Desperate conditions in Cuba are fueling unprecedented protests in opposition to the ruling regime.
“Thousands of Cubans took to the streets to express their frustration over food and medicine shortages, following weekend protests that led to dozens of arrests. As the government contends with a worsening pandemic and the most difficult economic crisis in decades, citizens are calling for President Miguel Díaz-Canel to step down. A defiant Díaz-Canel has said, ‘They will have to go over our dead body if they want to overturn the revolution.’ In Cuba, where six decades of Communist rule have created a culture of fear, the protests are notable for their boldness and scale. Cubans demonstrated in more than a dozen cities. Foreign-policy analysts are expecting the government to ruthlessly crack down, including by potentially cutting off access to the internet and making arrests. Immigration to the U.S. has historically been a tool to limit political pressure at home for Cuban leaders, but this time appears to be different. ‘Nobody is shouting that they want to leave Cuba, ‘said Juan Juan Almeida, the son of one of Fidel Castro’s top lieutenants, who now lives in Miami. ‘They are calling for Díaz-Canel to resign.’” Read more at Wall Street Journal
After missing penalty kicks, England's Black soccer stars faced racist abuse.
“Sunday's European Championship finals between England and Italy was an opportunity for national unity, with England playing in its first major tournament final in 55 years. But after Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho, and Bukayo Saka, who are Black, missed penalty kicks in a shootout, they faced an outpouring of racist social-media posts, including slurs and comments laden with derogatory emojis. A mural of Rashford, in his hometown of Manchester, was defaced. In response, Twitter said it permanently suspended some accounts and removed more than 1,000 posts, and Facebook also said it deleted comments. The racism drew condemnations from U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson as well as Prince William. The posts highlighted what has long been a problem at international soccer games: Black players often face especially malicious threats simply for performing below fan expectations.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
The Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine is linked to a rare neurological disorder.
“The FDA issued a warning that the company's shot is linked to a small incidence of cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a disorder that can cause the immune system to attack nerves, causing temporary but potentially severe paralysis. The risk in the general population is about one in 1 million. Some 12.7 million people have received the one-dose vaccine. J&J said that while the chance of such cases is very low, it exceeds the rate of normally reported cases among the general population by a small degree. The risk of Guillain-Barré can occur with some influenza vaccines as well as the main shot to prevent shingles. The Food and Drug Administration has already attached a warning label to the J&J shot over its association with a rare blood-clotting disorder.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Texas state House Democrats left the state yesterday in an effort to block Republicans from passing a restrictive new voting law during a special legislative session. The session was specifically called to discuss more voter restrictions after state Democrats walked out in the final hours of the regular session to quash a similar piece of legislation. Already this year, Republican-led states including Florida, Georgia and Iowa have enacted restrictive new voting laws. Democrats in Congress have pushed measures that would expand access to the ballot box nationwide, but GOP opposition in the Senate has kept efforts from advancing. This afternoon, President Biden is set to give a major speech in Philadelphia on voting rights. “ Read more at CNN
“On Thursday, the Treasury Department begins monthly payments to families with children, a program created by the COVID stimulus in March, the N.Y. Times' Jason DeParle reports.
Why it matters: ‘With all but the most affluent families eligible to receive up to $300 a month per child, the United States will join many other rich countries that provide a guaranteed income for children ... Experts estimate the payments will cut child poverty by nearly half, an achievement with no precedent.’
The Treasury Department said 39 million households — covering 88% of U.S. children — will automatically begin receiving monthly payments through the expanded Child Tax Credit. The program is scheduled to expire in a year.
Between the lines: ‘The unconditional payments ... break with a quarter century of policy. Since President Bill Clinton signed a 1996 bill to 'end welfare,' aid has gone almost entirely to parents who work,’ The Times reports.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) calls it ‘the most transformative policy coming out of Washington since the days of F.D.R.’” Read more at Axios
“In addition to voting rights, there are new developments (and new complications) for other big Biden administration priorities. Senate Democrats unveiled a $3.7 billion proposal to supplement security funding at the Capitol and beyond following the January 6 Capitol riot. This expanded plan, put forth by Sen. Patrick Leahy, would also provide funding to help Afghan supporters of the US military obtain visas as the US ends its combat presence there. Meanwhile, Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill is in danger of becoming less bipartisan. Some initial GOP backers now say they may vote against it due to misgivings about how the bill would be funded and worries that Democrats would also pass a larger version of the bill without Republican support.” Read more at CNN
“The latest effort to hold former president Donald Trump and his allies accountable for months of baseless claims about the 2020 election played out Monday in a Michigan courtroom, where a federal judge asked detailed and skeptical questions of several lawyers she is considering imposing sanctions against for filing a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results.
U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker said she would rule on a request to discipline the lawyers in coming weeks. But over and over again during the more than five-hour hearing, she pointedly pressed the lawyers involved — including Trump allies Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood — to explain what steps they had taken to ensure their court filings in the case filed last year had been accurate. She appeared astonished by many of their answers.
While their suit aimed to create a broad impression that the vote in Michigan — and specifically Detroit’s Wayne County — had been troubled, the affidavits filed to support those claims included obvious errors, speculation and basic misunderstandings of how elections are generally conducted in the state, Parker said.” Read more at Washington Post
“Ousted Social Security commissioner Andrew Saul, the Trump appointee who declared Friday he would defy his firing by President Biden, on Monday found his access to agency computers cut off, even as his acting replacement moved to undo his policies.
‘I’m here to do the job,’ Saul said from his home in Katonah, N.Y., where he had led the agency since the coronavirus pandemic forced most operations to shift in March 2020 to remote work, “but I can’t do anything with the communications shut down.”
Saul, 74, called his firing and that of his deputy David Black, in an email from the White House Personnel Office, a ‘palace coup’ that he said blindsided him, given that his six-year term was not set to expire until 2025. As Republicans made plans to defend him, Saul said he had no public announcement — yet — on his strategy to remain in office as the “duly confirmed Social Security commissioner.” Read more at Washington Post
“For much of the past decade, oil companies engaged in drilling and fracking have been allowed to pump into the ground chemicals that, over time, can break down into toxic substances known as PFAS — a class of long-lasting compounds known to pose a threat to people and wildlife — according to internal documents from the Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA in 2011 approved the use of these chemicals, used to ease the flow of oil from the ground, despite the agency’s own grave concerns about their toxicity, according to the documents, which were reviewed by The New York Times. The EPA’s approval of the three chemicals wasn’t previously publicly known.” Read more at Boston Globe
“The Trump Organization stripped its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, of roles at dozens of subsidiaries. Prosecutors indicted him alongside the company this month.” Read more at New York Times
“The U.S. will soon begin sending monthly checks to most American families, worth up to $300 per child.” Read more at New York Times
“Six months after the Jan. 6 attack, Capitol Police officers remain overworked and traumatized.” Read more at New York Times
“Several men involved in the assassination of Haiti's President Jovenel Moise previously worked as US law enforcement informants, according to people briefed on the matter. At least one man, who was arrested, worked as an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Several more of the 28 people in custody are allegedly Colombian mercenaries hired through a Florida-based security company. Top foreign officials, including members of the US National Security Council and Colombia's chief of national intelligence, have visited Haiti since Moise's death. Key questions about last week's attack remain notably unanswered, like how the attackers got into the country, how they were armed and furnished with vehicles, and why none of Moise’s security detail or residential staff were injured amid the abundant gunfire.” Read more at CNN
“Fringe theory | U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray and other top national security officials are on alert over the risk of renewed violence by Trump supporters. As Chris Strohm explains, the concern stems from a baseless prediction circulating on social media from conspiracy theorists like QAnon adherents that Trump will be reinstated as president as soon as next month.” Read more at Bloomberg
“WHO slams third vaccine booster. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus singled out vaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna for criticism on Monday as the two companies push for a third vaccine shot to further boost immunity levels against the virus. Offering a reminder that current two-dose vaccine regimens offer long-term immunity, Tedros said that the ‘priority now must be to vaccinate those who have received no doses and protection.’
Mike Ryan, the head of the WHO’s emergencies program was more blunt. ‘What part of ‘This is a global crisis’ are we not getting?’ he said on Monday. ‘We will look back in anger and we will look back in shame if we don’t now move to use the increasing [vaccine] production capacity that is coming on line … to protect the most vulnerable, protect the frontline health workers around the world,’ Ryan added.
The comments from the WHO came as Israel began offering a third vaccine dose to severely immunocompromised adults on Monday.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“South Africa deploys army to contain unrest. At least 10 people have died in violence following the arrest of former President Jacob Zuma last week. The protests reflect not only the continued factional fighting within the country's ruling party, but also broader social issues where the pandemic and lockdown rules have deepened poverty, joblessness and some of the world’s highest rates of inequality.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Wildfires that torched homes and forced thousands to evacuate burned across 10 parched Western states on Tuesday, and the largest, in Oregon, threatened California's power supply. Nearly 60 wildfires tore through bone-dry timber and brush from Alaska to Wyoming, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. Arizona, Idaho and Montana accounted for more than half of the large active fires. The fires erupted as the West was in the grip of the second bout of dangerously high temperatures in just a few weeks. The National Weather Service says the heat wave appeared to have peaked in many areas, and excessive-heat warnings were largely expected to expire by Tuesday.” Read more at USA Today
A firefighter sprays water while trying to stop the Sugar Fire, part of the Beckwourth Complex Fire, from spreading to neighboring homes in Doyle, Calif., Saturday, July 10, 2021.Noah Berger, AP
“250% — The amount by which Japan's central-government debt exceeds its gross domestic product, equal to about $10 trillion. A new way of thinking about debt by politicians in wealthy nations, plus the damage caused by the pandemic, has ushered in a period of heavy borrowing. The new spending could drive robust economic growth, but carries the risks of creating inflation and driving higher taxes.
15 years — The maximum prison sentence for grand larceny in the second degree, which is the most significant charge facing former President Donald Trump’s longtime right-hand man, Allen Weisselberg, as part of an alleged scheme to avoid paying taxes on benefits received from the Trump Organization. The company has removed Weisselberg as an officer from multiple Trump Organization entities.
59 — At least this many Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives are leaving the state to prevent a 30-day special session of the Legislature from holding votes. The lawmakers, who chartered flights to Washington, D.C., want to prevent passage of laws that could set some of the broadest voting restrictions in the U.S. by limiting early-voting hours, placing new restrictions on assisting disabled voters and making many election missteps felony offenses.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“WASHINGTON — Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is forming a task force to review the practices and policies of all the law enforcement bureaus in her department, after a recent report on the US Park Police’s handling of protesters in Lafayette Square last year cited problems with that agency’s communications, both internally and with other agencies involved in clearing the square.
Haaland named former Park Police chief Robert MacLean, now the director of Interior’s Office of Law Enforcement and Security, to lead the task force.” Read more at Boston Globe
“Former President Donald Trump, in a book out today by Michael Wolff, says he is ‘very disappointed’ in votes by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his own hard-won nominee, and that he ‘hasn’t had the courage you need to be a great justice.’
‘There were so many others I could have appointed, and everyone wanted me to,’ Trump told Wolff in an interview for the cheekily titled ‘Landslide.’
‘Where would he be without me? I saved his life. He wouldn't even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him.’
Between the lines: After the election, as Axios' Jonathan Swan reported in his ‘Off the rails’ series, Trump saved his worst venom for people who he believed owed him because he got them their jobs.
He would rant endlessly about the treachery of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, reminding people of how he shot up in the primary polls after Trump endorsed him.
Over lunches in the private dining room adjoining the Oval Office, Trump used to reminisce about how he saved Kavanaugh by sticking by him.
For Kavanaugh to not do Trump’s bidding on the matter of ultimate importance — overturning the election — was, in Trump's mind, a betrayal of the highest order.
Wolff writes that Trump feels betrayed by all three justices he put on the court, including Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, but ‘reserved particular bile for Kavanaugh.’
Recalling the brutal confirmation fight, Trump said: "Practically every senator called me ... and said, 'Cut him loose, sir, cut him loose. He’s killing us, Kavanaugh.' ... I said, 'I can’t do that.'
‘I had plenty of time to pick somebody else,’ Trump continued. ‘I went through that thing and fought like hell for Kavanaugh — and I saved his life, and I saved his career. At great expense to myself ... okay? I fought for that guy and kept him.’
‘I don’t want anything ... but I am very disappointed in him, in his rulings,’ Trump said.
‘I can’t even believe what's happening. I'm very disappointed in Kavanaugh. I just told you something I haven’t told a lot of people. In retrospect, he just hasn't had the courage you need to be a great justice. I’m basing this on more than just the election.’
Wolff gives an entertaining account of what it was like for the book authors who were given Trump interviews at Mar-a-Lago:
It's called the Living Room, but it's in fact the Mar-a-Lago lobby, a vaulted-ceiling rococo grand entrance, part hunting lodge, part Renaissance palazzo. But it is really the throne room. ... He sits, in regulation dark suit and shiny baby-blue or fire-red tie, on a low chair in the center of the room, his legs almost daintily curled to the side, seeing a lineup of supplicants or chatting on the phone, all public conversations.
And why would Trump talk to Wolff, who wrote two earlier bestsellers with devastating accounts of Trump dysfunction?
‘The fact that he was talking to me might only reasonably be explained by his absolute belief that his voice alone has reality-altering powers,’ Wolff writes.
Trump told Wolff: ‘I don’t blame you. I blame my people.’” Read more at Axios
“ESPN personalityStephen A. Smith issued an apology after making comments about Japanese baseball star Shohei Ohtani.” Read more at USA Today
“Mets slugger Pete Alonso retained his Home Run Derby crown, defeating Trey Mancini in the final round on Monday night at Coors Field in Denver.” Read more at USA Today
“The 91st Major League Baseball All-Star Game is Tuesday night at Coors Field in Denver with the top players in the American and National Leagues facing off. All eyes will be two-way star Shohei Ohtani of the Angels, who will be the AL's starting pitcher and leadoff hitter the day after participating in the Home Run Derby. Nationals right-hander Max Scherzer gets the start for the NL, while two of the game's best young players in Fernando Tatis Jr. and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. each make their first All-Star Gam appearance.” Read more at USA Today
“'We are going to need answers': Miles of beaches in Los Angeles were closed to swimmers Monday as 17 million gallons of sewage spilled into Santa Monica Bay.” Read more at USA Today
“Drake Bell, the former star of the Nickelodeon show ‘Drake & Josh,’ was sentenced to two years’ probation on child endangerment charges.” Read more at USA Today
“Japan warns that growing military tension around Taiwan and the economic and technological rivalry between China and the US are threatening peace and stability in East Asia. Japan’s annual defense white paper also pointed to China as Japan's main national security concern. Beijing has increased military activity around Taiwan, which is near the western end of the Japanese archipelago. Over the weekend, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also asserted a firm US stance on China's claims to the South China Sea. He reaffirmed the US commitment to protecting the Philippines' armed forces from attack in the region, and he observed the fifth anniversary of a ruling rejecting China's expansive territorial claims over the waterway.” Read more at CNN
“Jamaica calls for reparations. Jamaica is to soon ask the United Kingdom for compensation, potentially totaling billions of dollars, to address the damage done by the Atlantic slave trade in the former British colony. Although a total figure for reparations is still being debated, Jamaican lawmaker Mike Henry has suggested 7.6 billion pounds ($10.5 billion)—a contemporary figure roughly equivalent to the 20 million pounds paid in the 19th century by the British government to compensate slaveholders after the British Parliament abolished the practice of slavery.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“World hunger on the rise. After five years of relatively stable numbers, world hunger shot up last year amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new United Nations report. The number of people facing hunger rose by 118 million to around 768 million in 2020—10 percent of the world’s population. Nearly one in three people worldwide didn’t have access to adequate food last year—320 million people more than in 2019.
Unless the world takes ‘bold action,’ the U.N.’s goal of zero hunger by 2030 will be a pipe dream, according to the U.N. agencies responsible for the report. ‘Our worst fears are coming true,’ said World Food Programme chief economist Arif Husain. ‘Reversing such high levels of chronic hunger will take years if not decades.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
Byron Berline in performance with the Flying Burrito Brothers in Amsterdam in 1972. He wove elements of pop, jazz, blues and rock into an old-timey approach on the fiddle.Credit...Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns, via Getty Images
“Byron Berline, the acclaimed bluegrass fiddle player who expanded the vocabulary of his instrument while also establishing it as an integral voice in country-rock on recordings by Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and others, died on Saturday in Oklahoma City. He was 77.
His death, in a rehabilitation hospital after a series of strokes, was confirmed by his nephew Barry Patton.” Read more at New York Times
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