“WASHINGTON — The Senate is set for a key vote Tuesday on a sweeping rewrite of voting and election law, setting up a dramatic test of Democratic unity on a top priority that Republicans are vowing to block.
Democrats appeared to be coalescing Thursday around changes to the bill that could win the support of moderate West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the lone Democratic holdout on the legislation. Yet they still faced lockstep Republican opposition that will likely leave Democrats back where they started: lacking the votes to overcome a Republican filibuster. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, called Manchin’s proposal ‘equally unacceptable.’” Read more at Boston Globe
“U.S. Catholic bishops overwhelmingly approved the drafting of a ‘teaching document’ that many of them hope will rebuke Catholic politicians, including President Joe Biden, for receiving Communion despite their support for abortion rights.
The result of the vote — 168 in favor and 55 against — was announced Friday near the end of a three-day meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that was held virtually.
The bishops had cast their votes privately on Thursday after nearly three hours of impassioned debate.
Supporters of the measure said a strong rebuke of Biden was needed because of his recent actions protecting and expanding abortion access, while opponents warned that such action would portray the bishops as a partisan force during a time of bitter political divisions across the country.” Read more at USA Today
“Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline legal official sanctioned by the U.S. government, won Iran's presidential election after his main rivals conceded defeat Saturday, state media reported.
Raisi is the chief of Iran's judiciary and was the runner-up in Iran's last presidential election in 2017. Incumbent Hassan Rouhani, a moderate, is stepping down because he has reached his term limit. Initial results showed Raisi won almost 18 million votes in the contest, dwarfing those of the race's sole moderate candidate.
Rouhani served two four-year terms and broadly speaking he sought more engagement with the West. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ultimately has the final say on all Iran's domestic and overseas policy. However, the election of a new Iranian president could impact a range of issues, internal and external.” Read more at USA Today
“A federal judge said Friday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can’t enforce its rules for coronavirus-era sailing against cruise ships in Florida starting July 18.
The decision was hailed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — who filed suit against the public health agency in April — as a ‘major victory.’
‘The CDC has been wrong all along, and they knew it, ‘DeSantis said in a statement, alleging that the agency was trying to ‘sink’ the industry. ‘Today, we are securing this victory for Florida families, for the cruise industry, and for every state that wants to preserve its rights in the face of unprecedented federal overreach.’
Under the 124-page ruling from U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday, the CDC’s conditional sailing order will become a ‘non-binding ‘consideration,’ ‘recommendation’ or ‘guideline’ ” when applied to Florida sailings on July 18.” Read more at Washington Post
Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
“First Britain, then the U.S.: The COVID-19 variant that was first identified in India is expected to be the dominant strain in America by late summer.
‘As worrisome as this delta strain is with regard to its hyper-transmissibility, our vaccines work,’ CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told ABC’s ‘Good Morning America.’
Why it matters: Large pockets of unvaccinated people let the virus mutate into stronger variants that could one day overwhelm our vaccines. If vaccination rates continue to slow in the U.S., the delta variant could fuel surges in pockets of the country this fall, write Axios' Alison Snyder and Eileen Drage O'Reilly. A national wave is unlikely. But some states have very low vaccination rates and could see localized outbreaks.
The big picture: These variants are getting much more contagious.
The delta variant appears to be about 64% more transmissible than the alpha variant that was first found in the U.K., which itself was roughly 50% more transmissible than earlier strains.
The bottom line: This won't be the last SARS-CoV-2 variant, and others could be more severe.” Read more at Axios
“U.S. stocks retreated Friday, as traders warily eyed the Federal Reserve for hints of where monetary policy is headed.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had its worst week since the week ended Oct. 30. The index of blue-chip stocks on Friday fell 1.6%, or 533.37 points, to 33290.08. For the week, it lost 3.45%.
The S&P 500 declined 1.3%, or 55.41 points, to 4166.45 on Friday, losing 1.9% on the week. That broke a three-week streak of gains. The Nasdaq Composite lost 0.9%, or 130.97 points, to 14030.38, as large technology stocks also fell. For the week, it was down 0.3%.
Policy makers had signaled Wednesday that they expect to raise interest rates by late 2023, sooner than they had previously anticipated. Sentiment waned again on Friday after Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis leader James Bullard said on CNBC that he expects the first rate increase even sooner, in late 2022.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“PHOENIX — Investigators on Friday were trying to determine why a gunman opened fire on vehicles and pedestrians for some 90 minutes across metropolitan Phoenix, leaving one person dead and a dozen others injured in the string of drive-by shootings.
Authorities believe a man they arrested after the shootings on Thursday acted alone. His identity hasn’t been released.
There were at least eight separate shootings in three cities, stoking fear throughout the region and shutting down parts of major freeways as police gathered evidence. Four people were shot, including the person who died.
Others were injured as bullets shattered glass or as their vehicles crashed. Authorities said the injured victims were all adults and expected to fully recover.” Read more at Boston Globe
“WASHINGTON — Barely a week into office, President Biden made a promise that signaled a sharp break from his predecessor: No member of his family would be involved in government.
But that vow did not extend to his senior staff and their relatives. In the first few months of Biden’s presidency, at least five children of his top aides have secured coveted jobs in the new administration. They include two sons and a daughter of the White House counselor, the daughter of a deputy White House chief of staff, and the daughter of the director of presidential personnel.
The pattern — which continued this week with the Treasury Department’s announcement that it was hiring J.J. Ricchetti, son of Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti — has drawn concerns from ethics experts, diversity advocates, and others. They say it is disappointing that Biden didn’t shift even further from the practices of Donald Trump’s presidency, which they felt reeked of nepotism and cronyism.
‘While it may not be as bad as appointing your son or daughter to a top government post as Trump did with Jared and Ivanka, it is still bad,’ said Walter Shaub, who served as director of the Office of Government Ethics from 2013-17. ‘Not as bad as Trump’ cannot be the new standard.’” Read more at Boston Globe
“LONDON — In a surprising result, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party has been easily defeated in a special election for a seat that it has held for decades.
The Liberal Democrats party, which was in a coalition government with the Conservatives between 2010 and 2015 before seeing its electoral fortunes wane dramatically, won Thursday’s election in Chesham and Amersham, 35 miles northwest of London.
Sarah Green, the Liberal Democrat candidate, picked up around 57 percent of the vote and won a seat the Conservatives have held since it was created in 1974. She added around 30 percentage points to the party’s result from the 2019 general election.” Read more at Boston Globe
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, left, drew both praise and criticism for an essay she wrote this week. A fellow writer, Akwaeke Emezi, said it was ‘designed to incite hordes of transphobic nigerians to target me.’ Credit...From left: Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images; Frances F. Denny for The New York Times
“For more than a decade, the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has coached and mentored African writers through her annual creative writing workshop. Held in Lagos and Awka in Nigeria, the program has more than 200 graduates, including rising stars like Ayobami Adebayo, whose debut novel ‘Stay With Me’ was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, and Jowhor Ile, the first Nigerian winner of the Etisalat Prize for Literature.
The workshops, with just 20 students out of thousands of applicants, are intimate and for some graduates, career-defining, leading to book deals, prizes and residencies.
‘We become, even if only briefly, a family,’ Adichie has said of the program.
But now, a rift between Adichie and one of her most prominent students, the writer Akwaeke Emezi, has spilled into public.
In a lengthy essay published on her website on Tuesday, Adichie accused a former student of publicly attacking her after a 2017 interview in which Adichie said, among other things, ‘I don’t think it’s a good thing to talk about women’s issues being exactly the same as the issues of trans women.’ Adichie held up the personal feud as a cautionary tale about how social media has been used by ‘certain young people’ as an ideological battering ram rather than a place to communicate and seek understanding.
‘There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness,’ she wrote. ‘People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature — the messy stories of our humanity — but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy.’
While Adichie did not name Emezi or any other students, Emezi soon responded on Instagram, saying that Adichie had published emails without seeking permission, and that the essay was designed to ‘incite hordes of transphobic nigerians to target me.’ In a later post, Emezi, who uses they/them pronouns and identifies as nonbinary, criticized the publishing industry for championing Adichie, the author of the novels ‘Americanah’ and ‘Half of a Yellow Sun.’
‘Adichie’s social capital originated from the publishing industry,’ wrote Emezi, whose memoir, ‘Dear Senthuran,’ was published last week. ‘You in the industry continue to platform her, laud her work with no mention of the harm her views inflict on the trans community, and on other writers.’
Through a publicist, Adichie declined to comment. Emezi did not respond to a request for comment.
The dispute — between prominent Nigerian writers whose work has broadened the international readership for contemporary African literature — echoes a larger debate about whether Twitter and other social media outlets have become too toxic, prone to posturing and virtue-signaling rather than honest expression. ‘What matters is not goodness but the appearance of goodness,’ Adichie wrote. ‘We are no longer human beings. We are now angels jostling to out-angel one another. God help us. It is obscene.’
Shortly after Adichie posted her essay, social media erupted. Her name was a trending topic on Twitter for hours, prompting tens of thousands of responses. Some people dissected and criticized her views on gender, while others agreed that some people use social media as a weapon.” Read more at New York Times
“Fears of ethnic cleansing: During closed-door talks in February, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and other ministers said they were ‘going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years,’ according to an EU special envoy.” Read more at Axios
“Hours after Israel made a deal to transfer 1 million doses of COVID vaccine to Palestinians, the Palestinian Authority called off the agreement, saying the vaccines ‘will expire soon.’ Go deeper.” Read more at Axios
“The American Red Cross asked the public to help replenish the depleted U.S. blood inventory amid a ‘severe’ national shortage. Go deeper.” Read more at Axios
“Former Vice President Mike Pence was met with boos and shouts of ‘traitor’ on Friday as he spoke at a conservative conference about Republicans reclaiming the majority in Washington, D.C.
‘I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican in that order,’ Pence said as the crowd cheered him on at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Orlando.
But during Pence's speech, attendees could be heard in video of the event yelling ‘traitor’ and booing the former vice president, even as others continued to cheer.
Reporters at the event posted on Twitter that those who tried to interrupt Pence’s speech either were removed or left the event.” Read more at USA Today
“Race for Global Tax Revolution Faces Hurdles in Last Stretch
The world’s richest nations have set the stage for a revolution in corporate taxation, but they still have their work cut out to achieve their overhaul. Isabel Gottlieb and William Horobin outline the multiple technical details that are unresolved.” Read more at Bloomberg“Hollywood is lining up behind a sweeping, Democrat-backed election reform bill, with some of the country's biggest stars using their platforms to make a last-minute push for the passage of the For the People Act.
In recent days, scores of celebrities — from Kerry Washington, to Katy Perry and Orlando Bloom, to John Legend — have been pulling out all the stops with high-profile moves, calling on Congress to pass H.R. 1 and S.1.
The legislation would require all states to offer mail-in ballots and automatic voter registration, as well as the implementation of new voting machines. It would also create an independent nonpartisan redistricting commission in an effort to get rid of partisan gerrymandering.” Read more at The Hill
“Former President Trump formally endorsed the top primary challenger to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in a Friday statement, making good on his promise to go after the Alaska Republican over her repeated criticisms and vote to convict him in his impeachment trial earlier this year.
In a statement disseminated by Trump’s leadership PAC Save America, the former president threw his support behind former Alaska Commissioner of Administration Kelly Tshibaka, casting her as a staunch supporter of his agenda.” Read more at The Hill
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