The Full Belmonte, 7/6/2022
After the parade shooting in Highland Park, Ill. Sebastián Hidalgo for The New York Times
“The police charged Robert Crimo, a 21-year-old resident of Highland Park, Ill., with murder in the Fourth of July parade shooting.” Read more at New York Times
“The police had visited Crimo twice in recent years, confiscating knives after a family member said that he had threatened to ‘kill everyone.’ He legally purchased the rifle used in the attack.” Read more at New York Times
“A seventh person died yesterday. Here’s what we know about the victims.” Read more at New York Times
“New Jersey tightened its gun laws, making it more difficult to obtain a handgun license.” Read more at New York Times
A woman views a makeshift memorial to the victims of the July 4 parade shooting in Highland Park, Illinois.
Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images
Above: Vice President Kamala Harris hugs Highland Park (Ill.) Mayor Nancy Rotering yesterday during a visit to the site of the mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade that left seven people dead.
“A 21-year-old was charged yesterday with seven counts of murder.
He legally bought five weapons — including the high-powered rifle that sprayed more than 70 rounds onto the parade — despite authorities being called to his home twice in 2019 for threats of violence and suicide, AP reports.
The big picture: The revelation about his gun purchases is just the latest example of young men who were able to obtain guns and carry out massacres in recent months, despite glaring warning signs about their mental health and inclination to violence.
President Biden ordered that in honor of the Highland Park victims, U.S. flags will be flown at half-staff on public buildings through sunset on Saturday.” Read more at Axios
Photos: Win McNamee and Saul Loeb via Getty Images
Clockwise from top left: Retired Army Spc. 5 Dennis M. Fujii; Army Maj. John J. Duffy; Army Spc. 5 Dwight W. Birdwell; John Kaneshiro, who represented his late father, Army Staff Sgt. Edward N. Kaneshiro.
“President Biden awarded the Medal of Honor today to four veterans of the Vietnam War, saying the phrase "above and beyond the call of duty ... takes on life when you see these men."
From their commendations:
Spc. 5 Dwight W. Birdwell in 1968 rescued his wounded tank commander and fired back at enemy forces, refusing treatment for the wounds he sustained until he could evacuate other injured soldiers.
Spc. 5 Dennis M. Fujii in 1971 rejected medical aid from another helicopter when his own medevac helicopter crashed. Instead, he worked to treat other wounded soldiers.
Maj. John J. Duffy in 1972 moved closer to enemy forces in order to call in airstrikes rather than be evacuated. He avoided evacuation until all other evacuees made it onboard.
Staff Sgt. Edward N. Kaneshiro, who received the award posthumously, in 1966 repelled an attack from the North Vietnamese with rifle fire and grenades, allowing the rest of his unit to safely pull back. He was killed in action a year later.” Read more at Axios
“An Atlanta-area special grand jury investigating former President Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia has subpoenaed a handful of key Trump allies, including his former attorney Rudy Giuliani and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, according to court filings. This latest round of subpoenas marks a new phase of the probe, as the grand jury seeks testimony from witnesses who were members of Trump's inner circle. The special grand jury will now collect evidence and issue a report on whether Trump or any of his allies should face charges. Separately, the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection announced a seventh hearing scheduled for July 12. The remaining hearings are expected to focus on the assembly of a violent mob in Washington, DC, that Trump directed to march to the US Capitol and on Trump failing to take immediate action to try to stop the violence.” Read more at CNN
House Jan. 6 committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) swears in Cassidy Hutchinson last week. Photo: Sean Thew/Pool via AP
“Key House Republicans are threatening to subpoena records of the Jan. 6 committee if the GOP retakes the majority next year — an escalation of the party's effort to undercut the investigation's findings.
Why it matters: Fresh talk of 2023 subpoenas means the committee's ‘final report,’ expected this fall, may be far from the last word on the Capitol attack, Axios' Alayna Treene and Jonathan Swan report.
Ever since the Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed GOP members of Congress — including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — Republicans have been threatening unspecified subpoenas in retaliation.
The hearings have painted a damning portrait of former President Trump, with many former aides testifying they told him his claims of a stolen election were bogus.
While Republicans have been eager to move beyond what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, many want to use a GOP-controlled majority to frame their own narrative of what happened that day — and also raise questions about the Jan. 6 committee's work and spending.
Some Republicans have sought to dispute elements of Cassidy Hutchinson's explosive testimony about Trump's behavior and state of mind.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who chairs the largest bloc of House conservatives, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on July 1, requesting that DHS ‘review White House gate logs, surveillance videos, and all other records that could indicate which of these senior staff were present at the White House during the times referenced’ in Hutchinson's testimony.
The Jan. 6 committee declined comment.
Drew Hammill, Speaker Pelosi's spokesperson, dismissed GOP suggestions that Pelosi is responsible for the 1/6 security failure: ‘Numerous independent fact checkers have confirmed that Speaker Pelosi did not plan her own assassination.’” Read more at Axios
Data: JAMA Intern Medicine. Chart: Axios Visuals
“COVID was the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020 and 2021, accounting for 1 in 8 lives lost, Axios' Adriel Bettelheim writes from a new review of death certificate data in JAMA Internal Medicine.
Why it matters: The virus exacted a huge human toll even after vaccines became widely available. It indirectly affected other causes of death, including heart attacks and strokes, in part by discouraging some Americans from seeking care.
The National Cancer Institute study found COVID trailed only heart disease and cancer among the leading causes of death from March 2020 through October 2021.” Read more at Axios
Alexandra Rubio outside a courthouse in Springfield, Mass., after her adoption proceedings in 2015. Photo: Joanne Rathe/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
“Underfunded and overstressed foster-care systems will likely have more children sent their way with the end of federal abortion protection, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.
Why it matters: About 424,000 children are in foster care on any given day. They already face shortages of placements, low high school graduation rates, and disproportionately high rates of incarnation and homelessness.
‘We're really concerned that this could blow it up,’ Mariah Craven of the National Foster Youth Institute told Axios.
Children may end up in foster care because parents can't afford to keep them or aren't able to safely care for them.
Some women, without access to abortion, may not give the child up for adoption at birth, but decide later that they can't care for them.
Context: A surge in drug addiction by biological parents has prompted foster-care systems to place children in emergency shelters, hotels, out-of-state institutions and youth prisons.
By the numbers: The average placement time for children in state care is longer than a year and a half.
5% of children in foster care are there for 5+ years, HHS says.
1 in 3 are children of color.
What we're watching: Abortion foes say the post-Roe world is a chance for religious-based groups to build an infrastructure to facilitate more adoptions or help biological parents through faith.” Read more at Axios
“Gov. Andy Beshear's office turned over a June 23 White House email that confirms President Joe Biden intended to nominate anti-abortion Republican Chad Meredith to a lifetime appointment as a federal district judge in Kentucky. The day after the White House email was sent, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the federal constitutional right to abortion. Then the White House didn't put the nomination forward – and has declined to comment on the potential nomination over the past week.” Read more at USA Today
A gray wolf in New Mexico; a Trump administration move had made it more difficult to give protections to species threatened by anticipated future events.PHOTO: JIM CLARK/ASSOCIATED PRESS
“A federal judge in California threw out Trump-era changes to the Endangered Species Act, including one that allowed economic factors to be considered on whether to list a species as threatened or endangered.
The ruling Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Jon S. Tigar in Oakland, Calif., also voids regulations that made it more difficult to give protections to species threatened by anticipated future events, such as the impacts of climate change.
The ruling came in a lawsuit that Earthjustice, the Sierra Club and other environmental nonprofits filed in 2019 to challenge the Trump era changes, which they said in court papers ‘undermine[s] protection of imperiled species or their habitat.’
‘The Court spoke for species desperately in need of comprehensive federal protections without compromise,’ said Kristen Boyles, attorney at Earthjustice. ‘Threatened and endangered species do not have the luxury of waiting under rules that do not protect them.’” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“A federal judge has ruled that the nation’s three largest drug distributors cannot be held liable for the opioid epidemic in one of the most ravaged counties in the country — a place where 81 million prescription painkillers were shipped over eight years to a population of less than 100,000.
Judge David A. Faber of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia released the opinion on the July 4th holiday, almost a year after the end of a trial pursued by the city of Huntington and Cabell County, which were the focus of an Oscar-nominated documentary called ‘Heroin(e)’ about the effect of the prescription painkillers.
The fatal overdose rate in Cabell County increased to 213.9 from 16.6 per 100,000 people, from 2001 to 2017, according to the ruling.
In absolving the drug distribution companies — AmerisourceBergen, McKesson and Cardinal Health —Judge Faber acknowledged the terrible cost on the county and the city, but added that ‘while there is a natural tendency to assign blame in such cases, they must be decided not based on sympathy, but on the facts and the law.’
His decision points to the difficulty of determining responsibility for a decades-long disaster in which many entities had a role, including drug manufacturers, pharmacy chains, doctors and federal oversight agencies, as well as the drug distributors.
Drug distributors generally fulfill pharmacy orders by trucking medications from the manufacturers to hospitals, clinics and stores, and are responsible for managing their inventory. Like other companies in the drug supply chain, distributors are supposed to comply with federal limits established for controlled substances like prescription opioids, and have an internal monitoring system to detect problematic orders. Lawyers for the city and county argued that the distributors should have investigated orders by pharmacies that requested addictive pills in quantities wildly disproportionate to the population in these small communities.
But Judge Faber ruled: ‘At best, distributors can detect upticks in dispensers’ orders that may be traceable to doctors who may be intentionally or unintentionally violating medical standards. Distributors also are not pharmacists with expertise in assessing red flags that may be present in a prescription.’
The judge also soundly repudiated the legal argument that the distributors had caused a ‘public nuisance,’ a claim used broadly across the national opioid litigation and which has so far had mixed results in a handful of state and federal test cases.” Read more at New York Times
“When Sara Kruzan was 17, she was convicted of murdering a man she said had abused her beginning when she was 11 and had trafficked her for sex at 13. She served nearly two decades in prison.
On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California granted her a pardon for fatally shooting the man, George Howard, in 1994, saying that Ms. Kruzan had ‘provided evidence that she is living an upright life and has demonstrated her fitness for restoration of civic rights and responsibilities.’
The case had reignited criticism of the way that courts treat survivors of abuse, especially those who are adolescents. Criminal justice reform advocates have said the judge in her case did not treat her with enough compassion; Ms. Kruzan, though 16 at the time of the crime, was tried as an adult, and the judge did not permit evidence about the abuse to be presented during her trial, The Los Angeles Times has reported.” Read more at New York Times
“The Justice Department sued Arizona on Tuesday over a new state law requiring proof of citizenship to vote in a presidential election, saying the Republican-imposed restrictions are a ‘textbook violation’ of federal law.
It is the third time the department under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland has challenged a state’s voting law and comes as Democratic leaders and voting rights groups have pressed Mr. Garland to act more decisively against measures that limit access to the ballot.
Arizona’s law, which Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed in March, requires voters to prove their citizenship to vote in a presidential election, like showing a birth certificate or passport. It also mandates that newly registered voters provide a proof of address, which could disproportionately affect people with limited access to government-issued identification cards. Those include immigrants, students, older people, low-income voters and Native Americans.” Read more at New York Times
“In one of the most ambitious statewide attempts to reduce dependence on plastics, California instituted a new requirement that makers of packaging pay for recycling and reduce or eliminate single-use plastic packaging.
The law, signed by California’s governor on Thursday, is the fourth of its kind to be passed by a state, though experts say it is the most significant because it goes further in requiring producers to both make less plastic and to ensure that all single-use products are recyclable or compostable. Last summer, Maine and Oregon passed the country’s first such requirements, known as producer-responsibility laws.
A key tenet of the laws: The costs of recycling infrastructure, recycling plants and collection and sorting facilities, will be shifted to packaging manufacturers and away from taxpayers, who currently foot the bill.
The California law requires that all forms of single-use packaging, including paper and metals, be recyclable or compostable by 2032. However, this is most significant when it comes to plastic products, which are more technologically challenging to recycle. In addition, it is tougher for people to figure out which plastics are recyclable and which aren’t.
Unlike in other states, California will require a 25 percent reduction across all plastic packaging sold in the state, covering a wide range of items, whether shampoo bottles, plastics utensils, bubble wrap or takeaway cups.” Read more at New York Times
Orlando Sentinel/TNS
“The 2022 midterm election cycle marks the first time members of Gen Z are eligible to run for Congress. Candidates tell NPR about how growing up in a period of upheaval affects their politics and distinguishes them from their millennial colleagues.” Read more at NPR
Red states are winning the postpandemic economy.
“By many measures, states that lean Republican have recovered faster economically than Democratic-leaning blue ones, with workers and employers moving from the coasts to the middle of the country and Florida. Since February 2020, the month before the pandemic began, red states have added 341,000 jobs, while blue states were still short 1.3 million jobs as of May, according to the Brookings Institution think tank.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Great Salt Lake hits 175-year low
Boat docks sit on dry, cracked earth at the Great Salt Lake's Antelope Island Marina near Syracuse, Utah, last August. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
“The Great Salt Lake this weekend dropped below the 175-year low set last October, the Utah Department of Natural Resources announced.
‘This is not the type of record we like to break,’ DNR executive director Joel Ferry said. ‘It's clear the lake is in trouble.’
Why it matters: The West's megadrought, worsened by climate change, is shrinking the largest natural lake west of the Mississippi — and the largest salt-water lake in the Western Hemisphere.
Water has also been diverted for homes and crops in the fast-growing Beehive State.
The lake level will likely continue to decrease until fall or early winter, the state said.
Records date back to 1847.” Read more at Axios
“Prime Minister Boris Johnson clung to power today, gravely wounded by the resignation of ministers who say he's not fit to govern — and with a growing number of lawmakers calling for him to go, Reuters reports.
Johnson's finance and health secretaries quit yesterday, along with several more in junior roles, saying they could no longer stay in government after the latest in a series of scandals.
The Times of London, in an editorial today with the headline ‘Game Over’ (subscription), said Johnson's ‘serial dishonesty’ is ‘utterly corrosive.’
Johnson today showed his determination to stay in office by appointing businessman and education minister Nadhim Zahawi as his new finance minister and filling some of the other vacancies.
What's next: Later today, Johnson appears in parliament for his weekly question session.” Read more at Axios
Thierry Breton, the European Union’s internal-market commissioner, said the EU is the first jurisdiction to set a comprehensive standard for regulating the digital space.PHOTO: YVES HERMAN/REUTERS
“European lawmakers approved two sweeping new pieces of digital regulation, paving the way for clashes between regulators and some of the world’s biggest tech companies over how the rules should be applied.
The European Parliament on Tuesday voted its stamp of approval for the two laws—one focused on anticompetitive behavior, the other on content deemed illegal in Europe—after reaching an agreement on them with European Union member states in the spring.
The laws, which are backed by the threat of noncompliance fines in some extreme cases of as much as 20% of a company’s annual world-wide revenue, are the most far-reaching Western efforts to rein in technology companies in at least a generation. They build on the EU’s effort to expand its role as a global tech regulator and offer what proponents say is a road map—and what detractors warn will be a cautionary tale—for digital legislation in the U.S. and elsewhere….
The new rules could set a global benchmark for tech regulation, lawyers and digital-policy experts have said. Lawmakers in the U.S. from both major parties have introduced bills that include elements present in the EU’s Digital Markets Act aimed at reining in purportedly anticompetitive behavior by big tech companies. One would bar dominant tech companies from using their platforms to promote their own goods and services over those from other companies. Another could force the breakup of part of Google’s advertising business.
The Digital Markets Act will impose new obligations on how a small number of digital giants operate, with rules dealing with online messaging, digital advertising and the app ecosystem. The Digital Services Act will require large social-media platforms to take steps to deal with illegal content and other material regulators view as harmful, and give users an avenue to register their complaints about content moderation.
The Digital Markets Act is expected to enter into force in the coming months, but it will likely take until 2024 before large tech companies have to comply with the rules.
The Digital Services Act is set to apply to all regulated companies as early as January 2024, although the EU says the rules will kick in sooner, potentially mid-2023, for the biggest online platforms and search engines.
Mr. Breton said in a blog post Tuesday that officials are setting up teams that will focus on the societal, technical and economic aspects of the new legislation, and intend to recruit more staff next year and in 2024.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Sri Lanka is ‘bankrupt,’ Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Tuesday, as the country suffers its worst financial crisis in decades, leaving millions in the South Asian nation struggling to buy food, medicine and fuel. Schools have been suspended and fuel has been limited to essential services. In several major cities, including the commercial capital, Colombo, hundreds continue to line up for hours to buy fuel, sometimes clashing with police and the military as they wait. For months, large numbers of Sri Lankans have called for the country's President to resign over accusations of economic mismanagement. The British government said on Tuesday it is advising against all but essential travel to Sri Lanka due to the economic crisis.” Read more at CNN
“Floodwaters had inundated or were threatening the homes of tens of thousands of people around Sydney on Wednesday as rivers started to recede and the heavy rains tracked north. It's the fourth flood emergency in 16 months for Australia's largest city. Evacuation orders and official warnings to prepare to abandon homes were given to 85,000 people by Wednesday, up from 50,000 on Tuesday, New South Wales state Premier Dominic Perrottet said. Parts of southern Sydney had been lashed by nearly 8 inches of rain in 24 hours, more than 17% of the city's annual average, Bureau of Meteorology meteorologist Jonathan How said Tuesday.” Read more at USA Today
People look at the flooded Windsor Bridge at Windsor on the outskirts of Sydney, Australia, Tuesday, July 5, 2022. Hundreds of homes have been inundated in and around Australia’s largest city in a flood emergency that was impacting 50,000 people, officials said Tuesday. Mark Baker, AP
Tshisekedi and Kagame Meet in Angola
“Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi meets his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame today in the Angolan capital, Luanda, as the two leaders discussed the latest flashpoint in a war-ravaged region.
The latest dispute centers around the activities of the M23, a Congolese rebel group that has recently reemerged after a 10-year hiatus. The group has launched sophisticated military operations in recent weeks, overrunning the town of Bunagana near the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) border with Uganda and Rwanda. The DRC has been adamant that the group’s revival comes with Rwanda’s blessing—as well as military backing.
Mélanie Gouby, reporting from Bunagana in Foreign Policy on Monday, spoke with M23 fighters who said they had lain dormant until now, surviving in the mountains along the DRC-Rwanda-Uganda border. ‘It remains hard to square how the group survived five years on an inhospitable mountain with the sudden, spectacular conquests of recent weeks,’ Gouby writes.
The increased tensions came after Tshisekedi invited troops from neighboring Uganda late last year to help combat a separate rebel group—the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF). Rwandan officials worry that Uganda will use the ongoing operation as a pretext to increase its own sphere of influence, raising the possibility that it will intervene.
Although historical grievances in the region run deep, there’s much more than pride at stake. The DRC’s rich mineral deposits, particularly the metals needed to power the world’s electronic devices and batteries, have made the country a valuable target for its neighbors who have profited from smuggling networks.
The DRC’s resource wealth has helped make gold Uganda’s prime export, despite most of it originating in the DRC. The same goes for the metallic ore coltan, which the DRC’s neighbors export in large numbers despite not having close to the same reserves.
If he does decide to deploy military forces, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is unlikely to face Western pushback. Kagame, who has helped build up the country’s position as a ‘donor darling’ despite repressive policies and human rights abuses, has recently cast the country as a Western partner on immigration—inking deals with both the United Kingdom and Denmark to take asylum seekers.
He’s also fresh off the PR victory of hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in the capital Kigali in June.
Aside from Tshisekedi’s efforts, the International Crisis Group recommends that Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta attempt to pressure Kagame on the issue. Kenya is not only set to reap the trade benefits of the DRC’s new status as a member of the East African Community, but it also acts as a security partner through its participation in the U.N. Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), which is charged with fighting rebels in the DRC.
Claude Gatebuke, the director of the African Great Lakes Action Network, worries that the region could soon descend into wider conflict. ‘Without a vigorous confidence-building process between the two sides, a wider interstate conflict is a strong possibility,’ Gatebuke told the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. ‘That would likely draw in Uganda and possibly Burundi on the side of the DRC.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Donetsk next? Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Ukrainian province of Donetsk has called for the 350,000 remaining civilians there to leave as Russian forces turn their attention to the area after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared victory in Luhansk on Monday. Kyrylenko said that the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk are now Russia’s ‘number one target.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Blinken’s travels. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken departs Washington today on a trip to Southeast Asia which will include stops in Bali, Indonesia, for a meeting of G-20 foreign ministers, as well as Bangkok, Thailand. The State Department has confirmed that Blinken will meet with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi while in Bali.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Iran talks. U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price on Tuesday criticized Iranian negotiators for ‘consistently’ introducing ‘extraneous demands’ in talks to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, adding that Iran was showing a ‘lack of seriousness.’ The comments come after indirect talks between the United States and Iran ended in Doha without plans to reconvene. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, after speaking with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Tuesday, expressed hope a deal could still materialize but that ‘decisions are needed now.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Sporting authorities in Sierra Leone are investigating two soccer matches over suspicions of match fixing. The two games in question ended 95-0 and 91-1 respectively, with 177 of the 187 total goals coming in the second half of both matches.
Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) President Thomas Daddy Brima has vowed a full investigation into the four teams involved. ‘We can’t stand by and see an embarrassing situation like this go unpunished,’ he told BBC Sport Africa.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Substack, the newsletter start-up that has attracted prominent writers including George Saunders and Salman Rushdie, laid off 13 of its 90 employees on Wednesday, part of an effort to conserve cash amid an industrywide funding crunch for start-ups.
Substack’s chief executive, Chris Best, told employees that the cuts affected staff members responsible for human resources and writer support functions, among others, according to a person familiar with the discussion.
The cuts are a blow to a company that has said it was opening up a new era of media, in which people writing stories and making videos would be more empowered, getting direct payments from readers for what they produce instead of being paid by the publications or sites where their work appears.” Read more at New York Times
“Surgeons at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare have no option but to amputate a Florida girl's right leg after she was attacked by a nine foot shark last week while scalloping off the coast of Keaton Beach. Read more at USA Today
Rhett Willingham, left, and Addison Bethea, right, pose for a photo days after she was attacked by a shark near Keaton Beach in Taylor County.Provided to the Tallahassee Democrat
“Lives Lived: Kurt Markus’s black-and-white photographs captured the solitude and grandeur of the American West’s vanishing frontier. He died at 75.” Read more at New York Times
“Rock-and-roll guitar legend Carlos Santana collapsed on stage yesterday in Michigan due to dehydration and heat exhaustion. His manager says he's doing well, but a scheduled performance today has been postponed.” Read more at NPR
Data: IMDbPro. Chart: Nicki Camberg/Axios
“‘Minions: The Rise of Gru,’ the new installment in the Despicable Me franchise, broke the box-office record for a Fourth of July weekend opening, Kerry Flynn writes in Axios Pro: Media Deals.
The cartoon prequel broke the record set by ‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ in 2011.
Stuart the Minion in ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru.’ Photo: Illumination Entertainment/Universal Pictures via AP
Why it matters: This is the latest in a string of successes for Universal's family releases, including ‘Sing 2’ and ‘The Bad Guys,’ AP notes. So ‘Minions’ is further proof families are willing to go back to the movies.
"Minions" trailer. Read more at Axios