. Rescuers say that they were hot to the touch and suffering from heat exhaustion and stroke.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They were badly in need of water, and they were too weak to get out of the truck on their own.
--:-- Ron Nuremberg: The plight of migrants seeking refuge is always a humanitarian crisis, crisis, but tonight we are dealing with a horrific human tragedy.
--:-- Shamita Basu: So I would urge you all to think compassionately and pray for the deceased.
--:-- Ron Nuremberg: Guatemalan officials say some of the victims are from that country and there are indications that others may have been from Honduras.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In recent years millions of people have fled these countries and El Salvador, trying to escape poverty and violence.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Catholic Archbishop of San Antonio wrote, once again, the lack of courage to deal with immigration reform is killing and destroying lives.
--:-- Shamita Basu: After the September 11th attacks, close to 200 pregnant women who were exposed to toxins in New York were monitored for a study.
--:-- Rachel Yehuda: When these women gave birth at the seven-month wellness visit, we saw that many still had PTSD symptoms and that if they did, they and their babies had lower cortisol levels.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That meant they had something in common with another cohort Dr. Yehuda had been studying, the children of Holocaust survivors.
--:-- Rachel Yehuda: That led Dr. Yehuda and her team to conclude that trauma experienced by one generation can be passed down to the next.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she recently wrote about these findings for Scientific American.
--:-- Rachel Yehuda: We know that we inherit genes from our parents and that a lot of our personality traits and a lot of our physical attributes are a result of the genes that are transmitted from our mothers and our fathers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But somehow the experiences of our parents also seem to matter a lot. Not just what's in the genetic code, but also what happened to them.
--:-- Rachel Yehuda: Many of the adult children of Holocaust survivors that Dr. Yehuda observed spoke about having this unsettling feeling. Grief, guilt, obligation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There was some idea that the other shoe was about to drop. There was some idea that none of the good times were going to last.
--:-- Rachel Yehuda: And that any minute they would need to respond to a danger as their parents had.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Those dangers that a parent faced can actually change how their genes function, which can then get passed on to their children.
--:-- Rachel Yehuda: The idea of behavioral epigenetics is that there are environmental influences that can turn genes on and off.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And so it stands to reason that this overall design is meant to help facilitate our coping and adaptation.
--:-- Rachel Yehuda: And to the extent that offspring also have some of these changes, many of these changes could be about achieving resilience or achieving greater coping and adaptation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Dr. Yehuda says she hopes her research will help us realize that trauma isn't temporary. It's something that stays with us throughout our lifetimes and can even shape how our future kids deal with adversity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Serena Williams is back on the court today for the first time in a year. Many people in the tennis world think that this Wimbledon appearance could be one of her last.
--:-- Serena Williams: Yeah, Wimbledon was tough last year. I was just, I felt like I just last year was tough. I felt like I was injured for most of the year and then I ripped my hamstring.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That was tough. I don't think anyone ever wants to do that.
--:-- Serena Williams: In Sports Illustrated, John Wertheim writes about all the ways Serena made tennis better.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She and her sister Venus literally changed the makeup of the sport. It's more diverse now.
--:-- Serena Williams: More than half of the top 100 American women playing tennis are black.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Serena pushed tennis to embrace technology to make better line calls.
--:-- Serena Williams: She's pushed the boundaries of fashion in the sport.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And she's been vocal about what it means to be one of the greatest athletes of all time and play through pregnancy and motherhood.
--:-- Serena Williams: Wertheim points out Serena faces long odds at this year's Wimbledon. She's 40.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's facing much younger opponents. She hasn't played a professional match in about a year.
--:-- Serena Williams: But he says win or lose, her legacy is secure.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And the setbacks underscore what's special about Serena Williams. She's both superhuman and still just human.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app, including coverage of a newly announced January 6th hearing starting today at 1 p.m. Eastern.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News Plus partners.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
