PHOTO: ANDRE M. CHANG/ZUMA PRESS
“House committee votes for tech-sector curbs. Despite intensive lobbying by companies such as Google and Facebook, a package of six bills were passed, including one that requires the largest internet platforms to make it easier for users to transport their data to other platforms and even communicate with users on other platforms.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“The NIH deleted early Covid-19 sequences from its database at the request of Chinese researchers.
Chinese researchers directed the U.S. National Institutes of Health to delete gene sequences of early Covid-19 cases from a key scientific database, raising concerns that scientists studying the origin of the pandemic may lack access to critical pieces of information. The missing sequences were discovered by Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, who asked NIH why they had been removed from its database. The sequences are unlikely to change researchers' understanding of the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic in Wuhan, but Bloom said their removal sows doubts about China's transparency in the investigation into the pandemic’s origin. Bloom is a co-author of a letter published in May in the journal Science that criticized the World Health Organization's report in March on Covid-19’s origins and called for a deeper investigation into two leading hypotheses: that the virus entered the human population after escaping from a lab, or that it jumped to humans naturally from infected animals.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Brandi Levy had expressed her anger over not making the varsity cheerleading team.Danna Singer/ACLU, via Getty Images
“The Supreme Court rules in favor of a high-school cheerleader in a free-speech case.
An expletive-laden Snapchat message posted by a high-school cheerleader has now been deemed protected free speech by the Supreme Court. Posted in 2017 by then 14-year-old sophomore Brandi Levy after she failed to make the varsity cheerleading squad, the message contained a picture of herself and her friend extending their middle fingers with a caption that read: ‘F— school f— softball f— cheer f— everything.’ The school suspended Levy from the junior-varsity team for the school year, saying she had violated rules including prohibitions of foul language and unsportsmanlike conduct. In the decision, Justice Stephen Breyer said public schools as civic institutions had a duty to teach by example that unpopular speech is entitled to protection. ‘Schools have a strong interest in ensuring that future generations understand the workings in practice of the well-known aphorism, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,’ ‘ he wrote.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Following his successful effort to ban critical race theory in public schools, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expanded his war against student ‘indoctrination’ by signing three new bills yesterday, Axios Tampa Bay reporter Selene San Felice writes. The bills:
Require state colleges and universities to annually survey their students, faculty and staff about their beliefs to ensure ‘viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom.’
Prevent state colleges and universities from limiting student access to ideas ‘they may find uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.’
Create a K-12 civics curriculum that contrasts the U.S. with communist and totalitarian governments using ‘portraits in patriotism.’
Why it matters: DeSantis, viewed as a top 2024 presidential candidate and a leader in the GOP culture war, hinted his administration might cut funding to schools that don't comply.” Read more at Axios
“The court ruled against a California regulation that let union organizers recruit farmworkers at their workplaces, its latest blow to organized labor.” Read more at New York Times
“Police officers chasing someone over a minor crime cannot always enter homes without a warrant, the court ruled.” Read more at New York Times
“A woman from Indiana is the first Capitol rioter to be sentenced. She will serve no prison time.” Read more at New York Times
“Michigan Republicans published an unsparing debunking of voter fraud claims in the state.” Read more at New York Times
“Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, endorsed changing how the military handles sexual assault cases.” Read more at New York Times
“The Biden administration is forcing out Rodney Scott, the U.S. Border Patrol chief, who is a supporter of Trump-era immigration policies.” Read more at New York Times
“As U.S. troops start pulling out, the Taliban score victories in Afghanistan.
The Taliban swept through northern Afghanistan last week amid a U.S. withdrawal that has seen the pullout of more than half of 3,500 American troops. On multiple occasions in recent days, government forces surrendered to the Taliban, leaving behind stockpiles of weapons and convoys of Humvees. A new assessment by the U.S. intelligence community concluded that the Afghan government could collapse as soon as six months after Sept. 11, when the American military withdrawal is scheduled to be completed. Other Western officials think the government’s collapse could come as soon as three months after the U.S. withdrawal. White House officials are now urging the military to slow down the pace of the pullout, which could include keeping Bagram Air Base, north of the capital of Kabul, open for now. That would allow the U.S. military to maintain another evacuation point for U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization personnel and for the tens of thousands of Afghans who supported the U.S. over the years. The Taliban said their recent territorial advances ‘will be the beginning of the end of the ills birthed by occupation.’” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Vehicles on Interstate 95 travel past a project this year to add three lanes to the I-95 Rappahannock River Crossing in Virginia.
“Senators and White House officials have reached a bipartisan deal on an infrastructure bill, according to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. That’s a significant breakthrough on one of President Biden’s biggest legislative goals, but there’s much left to be done. Senators are slated to meet with Biden today to discuss details of the plan. A lot of Republicans may still not support it. And some progressive Democrats still plan to support a bipartisan version of an infrastructure package, then use parliamentary processes to pass a larger, big-ticket bill without bipartisan support. The current agreement is worth around $1.2 trillion, with $579 billion in new spending.” Read more at CNN
“A massive search and rescue effort was underway Thursday outside Miami after a 12-story, oceanside condo building partially collapsed into a massive pile of rubble, authorities said.
Miami-Dade Rescue Fire said on Twitter that more than 80 teams, including technical rescue teams, were on the scene in Surfside, a few miles north of Miami Beach. The building, part of Champlain Towers, is an oceanside condo built in 1981 with more than 100 units, according to the Miami Herald.
Authorities had no word yet on casualties and could not say how many people lived in the building.” Read more at USA Today
“A judge handed down the first sentence related to the January 6 Capitol riot -- and rebuked the GOP in the process. A woman from Indiana had pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor for trespassing inside the Capitol and avoided jail time with a probation sentence. But US Judge Royce Lamberth said some Republican lawmakers’ attempts to downplay the insurrection are ‘utter nonsense,’ adding, ‘I don't know what planet they were on.’ Meanwhile, an alleged member of the Oath Keepers pleaded guilty to charges related to the insurrection, marking the first plea deal among the Capitol riot cases against extremist groups. The Oath Keepers is a far-right coalition of largely ex-military and law enforcement that organized paramilitary training and attendance at political events. A handful of others have filed guilty pleas, admitting their roles in the riot.” Read more at CNN
“Just 10% of the world’s population is fully vaccinated from Covid-19, new data shows. In the US, two groups are being hit especially hard by the virus right now: Black Americans and younger people. Throughout the pandemic, Black people have been disproportionately affected by Covid-19, accounting for about 12.5% of the population but more than 15% of total deaths, according to the CDC. The average age of people dying from the virus has also recently shifted younger. Adults under 40 made up about 3% of Covid-19 deaths in May, more than double their proportion of total deaths since the pandemic began. Meanwhile, a Covid-19 outbreak at the US Embassy in Kabul has now ballooned to 159 cases, with several people on oxygen.” Read more at CNN
“Biden administration removes Fannie and Freddie overseer after court ruling. The decision to replace Mark Calabria as head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is the latest blow to investors betting that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be returned to private hands.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Hundreds of unmarked graves have been discovered at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Canada. The Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan is due to host a news conference today to announce the ‘horrific and shocking discovery.’ This tragedy comes after the remains of 215 children were found in late May buried near the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Indigenous leaders and residential school survivors in Canada called on officials to conduct a thorough investigation of every former residential school in the wake of that discovery. In recent years, Canada has been contending with the damaging legacy of the country’s residential schools, where thousands of mostly Indigenous children were separated from their families and forced to attend.” Read more at CNN
“2 — The number of members of the Ugandan Olympics delegation who have tested positive for Covid-19 upon arrival in Japan, despite vaccinations and pre-departure testing. Test results for the virus aren’t always perfect, so someone can test negative before boarding a plane but positive on arrival—and potentially be infectious to other passengers on that flight. That possibility raises the question of what will happen when Olympics participants arrive in Japan on a flight that turns out to include a Covid-positive passenger. The Ugandan scenario reveals potential vulnerabilities in plans to contain the virus during the Tokyo Olympics, set to open in a month.
$4.1 billion — The most recent amount of Berkshire Hathaway stock that Warren Buffett donated to philanthropy, as part of his goal to donate 99% of his net worth. Of that amount, Buffett distributed more than $3.2 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, from which he said he was stepping down as trustee. His announcement comes less than two months after the Gateses said they planned to divorce, and as the multibillion-dollar charity reshapes its leadership structure. Buffett made no reference to the foundation's new governance plans or to the divorce, but instead said he had been an inactive trustee for a long time. ‘My goals are 100% in sync with those of the foundation, and my physical participation is in no way needed to achieve these goals,’ he said.
$400,000 — The threshold of household income under which Americans won't have their taxes raised, according to a pledge that helped get Biden elected. Now that position is limiting ways to pay for a $1 trillion infrastructure proposal. The White House has turned down calls for increasing gas taxes, and as a result, the main tax-related option is stepping up the enforcement powers of the Internal Revenue Service. A recent estimate shows that as much as $1 trillion in owed taxes may go uncollected each year, and recent bipartisan negotiations among lawmakers focused on how much that tax-revenue gap could be closed by investing in the IRS.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Extremely low water levels in Lake Mead at the Hoover Dam this week.Justin Lane/EPA, via Shutterstock
“Climate change in action
Climate change has plunged the Western U.S. into its worst drought in two decades. And a record-breaking heat wave only made things worse.
In Arizona and Nevada, it’s been so hot that doctors warned people they could get third-degree burns from the asphalt. Wildfires raged in Montana and Utah. Power grids in Texas strained as officials asked residents to limit appliance use to avoid blackouts.
The levels in Lake Mead, which supplies water for millions of people, are at their lowest since the 1930s. In one California lake, the water was so shallow that officials spotted plane wreckage from a 1986 crash.
And that’s just in the U.S. Experts say global temperatures will keep rising as countries — and companies — fail to limit their planet-warming emissions. Smaller countries often pay the price for wealthier nations’ pollution through extreme weather. ‘Most of these gases have come from the United States, China, the European Union, Russia and other developed countries,’ Bernard Ferguson writes. Yet islands like the Bahamas, where Ferguson is from, ‘are on the front lines of the climate crisis.’
The problems in the West and around the globe are more evidence that climate change is already affecting us. But there are also reasons for hope.
What are the solutions?
For The Times Magazine’s climate issue, Ezra Klein spoke with experts to compare political progress in the U.S. with the scale of the crisis. ‘Our politics co-evolved with a century of fossil fuels, and so a huge portion of our regulations still favor the incumbent, which is fossil fuels,’ Saul Griffith, a scientist and founder of a nonprofit, said.
In Australia, Griffith said, a kilowatt-hour of energy generated by rooftop solar panels costs about a third of what it would from a U.S. power grid. ‘We can make everyone’s energy future cheaper, but politics has to work with technology, which has to work with finance,’ he said.
Cities have been adapting in other ways: Tucson, Ariz., is a national leader in recycling wastewater for irrigation and firefighting. Districts in California are investing billions into infrastructure to store water for future droughts.
More globally, another story in the magazine, by Aurora Almendral, focuses on decreasing the shipping trade’s carbon footprint. Cargo vessels are among the largest machines on the planet, and shipping generates 2.9 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions — nearly as much as the entirety of South America. Some experts believe using wind through modern sails could considerably reduce that number.
Other companies are developing more environmentally friendly manufacturing techniques that would repurpose carbon dioxide into building materials, fuels, plastics and even fish food.” Read more at New York Times
Na Yeon Choi, Jane Park and Lydia Ko have all spoken up about the rise of anti-Asian hate in the country.Credit...Jim Wilson/The New York Times
“ATLANTA — Players of Asian descent have won eight of the past 10 Women’s P.G.A. Championships, but there is nothing cookie cutter about the winners. They include Shanshan Feng of China, who has worn tailored cow pants to reflect her fun-loving personality, and Sung Hyun Park of South Korea, who had a Korean word on her bag that translated to ‘I am different.’
More than five dozen Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are L.P.G.A. members, more than any league or tour in North American professional sports. Several other members have Asian roots, and their convergence on the Atlanta Athletic Club this week for the third major of the season throws into stark relief both their ascendancy and ancestry.
The golf course is roughly 15 minutes from two of the three massage businesses where eight people, six of them Asian women, were fatally shot in March in a crime that encapsulates the escalating violence against Asians in America during the pandemic.
The rise of anti-Asian hatred and bias has jolted the players out of their silence. For years, these women have endured microaggressions about their names, their appearance, even their success. At a time when Asians have been scapegoated in American communities for the spread of the coronavirus, players of Asian descent who show no fear on the golf course have grown uneasy, and outraged, enough that they are speaking out about what it means, and how it feels, to be Asian in the United States right now.” Read more at New York Times