“Liberal activists and Democratic lawmakers are angling to use a planned Senate vote Tuesday on broad legislation to overhaul election access, campaign finance and government ethics — which is expected to fail because of solid Republican opposition — as an inflection point in a major last-ditch push to change Senate rules and pass voting rights legislation before the end of the summer.
Advocates of federal intervention who have been spurred to action by the raft of new, more restrictive state voting laws passed by Republican legislatures face a steep uphill battle after Tuesday’s vote. No GOP senators are expected to vote to even begin debating legislation, and several Democratic senators have made it clear that they oppose a move that could allow further action — eliminating the 60-vote supermajority rule known as the filibuster.
But top party leaders are betting that a show of firm GOP intransigence in Tuesday afternoon’s procedural vote will prompt movement among the handful of wary Democrats. In a fiery floor speech Monday that served, in part, as a veiled appeal to members of his own caucus, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) hammered the point that Republicans were threatening to block even a discussion of voting rights.” Read more at Washington Post
Police officers push back demonstrators shooting tear gas next to St. John’s Church on June 1, 2020. (Jose Luis Magana/AFP/Getty Images)
“A U.S. judge on Monday dismissed most claims filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., Black Lives Matter and others in lawsuits that accused the Trump administration of authorizing an unprovoked attack on demonstrators in Lafayette Square last year.
The plaintiffs asserted the government used unnecessary force to enable a photo op of President Donald Trump holding a Bible outside of the historical St. John’s Church. But U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of Washington called allegations that federal officials conspired to make way for the photo too speculative.
The judge’s decision came in a 51-page opinion after the Justice Department requested she toss four overlapping lawsuits naming dozens of federal individual and agency defendants, as well as D.C. and Arlington police, in the June 2020 incident.
Friedrich also ruled that federal defendants such as then-Attorney General William P. Barr and then-acting Park Police chief Gregory T. Monahan are immune from civil suits and could not be sued for damages, and that Black Lives Matter as a group could not show it was directly injured by actions against individual demonstrators.
The judge did allow litigation to go forward challenging federal restrictions on protests and other First Amendment activity at Lafayette Square across from the White House, and against local D.C. and Arlington County police agencies that supported the operation.
The lawsuits stem from confrontations last June when military personnel along with federal and local law enforcement officers forcibly cleared the square. Officials used batons, clubs and spray and fired projectiles as more than 1,000 largely peaceful demonstrators gathered to protest the killing of George Floyd. Images of violence before Trump made his way to the church drew a national backlash and the nation’s top military official later apologized for walking with Trump before television cameras that day.” Read more at Washington Post
“Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib became the first active NFL player to say he's gay. Nassib, 28, said on Instagram that he's coming out because ‘representation and visibility are so important,’ Axios Sports reports.
He's also donating $100,000 to the Trevor Project, which provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth.
In 2014, Michael Sam became the first openly gay player to be drafted into the NFL. He didn't make a roster out of training camp, but paved the way for more acceptance in the locker room.” Read more at Axios
Michael Allio/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
“For years, NCAA athletes have been unable to profit from the benefits their star power generates for their colleges. A new Supreme Court ruling found that the policy violates antitrust law, a landmark decision in an ongoing fight for student-athletes' rights.” Read more at WSJ / Brett Kendall and Louise Radnofsky
“In a rare 9-0 ruling, the Court found that the NCAA’s rule denying colleges the ability to provide education-related benefits to men’s and women’s basketball players and football players violated antitrust laws, forming a monopoly in which individual schools and conferences could not attract players through such benefits.” Read more at ESPN
“As a result of the ruling, the NCAA cannot ban schools from offering scholarships, internships, or educational equipment such as computers. A conference or school could still set policies banning such practices, but those schools would then be at a disadvantage when competing for the commitment of a player.” Read more at Washington Post / Robert Barnes
“In the majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the NCAA was engaging in ‘horizontal price fixing in a market where the defendants exercise monopoly control,’ and then asking for an exception to the Sherman antitrust laws that such a practice violates.” Read more at CNBC / Tucker Higgins
“In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh went even further in describing the NCAA’s violations, opening the door for a wider legal argument that could be used when the issue of student-athlete pay comes up. He rejected the NCAA's claim that its entire product is defined by the notion that its workers do not earn a fair market rate.” Read more at CNN / Ariane de Vogue and Chandelis Duster
“Meanwhile, the issue of whether to pay any student-athlete whose name, image, or likeness is used in universities’ promotional content is tantamount to a different court case, which asks for the NCAA’s rule to be rejected and for damages based on the compensation athletes would have received.” Read more at USA Today / Steve Berkowitz
“More than a dozen states have already passed laws that allow student-athletes to be paid for the use of their name, image, or likeness from other sources, seven of which go into effect in July. Though they could still face NCAA penalties for doing so, the current legislative and judiciary environment makes a rule change, either by choice or by law, possible.” Read more at NBC News / Pete Williams
“White House officials head to Capitol Hill today for a briefing on the status and details of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure proposal — a fresh push by President Biden to find a compromise with Republican senators, Axios' Hans Nichols reports.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) indicated last evening that he and the so-called ‘group of 20’ would try to advance the talks before the Senate leaves at the end of the week for the July 4 recess.
If today's meeting goes well, Biden is inclined to meet with the senators to try to advance the talks. He hosted Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) separately yesterday.
The big picture: Senate negotiators for the bipartisan infrastructure bill are trying to create momentum for a ‘too-big-to-fail’ package by adding an equal number of Democratic and Republican co-sponsors.
Progressives remain leery and are aiming for much more spending, potentially in multiple packages. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told Axios she won't support a package if ‘when the train leaves the station, childcare is left on the platform, along with clean energy.’” Read more at Axios
“President Biden is expected to lay out an anti-crime strategy this week, focusing on gun crimes as part of an effort to stem the rise in homicides across the country at the beginning of what his administration and experts believe will be a tumultuous summer.
Biden’s planned remarks Wednesday will put the White House at the forefront of a delicate issue that has dogged him and the Democratic Party in the past and carries potential political consequences for them. Administration officials are eager to show that the president is attuned to the problem and taking concrete steps to reduce crime, people familiar with the plans said.
The new push comes as chunks of the Democratic coalition tug in different directions: Some on the far left want to dismantle traditional policing while others see liberal slogans from 2020 such as ‘defund the police’ as a reason for underwhelming election results and concerned that spiking crime will only exacerbate the political fallout that the slogan wrought.” Read more at Washington Post
“Medicaid enrollment surged during the pandemic, report shows.More than 80 million people—a record number—have health coverage through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to new data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Donald Trump never did much to hide his dangerous belief that the US justice department and the attorneys general who helmed it should serve as his own personal lawyers and follow his political orders, regardless of norms and the law.
Former senior DoJ officials say the former president aggressively prodded his attorney generals to go after his enemies, protect his friends and his interests, and these moves succeeded with alarming results until Trump’s last few months in office.
But now with Joe Biden sitting in the Oval Office, Merrick Garland as attorney general, and Democrats controlling Congress, more and more revelations are emerging about just how far Trump’s justice department went rogue. New inquiries have been set up to investigate the scale of wrongdoing.
Trump’s disdain for legal principles and the constitution revealed itself repeatedly – especially during Bill Barr’s tenure as attorney general, during most of 2019 and 2020. During Barr’s term in office, Trump ignored the tradition of justice as a separate branch of government, and flouted the principle of the rule of law, say former top justice lawyers and congressional Democrats.
“After weeks of warnings about the growing dangers of coronavirus variants, the Delta variant may be responsible for a six-fold increase in hospitalizations in one Missouri city. A hospital CEO in Springfield said most new patients there are unvaccinated and appear to have not observed basic pandemic precautions. Health experts worry more local spikes like this could be on the horizon. We’re now about two weeks away from the Biden administration’s self-imposed July 4 deadline to reach a 70% partial vaccination rate among US adults. And while the reported 65.4% seems promising, vaccination rates have slowed to a crawl. Meanwhile, vaccine advisers to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are set to meet tomorrow to discuss a handful of reports linking treatable heart inflammation to the coronavirus vaccine in youths and young adults.” Read more at CNN
“U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., defended his affiliation with an exclusive beach club after a reporter, describing its membership as ‘all white,’ questioned him about it.” Read more at USA Today
“New York City is now the largest US jurisdiction to implement ranked-choice voting as the city's primary elections get underway today. Under this system, voters rate their top five choices in order of preference instead of picking just one -- a change that allows the city to avoid separate runoff elections in crowded mayoral primaries in which no one is expected to reach the 50% threshold to win outright. (The November general election will use a standard ballot.) The problem? It could take weeks to learn the full results. Thirteen Democrats and two Republicans are running in the mayoral primaries; they include former 2020 presidential candidate Andrew Yang and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer. Other decisions on the ballot, like for a new Manhattan district attorney, could have wide-ranging political consequences.” Read more at CNN
“The United States, European Union, United Kingdom and Canada rolled out fresh sanctions on Belarus yesterday in a coordinated response to President Alexander Lukashenko and his government's forced landing last month of a Ryanair flight and subsequent arrest of an opposition journalist. Dozens of people and entities are affected by the sanctions, which include US visa restrictions on 46 officials. The flight diversion and arrest of journalist Raman Pratasevich sparked international outcry. Pratasevich's appearances on Belarusian state TV since then have prompted opposition members and observers to suggest he showed signs of being tortured.” Read more at CNN
“$300,000 — The amount that publicly traded companies with headquarters in California could be fined if they fail to include at least one woman on their boards. A federal appeals court ruled that an investor may sue the state over the 2018 law that requires boards to include at least one woman by the end of 2019, and to include at least three by the end of 2021 if the board has at least six members in total.
500,000 — The number of Covid-19 deaths surpassed in Brazil. About 2,000 people are dying each day, seven times as many people per capita than in hard-hit India. The Gamma strain of the virus, responsible for most of the new infections in Brazil, has been found to be up to 2.2 times more contagious than previous versions. Of the 10 countries with the highest daily death rates per capita, seven are in South America.
2.7 — The number of seconds by which 12-time Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte came up short in his bid to make the U.S. Olympics swim team. He was eliminated after his finish in the 200-meter individual medley, his signature event. Lochte left the 2016 Rio Olympics in disgrace after a late-night incident at a gas station and had hoped to rebuild his reputation in Tokyo. Since 2016, he has become a father of two and says the strains of parenthood made training more difficult.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Netflix inks a deal with Steven Spielberg.
The filmmaker struck a multiyear agreement to make movies for Netflix, a huge deal for the streaming giant as it faces stiff competition from rivals such as Disney and Amazon. The deal carries symbolic weight in Hollywood, with Spielberg in 2018 having called films that are primarily watched at home TV movies. ‘You certainly, if it's a good show, deserve an Emmy, but not an Oscar,’ he added. The content produced by the acclaimed moviemaker has the potential to add more prestige to Netflix, which this year received 36 Oscar nominations for its films.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Lives Lived: Robert Quackenbush was a prolific children’s book author. His characters included Henry the Duck, Detective Mole and Miss Mallard, a crime-solving duck who got her own television series. He died at 91.” Read more at New York Times
“American Airlines slashed 950 flights in July to provide breathing room amid a travel surge and pilot shortage, USA Today reports.
The proactive cancellations amount to 1% of flights that were planned. Travelers were automatically rebooked.
The backdrop: This weekend, American scrubbed 120 flights Saturday and 176 Sunday — roughly 6% of its mainline operation that day — because of a lack of crew, The Wall Street Journal reports.” [Axios]
“Retail workers, drained from the pandemic and empowered by a strengthening job market, are leaving jobs like never before.
Americans are ditching their jobs by the millions, and retail is leading the way with the largest increase in resignations of any sector. Some 649,000 retail workers put in their notice in April, the industry’s largest one-month exodus since the Labor Department began tracking such data more than 20 years ago.
Some are finding less stressful positions at insurance agencies, marijuana dispensaries, banks and local governments, where their customer service skills are rewarded with higher wages and better benefits. Others are going back to school to learn new trades, or waiting until they are able to secure reliable child care.
‘It was a really dismal time, and it made me realize this isn’t worth it,’ said 23-year-old Aislinn Potts of Murfreesboro, Tenn., who left her $11-an-hour job as an aquatic specialist at a national pet chain in April to focus on writing and art. ‘My life isn’t worth a dead-end job.’” Read more at Washington Post
The Great Barrier Reef in Australia. The reef should be listed as ‘in danger’ because of environmental threats, UNESCO said. (Kyodo News/AP)
“SYDNEY — The Great Barrier Reef should be added to a list of world heritage sites that are ‘in danger,’ according to United Nations officials, a move Australian officials plan to challenge as politically motivated.
UNESCO, the world body’s educational, scientific and cultural agency, on Monday recommended placing the massive coral ecosystem on the list, ahead of a July meeting of the World Heritage Committee in Fuzhou, China.
The UNESCO report urges Australia to take ‘accelerated action at all possible levels’ to address the threat from climate change. Australia is one of the only wealthy nations that has not pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and it is facing pressure to do so.
The country’s environment minister, Sussan Ley, said in a statement on Tuesday that Australia would ‘strongly oppose’ the draft recommendation, which she said was a ‘back flip on previous assurances from UN officials.’
Biden’s plan to combat climate change leaves coal-loving Australia an outlier
‘We have been singled out,’ she said in an interview on Australia’s state broadcaster. T’here’s about 82 properties that are at risk of climate change … and they’ve singled out Australia for this unprecedented approach.’” Read more at Washington Post
“In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, as White House officials debated whether to bring infected Americans home for care, President Donald Trump suggested his own plan for where to send them, eager to suppress the numbers on U.S. soil.
‘Don’t we have an island that we own?’ the president reportedly asked those assembled in the Situation Room in February 2020, before the U.S. outbreak would explode. ‘What about Guantánamo?’
‘We import goods,’ Trump specified, lecturing his staff. ‘We are not going to import a virus.’
Aides were stunned, and when Trump brought it up a second time, they quickly scuttled the idea,worried about a backlash over quarantining American tourists on the same Caribbean base where the United States holds terrorism suspects.
Such insider conversations are among the revelations in ‘Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History,’ a new book by Washington Post journalists Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta that captures thedysfunctional response to the unfolding pandemic.” Read more at Washington Post
“CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — A plague of mice that has ravaged vast swathes of eastern Australia has forced the evacuation of a prison while authorities repair gnawed electrical wiring and clear dead and decaying mice from walls and ceilings.
Around 200 staff and 420 inmates will be transferred from the Wellington Correctional Center in rural New South Wales state to other prisons in the region during the next 10 days while cleaning and repairs take place, Corrective Services Commissioner Peter Severin said on Tuesday.
‘The health, safety and wellbeing of staff and inmates is our No. 1 priority so it’s important for us to act now to carry out the vital remediation work,’ Severin said.
Millions of mice have caused havoc in the grain-growing region of Australia’s most populous state for months, devouring crops and haystacks as well as invading homes, businesses, schools, hospitals and prisons.” Read more at AP News
“Blinken returns to Europe. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken begins a weeklong trip to Europe today, making his first stop in Berlin, where he is due to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. His travel includes calls on Paris—the first visit to France by a senior Biden administration official—and Rome, where he will co-chair an anti-Islamic State coalition meeting before participating in a G-20 foreign ministers meeting in the southern Italian cities of Bari and Matera.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Global vaccine production. The World Health Organization said on Monday it was in the early stages of establishing a “technology transfer hub” in South Africa to speed the production of COVID-19 vaccines across the African continent. The WHO said the new facility would work as a training center where “interested manufacturers from low- and middle-income countries can receive training and any necessary licenses to the technology,” while WHO Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan said it was possible for South Africa to produce vaccines “within 9 to 12 months.” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa hailed the news as “historic” but said it would still push for a waiver on intellectual property rights related to COVID-19 vaccines.” Read more at Foreign Policy