The Supremes: The court issued rapid-fire decisions yesterday on executions, voting districts, air pollution, and Texas abortion clinics.

The court gave Oklahoma the go-ahead to use an execution sedative that three inmates had argued is insufficient to avoid excruciating pain. The sedative midazolam is injected before three other drugs that admittedly would cause extreme pain. Three executions last year using midazolam went badly.

The court also ruled that an independent redistricting commission in Arizona established by ballot initiative is constitutional. In response to politically drawn lines for voting districts, the voters took the job away from the legislature. After losing elections to Democrats in some tossup districts, Republican legislators sued saying they shouldn’t be cut out of the process, thereby demonstrating why they were cut out of the process.

In its third major decision of the day, the court threw out Obama administration regulations to cut emissions of mercury and other toxic substances from coal fired power plants. Republicans called the regulation a “war on coal.” The court said the regulation failed to take into account the enormous cost of meeting the new standards.

The court also blocked a Texas law that would have left the state with only nine abortion clinics. The decision allows Texas abortion clinics to stay open while the court decides whether to hear arguments.

Greek Tragedy: Greece goes into default today unless it repays $1.8 billion in loans. The country’s creditors have made a last-minute offer but Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says any deal must be run by the voters in a snap referendum. He said he doesn’t think the EU will kick Greece out of the Euro Zone and a vote against austerity will help negotiate a better deal.

World: Egypt’s chief prosecutor was killed yesterday by a bomb in Cairo. Officials said a car bomb was parked along Hisham Barakat’s route to work and was probably remotely detonated. Several cars were incinerated. It was an ambitious target and could be a signal of increasing anti-government violence.

>An Indonesian military aircraft crashed into a neighborhood in the city of Medan, killing dozens of people. At least 45 people are reported dead so far.

Nation: Captured New York prison escapee David Sweat has been telling authorities that he and his partner Richard Matt had planned to go to Mexico. Instead they spent weeks stumbling through the woods surviving on food and alcohol stolen from hunting cabins. The two separated when Matt became too slow for Sweat.

Things went bad from the start when prison employee Joyce Mitchell failed to show up in her car when the two emerged from a manhole cover outside the Clinton Correctional Facility, according to authorities The NY Daily News is calling Mitchell the “Shaw-Skank.”

>At least two dozen homes burned in a 4,000-acre wildfire in Wenatchee in central Washington. The temperature hit 109 on Sunday. Rain moderated conditions for a while yesterday but forecasters predict more hot and dry weather that’s perfect for fire.

The Obit Page: Ben Wattenberg, the author, commentator and neo-conservative Democrat who was once a prominent voice in American politics has died at age 81 of complications following surgery. In the mid-1970s he urged the leftward leaning Democrats to move to the center and appeal to the “moderate majority” of the “middle-aged, middle-class, middle-minded, unyoung, unpoor, unblack.” Instead, the party that took his advice was the Republicans.

You’re Fired: NBC Universal has cut its business ties with Donald Trump because he said insulting things about Mexican immigrants in his presidential announcement speech. “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” No more Miss USA or Miss Universe on NBC.

Burning the catwalk behind him, Trump in a statement called NBC “weak” and said “they will stand behind lying Brian Williams, but won’t stand behind people that tell it like it is, as unpleasant as that may be. “

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