“The House voted yesterday to set up an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 riot. And even though Republican leadership was against it, 35 Republicans voted for the legislation. That chunk of GOP vote, while comparatively small, represents a revolt of sorts against their leader, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who pushed strongly for the bill’s defeat. It also sets up a tougher battle in the evenly divided Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has also voiced his opposition. A Republican vote against the commission is generally seen as an indication of loyalty to former President Trump, or at least the political landscape he shaped. A US Capitol Police officer anonymously sent a letter excoriating Republicans who voted against the commission, expressing ‘profound disappointment.’” Read more at CNN
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on Wednesday signed legislation banning abortions in the state as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, a measure slammed by critics as one of the strictest and most extreme measures in the nation and hailed by antiabortion supporters as a landmark achievement.
The Texas bill known as S.B. 8, described as a ‘heartbeat ban’ abortion measure, prohibits the procedure the moment a fetal heartbeat has been detected. By banning abortion after the six-week mark, many women in Texas who are not even aware they are pregnant will not be allowed to get the procedure done in the state. The bill, which goes into effect Sept. 1, does not include exceptions for women impregnated as a result of rape or incest, but offers a provision for medical emergencies.
Abbott, who had publicly offered his support of the bill, celebrated what he deemed a victory for Texans while surrounded by Republicans gathered to watch him sign the proposal in Austin: ‘The heartbeat bill is now law in the Lone Star State.’” Read more at Washington Post
“Winding down | Israel and Hamas appeared close to a cease-fire deal that would see fighting paused within two days, after Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to de-escalate the conflict. It would unfold in stages, starting with the cessation of Israeli strikes on Hamas infrastructure, facilities and leaders while the Palestinian militant group would halt rocket attacks, the New York Times reported.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is preparing to introduce a resolution on Thursday disapproving of the U.S. sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel, according to a draft obtained by The Washington Post.
The resolution aims to halt the planned sale to Israel by the Biden administration of JDAMs, or Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and Small Diameter Bombs, as the worst hostilities in years continue between Israel and Hamas. The resolution needs only a simple majority to pass the Senate; but if it were to be vetoed by President Joe Biden, it would need a two-thirds majority in both chambers to take effect.” Read more at Washington Post
“President Joe Biden will sign the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act into law Thursday, according to his official schedule. The House overwhelmingly passed the bill Tuesday, which sent it to Biden's desk as reports of hate incidents against Asian Americans have drastically climbed for more than a year. After a mass shooting in Georgia in March that killed eight people – six of whom were women of Asian descent – lawmakers in both chambers of Congress called for quick action on the legislation, which will become law during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., said Tuesday ‘after a year of the Asian American community crying out for help,’ that ‘Congress is taking historic action.’” Read more at USA Today
“Jobless claims are expected to fall this summer. The number of people receiving unemployment benefits is expected to drop this summer, as more than three-quarters of Republican-led states plan to end an extra $300-a-week in federal jobless benefits early.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A Covid-19 booster shot will likely be needed within a year of initial vaccination to keep up immunity, Dr. Anthony Fauci says. He added that variant-specific boosters may not be needed. That’s yet another reason to get even more Americans vaccinated, which is a top priority as initial demand and enthusiasm flags. In Europe, the EU has agreed to allow entry to vaccinated travelers from countries with low infection rates, easing longstanding travel restrictions in the bloc. An approved list of ‘safe’ destinations should be coming this week, but it's not clear when these changes will be in place.” Read more at CNN
“India has recorded the highest single-day Covid-19 death toll.
The country recorded 4,529 deaths in the previous 24 hours on Wednesday, topping the high set by the U.S. in January when it recorded 4,475 deaths. India recently has seen the fastest surge in cases in any country in the world. Hospitals were running short on beds, oxygen and Covid-19 medications. With crematoriums running out of space, some people in villages resorted to the Hindu practice of water burials, known as Jal Samadhi. The practice is against the law. ‘In this current scenario of the pandemic, death has been demeaned, death has been derogatory. It has become ugly,’ said Ashok Kumar Kaul, a retired professor of sociology at the Banaras Hindu University in Uttar Pradesh. New cases appear to have peaked, falling below 300,000 in recent days after topping more than 400,000 in April.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department says it will release within 30 days of an incident the names of deputies who shoot a suspect. That’s a reversal of past procedures, as the department sometimes concealed deputies' names for months during investigations. LA County is one of several police departments mulling its standards of transparency and accountability in recent months. In Louisiana, new bodycam video released by the Associated Press shows a Black man named Ronald Greene being tased, kicked and punched by officers before his death in 2019. The video, along with AP reporting on footage not publicly shown, appears to conflict with initial police reports, which did not mention troopers using force or arresting Greene. The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is investigating, along with the FBI.” Read more at CNN
“Washington State enacted an overhaul of the police, including bans on chokeholds and on no-knock warrants.” Read more at New York Times
“The University of North Carolina denied tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, a writer for The New York Times Magazine who worked on the 1619 Project.” Read more at New York Times
“The Yankees pitcher Corey Kluber threw a no-hitter against the Texas Rangers, M.L.B.’s sixth this year.” Read more at New York Times
“Lives Lived: Lee Evans was one of several Black athletes who threatened to boycott the 1968 Summer Olympics. Instead, he smashed two world records and raised his fist at the medal ceremony. Evans died at 74.” Read more at New York Times
“FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — The Navajo Nation has by far the largest land mass of any Native American tribe in the country. Now, it’s boasting the largest enrolled population, too.
Navajos clamored to enroll or fix their records as the tribe offered hardship assistance payments from last year’s federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act. That boosted the tribe’s rolls from about 306,000 to nearly 400,000 citizens.
The figure tops the Cherokee Nation’s enrollment of 392,000. But it, too, has been growing, said tribal spokeswoman Julie Hubbard. The Oklahoma tribe has been receiving about 200 more applications per month from potential enrollees, leaving Navajo’s position at the top unstable.” Read more at Boston Globe
“$4.4 million — The size of the ransom paid by Colonial Pipeline to the hackers who shut down the largest fuel pipeline in the U.S. Joseph Blount, the company’s chief executive, said that even though he was uncomfortable, he authorized the payment because he wasn't sure how badly the cyberattack had breached the company's systems.
53% — The approximate share of New York residents over age 18 who were fully vaccinated as of Tuesday. The state lifted most mask requirements outdoors and in many indoor settings for fully vaccinated people. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said businesses could still screen customers for vaccination or continue to require masks for all.
11% — The percentage by which Spain's economy shrank last year. The European Union is expected to welcome back tourists to the bloc's countries this summer. The move would be a boon for Mediterranean nations such as Spain, which would struggle to afford another summer with few foreign tourists.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Fortune 500 firms have been scrambling to hire chief diversity officers in response to racial justice protests in the year since George Floyd's death, Axios' Erica Pandey writes.
The number of people with the title ‘head of diversity’ jumped 104% from 2015 to 2020, according to LinkedIn data. The number of people with the ‘chief diversity officer’ title increased 68%.
The CDO job — and the field of diversity and inclusion — are still new. And those stepping into the job face hurdle after hurdle.
Met with resistance in making systemic changes, many CDOs find themselves running one-off diversity trainings for staff, which don’t accomplish much.
The bottom line: Companies that don't hire diverse workforces will fall behind in appealing to an increasingly diverse population.” Read more at Axios
“Pay inequality is worsening by many measures, Axios' Hope King writes from the U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index (JQI).
Why it matters: Worker pay is at the heart of debates over the slowly recovering labor market.
The latest index finds that 55% of workers were in low-quality jobs (weekly wages below national average) vs. 45% in high-quality.
Broken down by race, the index shows drastic inequality: 28% of Hispanic American workers held high-quality jobs in 2020, compared with 29% of Black Americans and 61% of Asian Americans.
Since 2007, Black Americans have seen a 6% decline in job quality — versus a less than 1% decline for all workers, a 29% increase for Hispanic workers and a 66% increase for Asian American workers.
Axios is first to report the new findings from the group of research and industry analysts who publish the JQI monthly. They include economists from the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a trade group representing domestic businesses, including farmers and manufacturers.” Read more at Axios
“The Tony and Emmy Award-winning actor Billy Porter disclosed in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Wednesday that he learned he had H.I.V. in 2007 and hid the information from colleagues for over a decade, fearing discrimination in the entertainment industry.
‘I was trying to have a life and a career, and I wasn’t certain I could if the wrong people knew,’ Porter, 51, said in the interview. ‘It would just be another way for people to discriminate against me in an already discriminatory profession.’
He also described the shame he felt, having grown up in a Pentecostal church and in a very religious family, and how he had been afraid to tell his mother for 14 years. ‘It’s time to grow up and move on because shame is destructive — and if not dealt with, it can destroy everything in its path,’ he said of his decision to talk about the diagnosis now.
Porter said that he was able to ‘work through the shame’ through his role on the FX series ‘Pose,’ which centers on the ballroom scene during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s in New York City. Porter’s character, a ballroom M.C. and elder of the community, received a diagnosis of H.I.V. in the first season and struggles to share the information with the group.” Read more at New York Times
“Singer Demi Lovato announced they were nonbinary and changed their pronouns to they/them. Here's what that means.” Read more at USA Today
“Ford is pitching its electric F-150 Lightning pickup, unveiled last night, as a generator on wheels — with batteries that can power a home for three days in a blackout, Axios' Joann Muller writes from Detroit.
For construction or camping, owners can power tools or appliances from outlets in the truck's cabin, bed and ‘frunk’ — the massive front trunk where the engine would usually be.
The big picture: Electric vehicles have finally hit the mainstream. The Ford F-series pickup truck, America's most popular vehicle model, is going electric at a decidedly mass-market price: $39,974
Why it matters: Until now, EVs have appealed mostly to wealthy technology fans or environmentalists. The F-150 Lightning is aimed at everyday truck owners — making it a potential turning point in the electric vehicle revolution.
The truck can send your smartphone an alert if you're in danger of running out of juice.” Read more at Axios
“Thursday is Global Accessibility Awareness Day, which promotes digital access and inclusion for people living with disabilities. To mark the day, Apple will roll out SignTime , which lets customers communicate with AppleCare and other retail services by using American Sign Language in the United States, British Sign Language in the United Kingdom, and French Sign Language in France through a web browser. Customers visiting Apple Stores in those countries can also use SignTime to remotely access a sign language interpreter without booking one ahead of time.” Read more at USA Today
“A judge in Los Angeles will determine whether there is enough evidence for ‘That '70s Show’ and ‘The Ranch’ star Danny Masterson to stand trial accused of raping three women in the early 2000s. Graphic testimony at a preliminary hearing Wednesday saw a woman identified in court only as Christina B., who was five years into a relationship with Masterson, say she awoke one night to find he was raping her. Masterson, 45, has pleaded not guilty and his lawyer, Thomas Mesereau, has said he would prove his client's innocence.” Read more at USA Today
“The 103rd PGA Championship begins Thursday from Kiawah Island Golf Resort's Ocean Course in South Carolina. Collin Morikawa won last year's event, which was played in August due to the COVID-19 pandemic. He will open the tournament alongside 2021 Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama and 2020 U.S. Open winner Bryson DeChambeau. Tiger Woods, golf's most recognizable player, is still recovering from injuries sustained in a car accident and will not play.” Read more at USA Today
“Biden had tough words about conflicts in the South China Sea during his graduation address to the United States Coast Guard Academy. The President singled out maritime competition with Russia and China, and said the US has to protect critical international waterways to keep such powers from gaining undue influence. Just hours later, a US Navy warship sailed near disputed Beijing-controlled islands in the South China Sea, performing what the Navy calls a "freedom of navigation" operation. Beijing, which claims almost the entire body of water as its territory, balked at the move and said the warship violated its sovereignty.” Read more at CNN
“Nicolas Sarkozy is returning to a Paris courtroom for the second time in six months as judges scrutinize whether the former French president deliberately broke spending limits in his failed 2012 election campaign — one of a series of allegations of impropriety he’s faced since leaving office. As Gaspard Sebag explains, the case has become a symbol of the bitter infighting within the center-right party he once led.” Read more at Bloomberg
“There’s no easy road map for getting Kim Jong Un to a nuclear deal. Joe Biden might as well use Donald Trump’s.
That’s what South Korean President Moon Jae-in hopes to convince Biden at a White House summit Friday to do, as Jon Herskovitz,Justin Sink and Jennifer Jacobs report.
Moon has spent his political career seeking an ‘irreversible peace’ with his northern rival and is in danger of watching it slip away in the final year of his presidency. He wants Biden to endorse the bare-bones ‘Singapore declaration’ that Trump signed during his unprecedented meeting with Kim three years ago.
In it, Kim merely restated his longstanding policy by agreeing to ‘work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.’ So far he has taken no concrete steps toward scaling back his atomic arsenal.
In fact, he’s accelerated weapons development, rolling out a new missile in October believed capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads to all of continental U.S.
But the Singapore deal is the only one Biden has.
And there are signs the administration appears ready to concede that, as it continues to keep details of its new North Korean strategy close.
A senior U.S. official told reporters yesterday the president was looking to build on agreements made by the previous administration, including the Singapore statement.
That’s unlikely to be enough to restart talks. Kim remains bitter, burdened by United Nations sanctions and cloistered behind the borders of his isolated nation.
North Korea last year blew up a liaison office funded by Moon’s government and earlier this month accused Biden’s administration of girding for an ‘all-out showdown.’
The words were a warning that Kim could at any time return to North Korea’s preferred method of negotiation: weapons tests.” Read more at Bloomberg
“The Arctic Council begins. The Arctic Council meets today in Reykjavik as the eight Arctic nations of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States convene alongside delegates from Indigenous groups to discuss areas of coordination in the Arctic. The Russian and American representatives at the meeting, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, met in person for the first time on Wednesday. The two spoke for longer than expected—almost two hours—covering myriad issues including humanitarian access in Syria, the detention of U.S. citizens Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, and cooperation on Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea policy, according to a State Department readout.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Colombia’s protests. Colombia’s national strike committee comprising unions, students, and other civil society groups will meet with Colombian government representatives today as nationwide protests enter their fourth week. The protests, as Genevieve Glatsky reports in Foreign Policy, have led to deadly reactions from Colombia’s riot police, leading to calls for the United States to cut off security assistance to the country.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“China moves on cryptocurrencies. The price of Bitcoin plunged 30 percent before recovering on Wednesday after the Chinese financial regulator banned banks and other payment firms from offering services related to cryptocurrencies. In explaining the move, the regulator blamed the asset’s volatile pricing, adding that it was ‘seriously infringing on the safety of people’s property and disrupting the normal economic and financial order,’ the Chinese regulator said. The move comes as Beijing moves forward with its plan for its own digital currency.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Authorities in Australia have embarked on a quest to solve a decades-old mystery. The case involved a corpse found on an Australian beach in a suit and tie, along with cryptic items: Notes believed to be written in code, a suitcase full of clothes with labels removed, and a note in his hand bearing the Farsi words Tamam Shud, or ‘it’s finished.’
The unknown body, known as Somerton man, was exhumed on Wednesday, as researchers try to garner DNA which will be compared with that of a potential granddaughter. Anne Coxon of Forensic Science South Australia said she hopes new technology unavailable to investigators in the 1940s would be employed as her team ‘try and bring closure to this enduring mystery.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
The village of Curon, Italy, was submerged underwater in 1950 when Lake Resia was created. Now, tourists can see the once lost town after maintenance required the lake to be temporarily drained.Courtesy: Luisa Azzolini
“The lost Italian village of Curon is resurfacing for the first time in over 70 years. Hundreds of people lived there before it was flooded for a hydroelectric plant and the merger of two nearby lakes in 1950, according to BBC News.
The lake is being temporarily drained for maintenance, giving tourists and locals the chance to see the village for the first time. Check out more photos from the scene.” Read more at USA Today