Wednesday morning news: June 27, 2018

Primary elections » Voters in seven states went to the polls in primary and runoff elections Tuesday. Among the winners, former Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney…  

ROMNEY: Thank you! 

… running for the U.S. Senate in Utah.

ROMNEY: Well, it looks like our team won the primary, alright?!

Romney easily defeated Republican rival Mike Kennedy, winning more than 70% of the vote. He’ll square off against Democrat Jenny Wilson in the general election.

And a shocker in New York! Incumbent congressman Joe Crowley is the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, and some saw him as a possible future House speaker, if his party regained control. Instead, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Bernie Sanders organizer, won the nomination by double digits, unseating Crowley. She’ll face Republican Anthony Pappas in November.

Also in New York, former GOP congressman and convicted felon Michael Grimm came up well short in his bid win back his old House seat. Dan Donovan bested him by nearly 25 points.

In South Carolina, Governor Henry McMaster won his Republican runoff election.

MCMASTER: As President Trump says, we’re gonna keep on winning, winning, winning in South Carolina!

In another gubernatorial contest, Maryland Democrat Ben Jealous won the chance to challenge Republican Governor Larry Hogan.

In Colorado, Democrat Jared Polis and Republican Walker Stapleton will face off to decide who will succeed outgoing Governor John Hickenlooper.

Immigration update » A judge in California has ordered U.S. border authorities to reunite separated families within 30 days. And U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said children younger than five must be reunified within 14 days.  

She also issued an injunction on future family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit or doesn’t want to be with the child.

More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents in recent weeks under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy on illegal border crossings. The White House recently suspended that policy and is calling on Congress to act on immigration.

And lawmakers in the House will vote today on a broad immigration bill. It’s a product of compromises between conservative and moderate Republicans. Speaker Paul Ryan says the legislation aims to keep families together, while also strengthening border enforcement.

RYAN: We want to keep families together and we want to secure the border and enforce our laws. Our government, because of a court ruling or a law, should not be forced to choose between keeping families together and securing the border and enforcing our laws. We should be able to do all of those, and that is the legislation that we’re supporting and proposing.

Republican leaders have already delayed a vote on this bill twice because they didn’t have enough House conservatives to ensure it would pass. And that may still be the case. Many in the House say the bill likely will fail.

A group of Republicans is privately discussing a backup plan, which would focus more narrowly on the issue of family separations.

House says DOJ still not in compliance; Strzok testifies » Speaker Ryan also spoke out Tuesday about ongoing efforts by top Republicans to get answers from the Department of Justice. The DOJ had a Monday deadline to turn over documents to congressional panels investigating the department’s handling of the Russia probe. But it hasn’t handed over everything lawmakers have asked for.

Ryan says technical issues involved in gathering the information could slow things down, but …

RYAN: We do expect full compliance very, very soon. And if we do not get that, then we’re going to keep every option available to us, because again, the Legislative branch has a constitutional duty to do oversight over the Executive branch. 

Meantime, Peter Strzok will answer questions on Capitol Hill today. He’s the FBI investigator at the center of a scandal over anti-Trump text messages he exchanged with another FBI employee. Strzok worked on the Hillary Clinton email investigation and special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.  

Strzok is meeting behind closed doors with members of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees. And lawmakers are expected to call on him to testify publicly sometime soon.

More than 10,000 acres burned in California » AUDIO: Sound of fire

Wildfires continue to scorch thousands of acres in Northern California, as fire crews use bulldozers to clear vegetation and hem in the flames. The blaze has consumed more than 10,000 acres so far.

Thousand of residents have been forced to evacuate. Lake County Sheriff Brian Martin said officers have been going door-to-door to try and get people out of harm’s way.

MARTIN: We drove every single road, wherever we saw a driveway with some sort of structure up there, we went up there and tried to make contact. Some of the people came and answered the door, some didn’t. 

The biggest blaze in the area, nicknamed the Pawnee Fire, was just five percent contained as of Tuesday.

Lake County is about a hundred miles northwest of Sacramento. And it’s only an hour-and-a-half away from Santa Rosa, where wildfires destroyed nearly 250,000 acres last year.

Gosnell movie lands distribution deal » A feature film about the trial of abortionist and convicted murderer Kermit Gosnell will finally make its way to theaters this fall. WORLD Radio’s Kristen Flavin has more.

KRISTEN FLAVIN, REPORTER: The film is called Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer. It explores his trial and how, for years Kermit Gosnell got away with murdering babies outside of the womb at his West Philadelphia abortion facility.  

The movie was made in 2014. But given the pro-abortion lobby’s strong influence in Hollywood until now, distribution companies, and even major streaming services, were unwilling to touch it.

But on Tuesday, the film’s producers announced they finally have a distribution deal in place. And the Gosnell movie will open in as many as 750 U.S. theaters this October.  

Reporting for WORLD Radio, I’m Kristen Flavin.

I’m Kent Covington. Straight ahead: More big news from the Supreme Court. Plus, J.C. Derrick with the story of an unaccompanied minor. This is The World and Everything in It.

(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer) In this Wednesday, June 20, 2018 photo Mitt Romney smiles during a campaign event, in American Fork, Utah. 

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.