“US states with below-average vaccination rates have almost triple the rate of new Covid-19 cases compared to states with above-average vaccination rates, new data shows. This huge disparity underscores the ‘two Americas’ that are emerging as life returns to normal in some areas and cases surge again in others. In the UK, Prime Minister Boris Johnson revealed plans to lift most lockdown rules by the middle of the month, despite rising cases. "We must reconcile ourselves sadly to more deaths from Covid," he said. His perspective is causing concern among health experts. In Thailand, a leaked memo from the country's health ministry is raising doubts about the efficacy of China’s Sinovac vaccine.” Read more at CNN
“HAVANA (AP) — Tropical Storm Elsa swept across a mostly rural section of western Cuba with strong rain and winds Monday, then moved into the Florida Straits for a possible close brush with the lower Florida Keys and the Dry Tortugas on Tuesday.
The storm made landfall in Cuba on Monday afternoon near Cienega de Zapata, a natural park with few inhabitants. It headed northwestward across the island, passing Havana just to the east.
Back over water, Elsa’s maximum sustained winds strengthened to 60 mph (95 kph) late Monday. Its core was about 20 miles (35 kilometers) north-northeast of Havana and 80 miles (130 kilometers) south-southwest of Key West, Florida. It was moving to the north-northwest at 12 mph (19 kph).” Read more at Boston Globe
“Search and rescue efforts at the Surfside condo collapse site have grown even more urgent as Elsa barrels toward the state. The tropical storm is expected to impact the west coast of Florida but could bring rain and dangerous winds that would complicate the search. Sunday evening's demolition of the rest of the building has made efforts easier, though residents were not allowed to retrieve their belongings before the building was felled. It's been almost two weeks since the collapse, but rescue teams are still holding out hope that they may find survivors in the rubble. So far, 117 people remain unaccounted for and 28 people are confirmed to have died.” Read more at CNN
“At least 150 people were killed by gun violence in more than 400 shootings across the US during the Fourth of July weekend. The deadly spate is part of a larger surge in violent crime that has set major cities on edge. So far this year, gun violence incidents in New York have spiked almost 40% over the same period in 2020, with 767 shootings and 885 victims. This weekend, the city saw 26 victims in 21 shootings from Friday to Sunday. In Chicago, Police Superintendent David Brown called July 4 the ‘most challenging weekend of the year.’ According to Chicago Police Department data, 83 people were shot, including 14 killed, in shootings from 6 p.m. Friday to 6 a.m. Monday.” Read more at CNN
“Up to 1,500 firms — in at least 17 countries — were hit with a holiday-weekend ransomware attack by the same Russia-linked gang that extorted meat processor JBS.
The notorious gang REvil breached a Miami-based IT management firm, Kaseya (pronounced kass-AY-uh), then used a Kaseya product that helps protect against malware to scale the attack globally.
Fewer than 60 Kaseya customers were hit, a company statement said. But ‘many of these customers provide IT services to multiple other companies,’ so the impact was much greater.
The latest: REvil said on its dark web site late Sunday that for $70 million in cryptocurrency, it would make available a universal decrypter to unscramble the affected machines, AP reports.
Some researchers said the criminals apparently have more victims than they can manage.” Read more at Axios
The Supreme Court justices in April.Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Predictable — and not so much
“The latest version of the Supreme Court — with Donald Trump’s three appointees — is starting to come into focus. It is both ideologically predictable and unpredictable, depending on the issue.
On many matters, including health care, immigration, crime and several social issues, the court is conservative but not uniformly so. Majorities often transcend ideological lines, with decisions sometimes disappointing conservative activists and pleasantly surprising liberals. ‘It’s nowhere near as bad as people thought,’ David Cole of the American Civil Liberties Union said last week.
These surprises accomplish a top priority of Chief Justice John Roberts: bolstering the court’s image as a nonpartisan institution. A central question about Trump’s three choices — Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — was whether they would take a similar approach to Roberts. He is deeply conservative but cares about forming cross-ideological coalitions. By contrast, Clarence Thomas and especially Samuel Alito are more reliably conservative.
If the three newest justices had joined Alito and Thomas, the five of them could rule the court, without Roberts. So far, however, Barrett and Kavanaugh have voted more like members of the Roberts camp, as Adam Liptak, The Times’s Supreme Court reporter, told me. Gorsuch has taken an approach somewhere between Roberts’s and Alito’s.
‘A clump’
“There is a clump in the middle of the court,” Adam says. As a result, the three Democratic appointees — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer — can end up in the majority, as long as they are joined by at least two of the six Republican appointees.
Source: The Supreme Court Database
In this term, the court upheld Obamacare with a seven-justice majority that included the three liberal justices, Barrett, Kavanaugh, Roberts and even Thomas. There were also cross-ideological rulings limiting a federal law on computer crime; favoring an immigrant facing deportation; favoring student free speech; favoring college athletes’ ability to be paid; and allowing a Catholic agency to refuse to work with gay parents (but more narrowly decided than conservatives wanted).
To be clear, the court is more conservative than it was a few years ago, when it included Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who was replaced by Barrett) and Anthony Kennedy (who was replaced by Kavanaugh). You can see the new conservatism in rulings limiting government regulations that affect religion, as well as in a decision that expanded the use of life sentences without parole for juveniles.
Still, it’s often hard to predict exactly how this conservatism will manifest itself — and who will be in the majority. As Jeannie Suk Gersen wrote in The New Yorker, about the most recent term, ‘The justices repeatedly defied expectations, with conservatives and liberals together forming majorities in high-profile cases in order to avoid or defer the fighting of deeper wars.’
But there are two issues on which the court tends to be both predictable and aggressively conservative: democracy and business regulation.
The two exceptions
The court’s conservative majority has ruled on multiple occasions that state officials can restrict voting access and redraw legislative districts without violating federal law. The state officials enacting these measures are almost always Republican, and many political experts believe that the measures will help the party win elections.
The court’s democracy rulings cut against Roberts’s preferred image of the court as an institution above partisan politics: Six Republican-appointed justices are issuing decisions that benefit Republican politicians, even when doing so conflicts with principles of majority rule. ‘This court will smile upon even the worst vote suppression efforts being undertaken by Republican legislatures,’ Scott Lemieux of the University of Washington has written.
The most recent example came last week, in a six-to-three decision — along partisan lines — that upheld two Arizona voting restrictions. The decision was sweeping enough that civil rights advocates will struggle to bring future cases alleging discrimination in voting access, legal scholars say.
The second area where the justices tend to be reliably conservative is business regulation. They generally take a laissez-faire approach that is skeptical of government oversight, hostile to labor unions and deferential to corporations. In the most recent term, the court made it harder for consumers to sue companies for misbehavior and harder for labor unions to organize farmworkers.
These rulings continue a long tradition of the court siding with businesses over workers, as the journalist Adam Cohen argued in ‘Supreme Inequality,’ a recent book. ‘The Supreme Court has played a critical role in building today’s America, in which income inequality is the largest it has been in nearly a century,’ Cohen wrote.
Business regulation is one of the few high-profile areas in which the liberal justices regularly join conservative rulings. ‘Contrary to a narrative out there, most decisions in business cases are not decided by narrow majorities,’ Daryl Joseffer, the chief legal counsel at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said on a recent call with journalists. Breyer is the Democratic appointee who most often sides with business.
And the future?
What does this mean for the future of the court? I see three questions to watch in the next term, which starts in October:
Will Barrett’s more moderate approach continue? New justices are often cautious in their first term, Adam Liptak says. Sometimes, that moderation continues, and sometimes it does not.
Will the court’s unpredictability apply to abortion? Next term’s highest-profile case offers the justices a chance to overturn Roe v. Wade. But the justices’ approach to this past term suggests that the most likely outcome may be a significant restriction of abortion access that still stops well short of overturning Roe.
How aggressive will the justices’ pro-business approach be? The court has agreed to hear a case that touches on a legal principle known as ‘Chevron deference,’ which essentially gives government regulators flexibility to interpret federal law. If the court overturns Chevron deference, it would be a big deal, limiting the Biden administration’s ability to regulate corporations — including its ability to regulate pollution and fight climate change.” Read more at New York Times
Demonstrators in Leesburg, Va., last month protest the teaching of critical race theory. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
“Efforts to recall school board members are surging around the U.S. — especially in California — amid Republican efforts to quash teaching about institutional racism, Axios' Russell Contreras reports.
Why it matters: School board recalls have traditionally stemmed from management disputes, open-meeting violations or allegations of corruption. Now, they're being fueled by controversies over race, and backlash to COVID closures and mask requirements.
At least 51 recall efforts involving K-12 school boards have been initiated so far this year, targeting 130 members.
That's more than twice the annual average, according to Ballotpedia, which tracks election trends.
Ballotpedia counted a yearly average of 23 recall efforts against 52 school board members between 2006 and 2020.
California is home to 22 of the current recall efforts. Arizona and Idaho follow with six and four, respectively.
Reality check: Critical race theory — which holds that racism is baked into the formation of the nation and ingrained in legal, financial and education systems — developed in law schools in the 1970s.
Some teachers have been criticized for merely mentioning systemic racism or Black Lives Matter protests.” Read more at Axios
“The latest round of ranked-choice preferences in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary is expected to be conducted Tuesday. In the most recent count released on June 30 , Eric Adams garnered 51.1% of the votes tallied and Kathryn Garcia was second, with 48.9%. Those results were available one day after 135,000 ‘test’ ballots were mistakenly added, then removed. Moreover, that round of results did not include absentee ballots, leaving room for a significant swing. No Democratic candidate won an outright majority in the election on June 22, so the ranked choice preferences of voters are redistributed, as the candidates with the fewest number of first choice votes are eliminated in a series of rounds.” Read more at USA Today
“80% — The proportion of the world's almond supply provided by California. But drought-stricken farmers in the state are bulldozing thousands of acres’ worth of almond orchards that can't be irrigated, and dropping plans to plant more as they confront what farmers say could be a hotter, drier future.
118 — The number of people who died in the record heat wave that engulfed the Pacific Northwest in late June. Emergency rooms overflowed, 911 calls doubled and ambulances were delayed when the temperature rose above 100 degrees for three straight days. The average high for Portland, Ore., for this time of year is 77 degrees.
$27.9 billion — The amount that individual investors plowed into the U.S. stock market in June, lured by continued volatility beneath the market’s surface and underscoring the enduring influence of ordinary investors in markets. It was the highest monthly amount deployed since at least 2014, and even trumped the amount retail traders spent in January during the first meme-stock frenzy.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“TOKYO (AP) — The pressure of hosting an Olympics during a still-active pandemic is beginning to show in Japan.
The games begin July 23, with organizers determined they will go on, even with a reduced number of spectators or possibly none at all. While Japan has made remarkable progress to vaccinate its population against COVID-19, the drive is losing steam because of supply shortages.
With tens of thousands of visitors coming to a country that is only 13.8% fully vaccinated, gaps in border controls have emerged, highlighted by the discovery of infections among the newly arrived team from Uganda, with positive tests for the highly contagious delta variant.
As cases grow in Tokyo, so have fears that the games will spread the virus.
‘We must stay on high alert,’ Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters on July 1. Noting the rising caseloads, he said ‘having no spectators is a possibility.’” Read more at AP News
Game 4: Tampa Bay Lightning left wing Patrick Maroon celebrates his game-tying goal in the third period against Montreal Canadiens goaltender Carey Price.Eric Bolte, USA TODAY Sports
“The Montreal Canadiens mixed up their lineup Monday night and staved off elimination against the Tampa Bay Lightning to force Game 5 in the Stanley Cup Final. The Lightning, seeking back-to-back championships, will try to secure the third Stanley Cup in franchise history at home Wednesday night.” Read more at USA Today
“Game 1 of the NBA Finals gets underway when the Phoenix Suns and Milwaukee Bucks take the floor Tuesday. The Suns, who are the betting favorites and have home court advantage, are making their first Finals appearance since 1993. On the other side, the Bucks are ending an even longer drought, reaching the final round for the first time in 47 years. Phoenix took both games against Milwaukee in the regular season, in a pair of dramatic one-point victories. For Milwaukee, many eyes will be on two-time NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, and whether he will be able to play for the Eastern Conference champions. Antetokounmpo has been sidelined since injuring his knee against the Atlanta Hawks on June 29. Tuesday's game in Phoenix is scheduled to start at 9 p.m. ET on ABC.” Read more at USA Today
“A family is suing Tesla, saying that the company’s Autopilot system was partly responsible for a crash that killed a 15-year-old boy.” Read more at New York Times
“Matiss Kivlenieks, a goalie with the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey team, died after fireworks struck him. He was 24.” Read more at New York Times
“‘Dreams do come true’:Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani have officially tied the knot! Stefani ended fevered wedding speculation with a July 5 Instagram post.” Read more at USA Today
“Lives Lived: Known as the ‘mother of the telenovela,’ Delia Fiallo wrote more than 40 for Spanish-language television. She died at 96.” Read more at New York Times
“The American-built Sher Khan Bandar crossing, north of the city of Kunduz, used to be one of the showcase projects of the 20-year American involvement in Afghanistan. But it fell to the Taliban on June 22, and the insurgents have since seized most of the rest of the country's border with Tajikistan. The crossing provides a lucrative new source of income for the Taliban as they begin to collect customs revenues there. Some of Afghanistan’s neighbors are tacitly cooperating with the insurgent group over fears that the Afghan government could collapse in as little as six months.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Strange bedfellows strike down law in Israel. In a blow to Israel’s new governing coalition, a vote to extend the controversial Palestinian family reunification law ended in a 59-59 tie with two abstentions, meaning the law—which is widely regarded as discriminatory for barring the automatic granting of citizenship and residency to West Bank and Gaza Palestinians married to an Israeli citizen—will expire. The law has led to countless hardships for such couples and their children, restricting access to everything from driving licenses to mortgages, medical care, public housing, and higher education for children.
The surprise was who supported the law and who opposed it. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his new coalition allies on the left backed it, after some compromises. Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and his right-wing allies framed the vote as a confidence motion and banded together with their nemesis—the Israeli-Arab Joint List—along with a renegade member of Bennett’s own party to oppose it while two coalition legislators abstained. Netanyahu’s opposition was based more on opportunism than moral outrage, however. As the Times of Israel noted, ‘While the right-wing Likud and Religious Zionism opposition parties support the law in principle, they voted against extending it, along with the ultra-Orthodox parties and the Joint List, to embarrass the government.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Japan’s mudslides. More than 110 people are still missing after a mudslide hit the city of Atami, in Shizuoka prefecture southwest of Tokyo, on Saturday. Japanese authorities have attributed four deaths to the disaster so far. Heita Kawakatsu, the governor of Shizuoka, said on Sunday that officials would investigate whether the mudslide was caused by deforestation in the area. Although Japan traditionally experiences landslides, the phenomenon has increased 50 percent over the last decade compared to the previous one, according to government figures.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“England opens up. England plans to lift all pandemic-related social distancing, mask wearing, and working restrictions on July 19, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday, a move that will likely make the country a test case for vaccine efficacy in the face of the more contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. (Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales have separate COVID-19 guidelines).
Although the number of new cases across the United Kingdom has averaged roughly 25,000 over the past week, the number of hospitalizations is a fraction of those seen when daily cases were as high in late 2020 and January 2021. British Health Minister Sajid Javid said that he expected that the number of daily cases would be ‘far higher’ on July 19 than they are currently.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“France’s champagne industry has denounced a new Russian law forcing foreign importers to describe their products as ‘sparkling wine’ in order to ensure the term ‘shampanskoye’ refers to Russian producers only.
The Champagne Committee, the group representing the French champagne industry, urged its members to halt Russian shipments in protest, and said it ‘deplores the fact that this legislation does not ensure that Russian consumers have clear and transparent information about the origins and characteristics of wine.’ Although French bottles won’t have to change their front label with the new law, the back label must include the sparkling wine description.
Russia’s new law adds another headache to France’s champagne industry as it hopes to bounce back following a pandemic-induced sales slump which saw exports fall 18 percent in 2020.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Jail time | A Hong Kong court sentenced a U.S. lawyer to prison for a scuffle with a plainclothes police officer at the height of pro-democracy protests in 2019. Samuel Bickett, a former executive at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, was given a term of four months and two weeks. Bickett said the cop was attacking people with a baton in a subway station when he stepped in.
Police in Hong Kong arrested nine people on suspicion of planning bomb attacks, fueling fears of potential violence as Beijing cracks down on political freedoms.” Read more at Bloomberg
No posts