And another day of resignations, weighing national abortion restrictions, removing himself from the board, the BA.5 variant, rising monkeypox cases, 71M in poverty, guilty pleas, AZ school vouchers, and voters switching to GOP comes to a close:
“Any sitting Senator who won’t comply with a subpoena shouldn’t be a sitting Senator anymore.” — Tristan Snell
“Boris Johnson’s worst scandal doesn’t even compare to Donald Trump’s top ten and they forced him out. Shows how damaged and abused we are here. Donald Trump tried to overthrow the US Government and American conservatives can’t condemn him.” — Tim Hannan
Deaths
US: 1,045,080 (+523)
World: 6,368,901 (+2117)
Cases
US: 90,065,165 (+134,702)
World: 558,528,324 (+1,017,450)
One scandal too many: British PM Boris Johnson resigns. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his resignation Thursday after droves of top government officials quit over the latest scandal to engulf him, marking an end to three tumultuous years in which he tried to bluster his way through one ethical lapse after another. Months of defiance ended almost with a shrug as Johnson stood outside No. 10 Downing St. and conceded that his party wanted him gone. “Them’s the breaks,” he said. -- Johnson’s scandals were nothing compared to Trump’s. And the Republicans refuse to let Trump go.
House Republicans weigh national abortion restrictions. House Republicans are weighing what kind of national-level abortion ban legislation to pursue if they win the House majority next year, with a 15-week ban or further on the table.
“There I was, all these years, thinking conservative Republicans were all about minimizing how much the Government should meddle in our private lives.” — Neil deGrasse Tyson
A Dutch doctor and the internet are making sure Americans have access to abortion pills. Aid Access, an online-only service run by a Dutch physician, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, began shipping abortion pills to Americans from abroad four years ago. The organization’s team consists of about four doctors supervising about 10 medical staff members, and they’re difficult for U.S. authorities to reach because all are outside the country and they ship pills from a pharmacy in India.
If Republicans Retake Congress In November, Here’s What Their Agenda Will Look Like. Kneecapping the EPA, rolling back transgender rights, slashing social welfare programs—a little-read policy document spells out the House GOP’s extreme plans. A little-noticed budget document, the Blueprint to Save America, released in June by the Republican Study Committee, details the group’s priorities. Since nearly 75 percent of Republican House lawmakers are RSC members, these priorities are shared by a majority of the GOP caucus. The 122-page manifesto, containing a laundry list of longstanding conservative desires, calls for significantly reducing the size of America’s social safety net, drastically limiting abortion access nationwide, effectively throwing in the towel on combatting climate change, raising the age requirement to receive full Social Security benefits, cracking down on transgender rights, and making it easier for Americans to carry concealed weapons. — We have been warned. Vote all Republicans out of office.
Donald Trump removed himself from the board of his Sarasota-based social media company, records show, just weeks before the company was issued federal subpoenas by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and a grand jury in Manhattan. Trump, the chairman of Trump Media and Technology Group, was one of six board members removed on June 8, state business records show. Among the board members removed were Kashyap Patel, Trump's former point man in the White House; Scott Glabe, a former assistant to Trump who was counsel for the media company; and Donald Trump, Jr. -- Yeah, that’s not suspicious. I wonder who tipped him off.
BA.5, now dominant U.S. variant, may pose the biggest threat to immune protection yet. The two subvariants also appear to evade protection from vaccines and previous infections more easily than most of their predecessors.
Monkeypox cases rise 77% in a week, WHO reports: "Concerned by the scale and spread of the virus". The World Health Organization on Thursday reported a 77% weekly increase in the number of lab-confirmed monkeypox cases, to more than 6,000 worldwide, and two more deaths in parts of Africa where the virus has circulated for years.
Inflation pushed 71M people into poverty since Ukraine war. A staggering 71 million more people around the world are experiencing poverty as a result of soaring food and energy prices that climbed in the weeks following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations Development Program said in a report Thursday.
WNBA star Brittney Griner pleads guilty to drug charges in Russian court. Griner, 31, could face up to 10 years in prison as her family and friends step up their calls for the U.S. government to do more to free her. Griner, 31, was detained in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after Russian authorities said they found vape canisters with cannabis oil in her luggage.
Voters switch lopsidedly to GOP, in warning for Dems. A political shift is beginning to take hold across the U.S. as tens of thousands of suburban voters who helped fuel the Democratic Party’s gains in recent years are becoming Republicans. -- Too many people embrace fascism. Get ready to lose everything: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, LGBTQ+ rights, education, the planet, anything that helps people or society will be gone. White Christian Nationalism will rule.
Dems want to tax high earners to protect Medicare solvency. Senate Democrats want to boost taxes on some high earners and use the money to extend the solvency of Medicare, the latest step in the party’s election-year attempt to craft a scaled-back version of the economic package that collapsed last year, Democratic aides told The Associated Press...Under the latest proposal, people earning more than $400,000 a year and couples making more than $500,000 would have to pay a 3.8% tax on their earnings from tax-advantaged businesses called pass throughs. Until now, many of them have been using a loophole to avoid paying that levy. -- But of course, many people who earn much less than $400,000 a year are going to vote for Republicans. smh.
Arizona OKs biggest US school voucher plan, faces challenge. The expansion Ducey signed will let every parent in Arizona take public money now sent to the K-12 public school system and use it to pay for their children’s private school tuition or other education costs.
Brad Pitt says he suffers from facial blindness. If you run into Brad Pitt, chances are he won't recognize you the second time around. That's because the award-winning actor says in a new interview with GQ that he suffers from facial blindness, also known as prosopagnosia, causing him to struggle to remember people's faces. Although he has not been officially diagnosed, Pitt, 58, says he believes he has it. "Nobody believes me!" he said. "I wanna meet another [person with it]."…Prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder that can cause people to have difficulty recognizing even family members or friends, according to the National Institute of Health. Treatment involves developing other strategies to recognize people, such as focusing on their voice.
Huge underground search for mysterious dark matter begins. In a former gold mine a mile underground, inside a titanium tank filled with a rare liquified gas, scientists have begun the search for what so far has been unfindable: dark matter. Scientists are pretty sure the invisible stuff makes up most of the universe’s mass and say we wouldn’t be here without it — but they don’t know what it is. The race to solve this enormous mystery has brought one team to the depths under Lead, South Dakota. The question for scientists is basic, says Kevin Lesko, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “What is this great place I live in? Right now, 95% of it is a mystery.”
RIP James Caan. He was 82.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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