Signs emerge Iowa governor has a favorite
Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, has said she does not plan to formally endorse a candidate in the presidential race. But through her words and deeds, Reynolds seems to be softening the ground in Iowa for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, appearing to try to create the conditions for an opening for him to take on former President Donald Trump. Appearing with DeSantis at three of his four visits to Iowa this year, and with his wife as well, Reynolds has extolled Florida’s achievements under his leadership and connected his state’s successes to Iowa’s.
Transgender care ban allowed to take effect in Tennessee, appeals panel says
A federal appeals panel on Saturday said a Tennessee law that would ban hormone therapy and puberty blockers for transgender youth could go into effect, marking the first time a federal court has allowed a law banning transition care to fully take hold in the United States. The ruling was issued by a divided three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati. It is a notable blow to transgender youth, their families and their allies, who have leaned on the nation’s judiciary as a last resort to block a series of laws that target transition care, legislation they say would be harmful to young people’s health.
Rising temperatures threaten more than misery for oldest Americans
Another wave of dangerous heat sweeping across the South and into the West this past week has posed particular perils for older people, who are among the most vulnerable to extreme conditions. Forecasters expect the scorching spell to continue through the coming week, with heat indexes rising to well over 100 degrees across a vast swath of the South. It has created misery, and has also underscored a recognition that health risks stand to intensify as a changing climate brings higher temperatures that will likely endure for longer periods. The aging process makes older bodies generally less capable of withstanding extreme heat, medical experts said.
After the Affirmative Action ruling, Asian Americans ask what happens next
Asian Americans were at the center of the Supreme Court decision against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. In both cases, the plaintiffs said high-achieving Asian American applicants lost out to less academically qualified students. But in the days following the court’s ruling, interviews with some two dozen Asian American students revealed that for most of them — no matter their views on affirmative action — the decision was unlikely to assuage doubts about the fairness of college admissions. “I don’t think this decision brought any kind of equalizing of a playing field,” said Divya Tulsiani, the daughter of Indian immigrants. “It kind of did the opposite.”
The mango is king of the Miami summer
The air gets thick with humidity as summer arrives in South Florida. Then, something magical happens: Mango trees bear fruit. In good years like this one, they produce so much that strangers give away mangoes on their lawns, and neighbors pack them in boxes to mail to loved ones. What South Florida mango evangelists cherish most about the peak June-to-August season is how sharing a beloved fruit brings people together in a relatively young, multinational city with few widely shared traditions. Mangoes remind immigrants of the places they left — and help them feel like Miami, with its hodgepodge of cultures and languages, is home.
Far-right parties are rising to power around Europe. Is Spain next?
As Spain prepares for elections, some liberal European politicians fear the hard-right Vox party could become the first right-wing party since the Francisco Franco era to enter Spain’s national government. The rise of Vox is part of an increasing trend of hard-right parties surging in popularity and, in some cases, gaining power by entering governments as junior partners. In a seeming recognition that the continent’s political complexion is changing, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in Spain this past week that the European Union needed to deliver tangible results in order to counter “extremist” forces.
Bucha gets a remake, but pain lingers behind the facade
There is a line of tidy houses on Vokzalna Street in Bucha, Ukraine, where crumbling homes once lined a roadway littered with burned-out Russian tanks. And there are backhoes and bulldozers plowing across a construction site where a new home goods store will replace one that was burned to the ground. More than a year after Ukrainian forces wrested back Bucha from Russian troops, the town has drawn international investment that has physically transformed it, and it has become a stopping point for delegations of foreign leaders. And yet behind the veneer of revitalization, the pain that suffused Bucha during its month of horror under Russian occupation still lingers.
Collapse of Dutch government highlights Europe’s new migration politics
The collapse of a Dutch coalition government over a proposed refugee policy has once again underscored the potency of immigration as an arbiter of Europe’s politics. The current crisis in the Netherlands was precipitated by its conservative prime minister, Mark Rutte, who resigned after his centrist coalition partners refused to back his tough new policy on refugees. Over the past decade or so, centrist parties have sought to accommodate the tough migration views of traditional conservative voters while coming together to keep the far-right parties at bay. But as the collapse of the Dutch government seems to show, that strategy may be running its course.
On Ukraine war’s 500th day, Russia strikes and Zelenskyy shows defiance
Russian forces launched a deadly strike in eastern Ukraine on Saturday as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked the 500th day of the war with a show of defiance, sharing a video of himself visiting a Black Sea island that has become a potent symbol of his country’s resistance to the invasion. At least seven civilians were killed and 13 others were injured when Russian forces shelled the city center of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials said. Russian forces used cluster munitions in the attack, according to Ukraine’s prosecutor general. The attack came just a day after President Joe Biden said the United States would supply the weapon to Ukraine to battle Russia’s entrenched forces.
In Ukraine, they’re Doctors; in Britain, they’re unemployed
Dr. Samer al-Sheikh stared at the photograph of himself on his phone. The doctor pictured at the operating table was now almost unrecognizable to him. After fleeing the Iraq War at age 16, al-Sheikh built a life in Ukraine as a trauma surgeon. But now the pings of job rejection emails mark his time. After leaving Ukraine in March 2022, he is a refugee again, this time in Britain, struggling to find a medical post commensurate with his skills. Andrew Geddes, director of the Migration Policy Center at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, said that it was not uncommon for highly qualified refugees to struggle to find jobs relevant to their skills.
Toronto pepares for its ‘Beyoncé weekend’
If it were left up to fans, one of the incoming Toronto mayor’s first acts would be to declare a municipal holiday in honor of Beyoncé’s latest tour stop in the city to kick off her North American shows. With two shows scheduled in Toronto this weekend, Beyoncé begins the North American leg of her first solo tour in seven years in a city still rebounding from the pandemic, which shut down live shows and capped concert attendance well below capacity. Her blockbuster shows, part of the Renaissance World Tour, are expected to trigger gridlock around the concert venue, the Rogers Center, with throngs of pedestrians pouring onto the city’s downtown streets.
By wire sources