“Biden administration suspends Trump-era oil leases in Alaska's Arctic refuge. Plans for the first-ever drilling program in the pristine 19-million-acre site are on hold. The decision is the latest twist in more than 30 years of fights over how to manage some of the U.S.'s last unspoiled wilderness. Oil prices hit multiyear highs on Tuesday.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“TULSA — President Biden promised Tuesday to ‘fight like heck’ against Republican efforts to restrict voting, using the anniversary of a racist massacre here to respond to Democrats' growing anxiety that his low-key approach was threatening fair elections and their own electoral future.
Biden announced that he was tapping Vice President Harris to marshal an effort against the increasing array of Republican-led state laws that restrict voting in various ways, a campaign Biden condemned as “un-American.”
‘This sacred right is under assault with incredible intensity like I’ve never seen,’ Biden said, adding that June should be a ‘month of action’ on Capitol Hill and taking what appeared to be a shot at Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), suggesting they often side with Republicans.” Read more at Washington Post
“First gas pipelines, now meatpacking: Ransomware cyberattacks are getting increasingly close to basic American necessities.
The White House said it's ‘engaging directly with the Russian government’ after meatpacking giant JBS received a ransom demand from criminals suspected to be in Russia.
Between the lines: Five JBS plants totaling 20% of U.S. beef packing supply are currently offline because of the hack, Bloomberg reports.
‘In the U.S., JBS accounts for about a quarter of all U.S. beef capacity and roughly a fifth of all pork capacity.’
The big picture:Colonial Pipeline was taken offline last month because of a cyberattack.
In March, a cyber-espionage unit hack backed by the Chinese government resulted in 30,000 U.S. victims.
Earlier this year, the U.S. intelligence community assessed that Russia was responsible for the major SolarWinds attack.
Microsoft disclosed Thursday that the same Russian hackers behind the SolarWinds breach had launched a new wave of cyberattacks.” Read more at Axios
“The White House is facing partisan battles on several fronts as we enter the summer months. President Joe Biden is hoping talks with GOP leaders will break the stalemate on his much-touted infrastructure plan soon. Biden has also asked Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the administration’s efforts on voting rights amid several state efforts to restrict voting access and procedures. Some Democrats want Congress to pursue federal voting rights legislation, but that would likely be met with several obstacles among the deeply divided chambers. Meanwhile, after Senate Republicans blocked legislation to form an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is making plans for a possible House-led investigation instead -- without GOP support.” Read more at CNN
“The US Chamber of Commerce has announced a nationwide initiative to address the worker shortage in the US. According to the organization, there were a record 8.1 million job openings in the United States in March 2021, and about half as many available workers for every open job across the country as there have been over the past 20 years. The Chamber has suggested removing barriers that prevent people from entering the workforce, and helping people acquire skills needed for certain jobs. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry identified four reasons why it’s so hard for companies to hire workers right now: scant childcare, ongoing health concerns, more competition, and changes in expectations and tolerance for working conditions.” Read more at CNN
“The World Health Organization has approved a Covid-19 vaccine made by Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac for emergency use. The decision will allow CoronaVac to be used in WHO's vaccine-sharing program, COVAX, which seeks to provide equitable global access to immunizations. In Peru, the country's prime minister announced a revised Covid-19 death toll of 180,764; more than double the previously reported count. That leaves Peru with the highest coronavirus-related death rate per capita in the world. Meanwhile, thousands of emails to and from Dr. Anthony Fauci during the early days of the pandemic have been published by some news outlets, revealing a grueling schedule for one of the country's top virus experts. They also provide a glimpse into how quickly information evolved as the pandemic progressed.” Read more at CNN
“A 41-year-old man from eastern China is the first human to contract the H10N3 strain of bird flu , Chinese officials said, adding that the infection was a result of accidental cross-species transmission. Authorities in China said the risk of widespread transmission is low and there are no other human cases of H10N3 reported elsewhere in the world. While it’s possible for some avian viruses to jump from birds to humans, they so far don’t have the capability of transmitting between humans, said Jürgen Richt, director of the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases with the National Institutes of Health.” Read more at USA Today
“The Supreme Court is entering the self-imposed final month of the term, but several high-profile cases still need attention. There’s a challenge to the Affordable Care Act on the docket, as well as a major dispute out of Philadelphia that pits claims of religious liberty against the LGBTQ community. Decisions on voting rights, policing and NCAA rules are also outstanding. Politicians also will be looking out for any retirement plans of Justice Stephen Breyer, 82. If he were to depart, it would open the door for President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats to replace him with a much younger liberal.” Read more at CNN
“Democrats held on to a suburban House seat in New Mexico on Tuesday, with state Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D) easily winning the Albuquerque-area district filled until this spring by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
Stansbury defeated state Sen. Mark Moores, who worked to make the race a referendum on Albuquerque’s rising crime rate. Republicans, hopeful that suburban voters might abandon Democrats over their embrace of police reform, were stymied by a Stansbury campaign that emphasized her own support for law enforcement funding.
Stansbury’s victory, projected by the Associated Press little more than one hour after polls closed, will give Democrats 220 seats in the House to 211 for Republicans, offering a bit more breathing room to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ahead of an expected summer push on infrastructure spending. Two Republicans will face each other in the runoff for another vacant House seat, in Texas, on July 27. Two open seats in Ohio, split between the parties, will not be filled until November, and a safely Democratic seat in Florida will remain vacant until January 2022.” Read more at Washington Post
“Authorities continue their search Wednesday for three people in connection with a shooting at a Miami banquet hall that left two dead and 21 more injured over the weekend. Police have revealed no clear motive but said the shooting apparently was linked to a rivalry between two groups. The incident was part of six known instances of gun violence in Miami since Thursday .Rapper DaBaby was detained for questioning and released over a separate shooting on Ocean Drive, South Beach, on Monday that wounded two people. Police said two suspects are now charged in that case.” Read more at USA Today
“Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, signed a bill banning transgender female student-athletes from competing in women’s sports.” Read more at New York Times
“President Biden recognized June as Pride Month, while pushing for LGBTQ equality and calling out some states for targeting trans youth in ‘discriminatory bills.’” Read more at Axios
“Michael Flynn is trying his best to take back his apparent endorsement of a violent military coup in the United States—despite his comments being caught on video. On Sunday, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser appeared at a Dallas QAnon conference and was asked by an audience member ‘Why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here? ‘Flynn responded: ‘No reason. I mean, it should happen here.’ After his comment was reported by media outlets, Flynn rushed to Telegram to disavow his own comment. ‘Let me be VERY CLEAR,’ he wrote. ‘There is NO reason whatsoever for any coup in America, and I do not and have not at any time called for any action of that sort.’ He then went on to add annotations to what he said to make it appear like an innocuous statement, writing that his intended message was: ‘There is no reason it (a coup) should happen here.’ QAnon believers have cited the Myanmar coup as an example of how Trump could be reinstated as president.” Read more at CNN
“Across the country, Republicans and Democrats are clashing over what schools should or shouldn’t teach about systemic racism.” Read more at New York Times
“The editor in chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association, one of the country’s pre-eminent medical research journals, is stepping down after the publication produced a podcast episode and a tweet that questioned the existence of racism in medicine.
Howard Bauchner, a pediatrician at Boston University School of Medicine who has edited the journal since 2011, was placed on leave in March and the journal’s publisher, the American Medical Association, said at the time the incident was being reviewed.
On Feb. 24, JAMA’s official Twitter account posted a message that read in part, ‘No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care?’ The message urged readers to listen to an episode of a JAMA podcast hosted by Edward Livingston, a top editor at the journal, in which, according to several news reports, he said, ‘Many people like myself are offended by the implication that we are somehow racist.’
The JAMA tweet went viral and it, along with the podcast discussion, provoked widespread indignation on social media and among research doctors, some of whom pledged to boycott JAMA by refusing to submit papers to the journal or provide peer review for its publications.
The Institute for Antiracism in Medicine, a nonprofit that promotes racial-equity issues, circulated an online petition calling for a formal review of Dr. Bauchner’s handling of the incident and asked for changes in the publication’s editorial priorities. The petition, which stopped short of demanding that Dr. Bauchner step down, garnered more than 9,000 signatures.
The podcast episode and the tweet have since been deleted. In place of the podcast on the JAMA website is a recording of Dr. Bauchner apologizing for the discussion.
‘Comments made in the podcast were inaccurate, offensive, and hurtful, and inconsistent with the standards of JAMA,’ Dr. Bauchner said in the recording. ‘Racism and structural racism exist in the United States, and in healthcare.’” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Biden's budget aims to modernize government tech. The White House is focusing the bulk of a proposed $58.4 billion IT spending plan on agency-wide upgrades, maintenance, cybersecurity and an accelerated push to the cloud.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Biden visited the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. ‘For much too long, the history of what took place here was told in silence,’ he said.” Read more at New York Times
“Israel’s new government. An anti-Netanyahu coalition has until the end of today to announce a new Israeli government as negotiations go down to the wire. If a coalition deal can be reached, Naftali Bennett is expected to become prime minister in a rotating agreement with his senior coalition partner Yair Lapid. Benny Gantz, who is expected to retain his defense minister role in the shakeup, will travel to Washington on Thursday to request $1 billion in emergency military aid to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome defense system and to purchase more bombs for its air force.
Israel’s Knesset also voted today for a new president—a largely ceremonial role. Issac Herzog, the former Labor Party leader, won with 87 of 120 votes and will replace Reuven Rivlin on July 9.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that tribal police officers with sufficient cause can stop and search non-Indians traversing reservations, the latest in several recent decisions that in ways large and small have affirmed limited sovereignty for Native American nations.
Indian tribes have jurisdiction over Indians for crimes committed on reservations, but non-Indians typically fall under the authority of federal or state authorities. Reasoning that a non-Indian’s 2016 drug arrest in Montana stemmed from a tribal officer’s investigation, federal trial and appellate courts threw out the conviction.
Tuesday’s decision, however, found that tribes hold basic authority on reservations to safeguard the welfare of their members, including the legal power to make safety checks on suspicious cars stopped along the public right-of-way.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“As Texas becomes less Republican, its Legislature is veering right.” Read more at New York Times
“The Federal Election Commission has fined the National Enquirer’s parent company $187,500 for ‘knowingly and willfully’ violating election law by making a payment in 2016 to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with former president Donald Trump years before he was elected.
The decision came in response to a complaint made more than three years ago by the nonprofit government watchdog group Common Cause, which was notified of the FEC’s findings Tuesday.
The group had alleged that the company’s $150,000 payment to McDougal months before the 2016 election was effectively an illegal in-kind corporate contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign. The payment allegedly benefited Trump’s campaign by suppressing McDougal’s story of an alleged relationship with Trump before voters went to the polls.” Read more at Washington Post
“New data on the 2020 election show that former President Donald Trump drew substantial support in battleground states from voters who had cast ballots intermittently or sat out all prior elections, despite being old enough to vote. Whether this new pool of voters participates in next year's midterm elections will be central to races across the U.S. In Pennsylvania, more than 600,000 2020 voters had cast general-election ballots for the first time despite previously being eligible. More of these voters registered as Republicans than Democrats by about 6 percentage points. The data help explain how Trump won 11 million more votes than in 2016, but also illustrated the gamble behind his campaign, which focused most intensely on reaching working-class and rural voters in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and other battlegrounds. While he gained with those who have inconsistent voting records, Republicans overall lost support from professional-class and suburban voters, a group that votes more consistently. Analysts from both parties say Republicans' new voter base might be one that needs an extra push to turn out again.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A drought along the California-Oregon border is infuriating farmers and killing fish.” Read more at New York Times
“Former president Donald Trump’s company has again hired a broker to sell the lease to its D.C. hotel, according to two people familiar with the discussions, a second attempt to unload the property after the pandemic thwarted a previous effort.
The Trump Organization previously listed the Pennsylvania Avenue hotel, in the federally owned Old Post Office Pavilion, in the fall of 2019. When covid-19 struck, many hotels closed either completely or partially due to government shutdowns, and the company pulled the property off the market.
Now, with Trump under investigation by prosecutors in New York and the economy beginning to take off, his company is trying again, hiring the brokerage firm NewmarkGroup to market the lease, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share private business discussions.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Virginia Military Institute has tolerated and not addressed ‘institutional racism and sexism,’ and the institution should be held accountable to make sure it implements a series of reforms, an independent investigation of the state-supported military college found.
‘VMI’s overall unwillingness to change — or even question its practices and traditions in a meaningful way — has sustained systems that disadvantage minority and female cadets and faculty, and has left VMI trailing behind its peer institutions,’ an investigative team from law firm Barnes & Thornburg wrote in a report published Tuesday. ‘If VMI refuses to think critically about its past and present, and to confront how racial and ethnic minorities and women experience VMI, it will remain a school for white men.’
Investigators proposed a reform plan and recommended that the Lexington military institute submit quarterly reports to the state. The report also suggested Gov. Ralph Northam and the General Assembly form a committee to monitor the progress and address when VMI may be falling short on making improvements.
Since taking over as superintendent in the fall, retired Army Maj. Gen. Cedric T. Wins has emphasized that he will ensure that VMI fosters a community that prioritizes diversity and inclusion so that any cadet can succeed.” Read more at Roanoke Times
“Tesla failed to oversee Elon Musk’s tweets, SEC says. Securities regulators told the company last year that its CEO's use of Twitter had twice violated a court-ordered policy requiring his tweets to be preapproved by company lawyers, according to records obtained by the Journal.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The European Commission will tomorrow propose the introduction of digital wallets that offer access to a range of services across the European Union for the bloc’s 450 million citizens, a further step toward closer integration.” Read more at Bloomberg
“A dispute over whether to rotate the presidency of the Pan-African Parliament descended into chaos, with lawmakers exchanging death threats and scenes of fisticuffs broadcast from the proceedings. The legislative arm of the African Union meeting near Johannesburg has been unable to elect a new president as a result. Discussions were abandoned again yesterday after members failed to heed an appeal for calm.” Read more at Bloomberg
“AU suspends Mali. The African Union has suspended Mali’s membership for the second time in less than a year following last week’s coup in which interim President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane were arrested and pressured to resign by the Mali’s military. The African Union has also threatened Mali with sanctions if it did not embrace ‘an unimpeded, transparent and swift return to the civilian-led transition.’ Assimi Goita, the leader of the August coup which toppled Mali’s previous government, assumed the role of president last Friday. The AU’s move follows a similar suspension by the West African bloc ECOWAS on Sunday.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Canada’s mass graves. After the remains of 215 children were found last week at a former Indigenous residential school in Canada, Indigenous groups are now calling for a search for more unmarked mass graves at residential school sites throughout the country. The children, some as young as three, were buried in British Columbia at Kamloops Indian Residential School, one of the state-funded institutions where about 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly sent between 1831 and 1996 to be ‘assimilated’ into white Canadian society in what the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called a ‘cultural genocide.’
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that the discovery was not an ‘isolated incident,’ and that looking for more mass graves is ‘an important part of discovering the truth,” but he did not commit to any plans.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“41 companies on the 67th annual Fortune 500 are led by women CEOs —an all-time high, the magazine reports:
For the first time, two Black women are running Fortune 500 businesses — Roz Brewer of No. 16 Walgreens Boots Alliance, and Thasunda Brown Duckett of No. 79 TIAA.
Making history at the highest-ranking business ever run by a female CEO: Karen Lynch of No. 4 CVS Health.
The top 10:
Walmart
Amazon
Apple
CVS Health
UnitedHealth Group
Berkshire Hathaway
McKesson
AmerisourceBergen
Alphabet
ExxonMobil
Full list. ... Methodology.” Read more at Axios
“Global oil prices. Oil prices rose to their highest level of the pandemic period as Brent crude futures traded at over $70 a barrel for the first time in two and a half years. The rise reflects expectations of greater fuel demands as the U.S. and Chinese economies show signs of recovery heading into the summer, and builds on the confidence of OPEC+ countries, who agreed to continue easing oil supply restrictions through July.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Lives Lived: Raimund Hoghe was born with a spinal deformity and doubted he could ever dance. Yet he made a career as a choreographer and incorporated his body into his performances. Hoghe died at 72.” Read more at New York Times
“The Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Phoenix Suns and now face a 3-2 deficit in their first-round playoff series. Here arethree takeaways from Game 5.” Read more at USA Today
“100,000 — The approximate number of manufacturing jobs added in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Nevada from January 2017 to January 2020, making up 30% of U.S. job growth in that sector. The open land, lower tax rates and growing supply of workers have attracted companies producing everything from steel to electric vehicles.
11.4% — New York City's unemployment rate, almost twice the national average. Still, many small businesses are struggling to find workers. New York's unemployment benefits can total up to $804 a week and some say they could act as a disincentive to looking for a job. But some people say they're still having trouble finding work or simply don't want to return to the dead-end jobs they previously held.
$2.1 billion — The sum Johnson & Johnson owes 20 women who won a civil judgment in a Missouri court over claims that the company's talcum powder causes ovarian cancer. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from J&J, leaving in place last year's ruling by a Missouri appeals court.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
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