The Daily 202 generally focuses on national politics and foreign policy. But as passionate believers in local news, and in redefining “politics” as something that hits closer to home than strictly inside-the-Beltway stories, we try to bring you a weekly mix of pieces with significant local, national or international importance.
But we need your help to know what we’re missing! Please keep sending your links to news coverage of political stories that are getting overlooked. (They don’t have to be from this week, and the submission link is right under this column.) Make sure to say whether we can use your first name, last initial and location. Anonymous is okay, too, as long as you give a location.
Tech helps keep Phoenix cool(er)
As record-breaking heat waves smother the nation, cities are getting creative about how they manage extreme heat. Our colleagues Allyson Chiu, Erin Patrick O’Connor and John Farrell took an infrared camera around Phoenix to see how the city’s cooling measures are working amid this historic hot streak, and it turns out they’re making a noticeable difference in some places.
Some roads and roofs in Phoenix are treated with a coating designed to better reflect the sun, offsetting some of the heat that would otherwise get trapped in the pavement and buildings. Researchers are also testing other kinds of reflective coatings that can actively help cool the surrounding air when applied to buildings, bus stop shelters and other shade structures.
The politics: As summers continue to get hotter, lawmakers are scrambling to find ways to keep people cool and safe in extreme heat. In 2021, Phoenix became the first U.S. city with a publicly funded office dedicated to managing extreme heat, and other municipalities have followed suit.
Texas A&M suspends professor accused of criticizing lieutenant governor
Kat S. of Houston flagged this story about a respected opioid expert who was placed on leave from her professorship at Texas A&M after a student accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during a lecture. (The professor, Joy Alonzo, has since been reinstated at the university.)
It’s not completely clear what Alonzo said that sparked such backlash, and several students who attended the lecture told the Texas Tribune’s Kate McGee and James Barragán they were confused about what she had said that was so offensive. One student said Alonzo made a comment that Patrick’s office had opposed policies that could have prevented opioid-related deaths, and by doing so had allowed people to die.
The politics: Kate and James put it best. “For free speech advocates, health experts and students, Texas A&M’s investigation of Alonzo was a shocking demonstration of how quickly university leaders allow politicians to interfere in classroom discussions on topics in which they are not experts — and another example of increasing political involvement from state leaders in how Texas universities are managed,” they wrote.
The rise of the geofence warrant
More and more frequently, law enforcement are using something called “geofence warrants” to demand Google hand over location data that could be useful to solving crimes. The Los Angeles Times’s Queenie Wong reports that Google received 982 of the warrants in 2018. By 2020, that number skyrocketed to 11,554.
A reader in Sacramento pointed out this story, which details how civil rights groups fear such warrants could infringe on the privacy of innocent bystanders. This year, a California court of appeals ruled that one such warrant — in which law enforcement asked Google to provide cellphone location data for people who were near places a man visited on the day he was killed — violated the 4th Amendment because it was too broad and could have swept up thousands of innocent people in its investigation.
The politics: How police should be able to access and use our personal data is one of the most fraught political conversations of our time. Lawmakers are searching for ways to allow police to do their jobs while still protecting citizens’ privacy, and it’s a tricky balancing act.
This newspaper is transitioning into a nonprofit — with help from the Salt Lake Tribune
The Moab Times-Independent, a newspaper that has published continuously in southeast Utah for 127 years, is becoming a nonprofit and joining forces with the Salt Lake Tribune. That means every resident in Moab (including reader Carrie B., who kindly flagged this story to us!) will receive a free copy of the paper once a week, and stories on its website will be free to read.
“By increasing the reach and [the] circulation, that greatly increases the advertising value of the paper,” the Moab paper’s publisher Zane Taylor told the Tribune’s Sean P. Means. “It’s just a different business model for the future.”
The politics: Local news is vital to democracy, but in recent years, outlets have been vanishing across the nation at an alarming rate. Nonprofit collaborations like this one between the Salt Lake Tribune and Moab Times-Independent are one path to ensuring local news sticks around.
‘Vicious cycle’: Heat waves ramp up U.S. burning of fossil fuels
“America’s historic heat wave is producing a big winner: fossil fuels. As temperatures have soared, so has consumption of natural gas, burned for the electricity needed to run air conditioners across much of the Northern Hemisphere. The United States this week has twice broken its summertime record for daily gas consumption, and it could break it again Friday, according to estimates from S&P Global Commodity Insights,” Timothy Puko reports.
Hottest weather of the summer so far grips Central and Eastern U.S.
“Over 180 million people are under heat alerts Friday as dangerously hot conditions peak in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast, persist in the Desert Southwest, and tighten their grip over the south central states,” Ian Livingston reports.
Tim Scott rebukes 2024 GOP rival Ron DeSantis over Florida curriculum on slavery
“Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) rebuked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a rival for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, on Thursday over new state standards on how Black history is taught in Florida schools, saying ‘there is no silver lining’ in slavery,” John Wagner reports.
Lunchtime reads from The Post
After Mississippi banned his hormone shots, an 8-hour journey
“Across the country, families were doing everything they could to protect their trans children. Some uprooted their lives in red states for the promise of protections in blue ones. Others filed lawsuits. Katie couldn’t afford to move, and she needed a solution faster than the courts could offer, so she’d settled on a cheaper, quicker plan: She’d take a day off from her nursing job, and she and Ray would travel out of state for his medical care,” Casey Parks reports.
Infrastructure and green energy spending are powering the economy
“A surge in government funding and related private investment is beginning to make its way to businesses and communities across the country, building electric vehicles, new bridges, airport upgrades and a host of other infrastructure and green energy projects that are juicing the economy — just when it needs it most,” Abha Bhattarai reports.
Nearly 4 million in U.S. cut from Medicaid, most for paperwork reasons
“[Kristin Fortner] is among nearly 4 million Americans who have been lopped off Medicaid since the end of a pandemic-era promise that people with the safety-net health coverage could keep it, requiring every state to begin a herculean undertaking of sorting out who still belonged on the rolls. The 3.8 million — the most thorough tally — is an undercount, reflecting only people who have lost coverage so far in 38 states that have voluntarily made public their data from this sorting process, known as the Medicaid unwinding,” Amy Goldstein reports.
Bid to accelerate U.S. chips permitting passes Senate as part of defense bill
“The Senate approved legislation Thursday intended to speed up construction of US semiconductor facilities by exempting certain projects from often lengthy environmental reviews,” Bloomberg’s Mackenzie Hawkins reports.
- “The legislation was included in an amendment package to the annual defense policy bill and passed by a vote of 94-3, underscoring the broad bipartisan support for rapidly expanding the country’s semiconductor industry.”
Credit hurdles for transgender and nonbinary people could be cleared under proposed bill
“Proposed legislation could help clear significant credit reporting hurdles for transgender and nonbinary people,” the 19th’s Daja E. Henry reports. Democratic Sens. John Fetterman (Pa.) and Tina Smith (Minn.) introduced a bill Thursday “requiring credit reporting agencies to use only a person’s current name in their credit reports,” Henry writes.
Lawmakers propose $45 million in new funding for measures to lower U.S. stillbirth rate
“If passed, the Stillbirth Health Improvement and Education (SHINE) for Autumn Act of 2023 would be the most comprehensive federal stillbirth law on record. Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., who introduced the bill in the House, called it ‘the first step in the right direction’ to help prevent stillbirths and ensure healthy pregnancies,” ProPublica’s Duaa Eldeib reports.
Biden administration ramps up deportations
“According to the Department of Homeland Security, about 85,000 migrants have been ‘repatriated’ since Title 42 was lifted. That’s up 65% since the same period last year, which saw 51,246. During the same period the previous year, there were 33,087 repatriations, according to it,” NBC News’s Gabe Gutierrez reports.
Biden, testing Xi, will bar Hong Kong’s leader from economic summit
“The White House has decided it will bar Hong Kong’s top government official from attending a major economic summit in the United States this fall, according to three U.S. officials familiar with the matter, in the latest test of President Biden’s bid to reset relations with China,” Ellen Nakashima and Shibani Mahtani report.
Biden orders changes to the military code of justice for sexual assault victims
“President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday giving decisions on the prosecution of serious military crimes, including sexual assault, to independent military attorneys, taking that power away from victims’ commanders,” the Associated Press’s Tara Copp reports.
Biden unveils worker-safety and other measures in response to extreme heat
“President Biden unveiled several measures Thursday aimed at addressing the extreme heat affecting large swaths of the nation, including ramped-up enforcement of safety protections for workers in fields such as construction and agriculture who are most vulnerable to high temperatures,” John Wagner reports.
How Congress is aging, visualized
“The current class of lawmakers is one of the oldest in history, with an overall median age of 59. The median age of senators is 65, the highest on record. In the House, the median age has hovered between 57 and 58 for the past decade, higher than in any year before that period,” Nick Mourtoupalas and Derek Hawkins report.
Democrats plot middle-class message to retake economic high ground
“The secret slide deck started circulating in June, intended as a wake-up call to top Democrats in Congress, the White House and state capitals across the country about a dangerous flaw in the Democratic brand,” Michael Scherer and Marianne LeVine report.
- “Based on six months of polling and focus groups, the document showed the party losing badly to Republicans on the most important single issue of voters: the economy. Voters said Democrats focused too much on ‘cultural and social issues; and not enough on pocketbook issues. The message of ’economic fairness’ was a loser compared with ‘growing the economy,’ a regular GOP refrain. The effect was almost immediate.”
As McConnell tries to convey business as usual, his future is in doubt
“It has been decades since there was any real uncertainty at the top of the Republican Party in the Senate. But Senator Mitch McConnell’s alarming freeze-up at a news conference on Wednesday at the Capitol, as well as new disclosures about other recent falls, have shaken his colleagues and intensified quiet discussion about how long he can stay in his position as minority leader, and whether change is coming at the top,” the New York Times’s Annie Karni and Carl Hulse report.
At 12:20 p.m., Biden will arrive in Auburn, Maine, to discuss “Bidenomics” and manufacturing.
Biden will leave Auburn for Brunswick at 2:15 p.m.
At 4 p.m., Biden will participate in a fundraiser in Freeport, Maine.
Biden will leave Brunswick for Dover, Del., at 5:25 p.m. He is scheduled to arrive in Rehoboth Beach, Del., at 7:30 p.m.
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.
