As California’s big cities fail to rein in their water use, rural communities are already tapped out

As cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco struggle to cut their water use — water that overwhelmingly comes from the state’s reservoirs — rural Californians that rely on groundwater are already tapped out. They live with the daily worry that they won’t have enough water to bathe with or drink.

CNN

Filmmakers of THE JANES on Roe v. Wade and the Future of Legal Abortion

Activists have long known the Supreme Court could likely overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark case guaranteeing legal abortion, and in May, a leaked draft majority opinion all but confirmed as much. Now, as the country waits for the official Supreme Court decision that will rescind Roe, a timely documentary called THE JANES is hitting HBO. 

Teen Vogue

Electrical engineer will be 1st Mexican-born and one of youngest women in space

Katya Echazarreta joins a diverse international crew boarding the fifth passenger flight by Blue Origin. Of 600 people who’ve flown to space, fewer than three dozen have been Black, Indigenous or Latino.

NBC News

Leaked Report Shows That Harvard Has 7,000 Remains of Native Americans, And 19 Enslaved People

While many American universities attempt to reconcile their history with slavery, more information continues to surface.

The Root

The Satanist Neo-Nazi Plot to Murder U.S. Soldiers

A rogue G.I.’s trial exposes the depths of a murderous far-right ideology — and the FBI’s complicity in spreading hate.

Rolling Stone

Mitch McConnell, two governors said to be in Wisconsin gunman’s hit list

The names of U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers appeared on a hit list kept by a man accused of fatally shooting a retired Wisconsin judge, authorities and local media said on Saturday.

Reuters

COVID-19 cases are on the rise. Does it matter anymore?

COVID-19 cases have risen in the U.S. to around 100,000 per day, and the real number could be as much as five times that, given many go unreported.

But the situation is far different from the early months of the pandemic. There are now vaccines and booster shots, and new treatments that dramatically cut the risk of the virus. So how much do cases alone still matter?

The Hill

A man had his AR-15-style rifle stolen at gunpoint. He then used a second gun to open fire on the robber, police say.

A man who was open-carrying an AR-15-style rifle at a Missouri supermarket had his firearm stolen at gunpoint, according to police.

Then, in a surprising twist, he retrieved another gun from his vehicle, and opened fire on the man accused of robbing him, North County Police Cooperative said on Facebook.

Insider

Book banning in the US: These are the authors of color who censors are trying to silence

“The frank and difficult stories of being Black in America” are coming under fire, said NCAC spokesperson Nora Pelizzari.

CNN

The Johnny Depp Amber Heard Verdict Doesn’t Matter After the Internet Made a Spectacle of Abuse

The internet made a spectacle of domestic abuse claims, leaving a despicable landscape for survivors everywhere.

Teen Vogue

Uvalde funeral attendant who encountered gunman says he tried to go after shooter, was held back

Cody Briseno said he has helped bury five children who died on that day, including a cousin.

NBC News

At first meeting since massacre, Uvalde school board takes no action on police chief

Chief Pete Arredondo has been faulted for a slow response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary.

The Texas Tribune

Latina mothers, daughters and the pursuit of higher education — together

Cindy identified nine working-class mother-daughter families consisting of 22 women — all but three of whom attended college in California at the same time. Some are one mother, one daughter, while others are triads like the Escobedo women — Cecilia and daughters Cindy and Abigail. The mothers are largely immigrants — from Mexico, Peru, Belize, Guatemala — while all but one of the daughters U.S. born.

LA Times

Online pro-gun extremism: ‘Cool for active shooter stuff’

As Americans reel from repeated mass shootings, law enforcement officials and experts on extremism are taking increasing notice of the sprawling online space devoted to guns and gun rights: gun forums, tactical training videos, websites that sell unregistered gun kits and social media platforms where far-right gun owners swap practical tips with talk of dark plots to take their weapons.

AP News

America Tolerates High Levels of Violence but Suppresses Photos of the Slaughter

The scale of American violence is awe-inspiring in all the wrong ways. The rate of shootings — school shootings, mass shootings, police shootings, accidental shootings, suicidal shootings — is top of the charts compared with almost every other country on our planet. The same goes for the other ways Americans kill and die; we excel at the fatal work of extinguishing each other. No single factor can be blamed, but it’s notable that energetic measures are consistently taken to prevent us from seeing what is done. These measures have only intensified as our society has become more visual, with screens tuned to every aspect of the human experience except its final act. As the photographer Nina Berman explained to a New York Times reporter a few days ago, “For a culture so steeped in violence, we spend a lot of time preventing anyone from actually seeing that violence. Something else is going on here, and I’m not sure it’s just that we’re trying to be sensitive.”

The Intercept

California drought is pushing Latino farmers and workers to make difficult decisions

Del Bosque is one of the many Latino farmers and workers whose lives revolve around California’s agriculture industry and who have been forced to make difficult decisions due to the ongoing water crisis.

CNN

How we pronounce Uvalde says a lot about the power of language in mixed communities

But how we say Uvalde matters, because it represents a long lineage of how Latinos have been racialized in the U.S. and in South Texas, specifically.

NPR

Parkland activist and teachers lead gun protest outside Marco Rubio office

A Parkland activist and a Democratic candidate for Florida Governor led teachers in a rally outside U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s Doral office Friday morning in an attempt to pressure the Republican lawmaker to sit down and talk about gun safety following several mass shootings.

Miami Herald

Lakota elders helped a white man preserve their language. Then he tried to sell it back to them.

“No matter how it was collected, where it was collected, when it was collected, our language belongs to us,” said Ray Taken Alive, a Lakota teacher.

NBC News

California Suggests Reparations for Black Residents, a First Step Toward Nationwide Atonement

After hundreds of years, the California Reparations Task Force is finally making headway in reparations justice for Black residents.

Jezebel

A House Democrat plans to introduce a bill that would hit AR-15’s with a 1,000% tax — and it could pass Congress without GOP votes

That outcome prompted Beyer to eye reconciliation, the legislative tactic allowing proposed laws to bypass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold known as the filibuster and pass with a simple majority. Democrats employed the maneuver in 2021 to approve both the stimulus law and the House-approved Build Back Better bill over united GOP resistance.

Business Insider

Overturning Roe Would Be Just the Beginning

A self-assured right-wing majority may be ready to radically alter our legal system and destroy the public’s trust in the Supreme Court and the law.

The Atlantic

Carnival crew members rescue 16 ‘in distress’ from a raft off the coast of Cuba

This week alone, U.S. authorities in Florida have intercepted several trips of Cuban migrants. Two separate groups of Cubans people, totaling 28 balseros, landed Sunday in the Florida Keys, a hot spot for landings in the state. On Monday and Tuesday, two other boats filled with Cuban migrants were detained near the chain of islands.

Miami Herald

The World Has Not Learnt the Lessons of the Tiananmen Square Massacre

Instead, while the world slept, Chinese authoritarianism metastasized.

The Diplomat

Tiananmen crackdown statues unveiled in Norway, Taiwan after monuments disappear in Hong Kong

Replicas of a Tiananmen statue removed from a local university campus last year have found a home abroad in the run-up to the 33rd anniversary of the Beijing crackdown, as commemorations in Hong Kong itself are expected to be muted amid the national security law.

Hong Kong Free Press

Colombia court orders penalties for president, cites national park

A court in Colombia has ordered President Ivan Duque to be fined and placed under house arrest for five days, it said on Saturday, citing the Andean country’s leader failure to comply with a previous ruling that demanded he protect a national park.

Reuters

Timid Biden condemns Ukrainians to an agonising war without end

Nato’s reluctance to seize the initiative, rather than passively reacting to Russian actions, is unfathomable, too. Proposals for a no-fly zone and safe havens in western Ukraine are repeatedly rejected as too risky. So dare to try something else! Nato has the muscle and means. It could do much more to stop the systematic killing of civilians and push Russia back, as previously argued here.

The Guardian

Nigeria Owo church attack: Gunmen kill Catholic worshippers in Ondo

The armed men entered St Francis Catholic church in the town of Owo during a Sunday service. They fired into the congregation and then kidnapped a priest as well as some other church-goers, witnesses said.

BBC

Severe Covid cases ‘more likely in highly polluted areas’

A study found that people who live in places where there are high levels of the atmospheric pollutant nitrogen dioxide had higher chances of ending up in intensive care units (ICUs) or of needing mechanical ventilation after they had caught Covid.

The Guardian

Protests held amid crackdown on anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre

Demonstrators gathered Saturday in Japan to protest China’s crackdown on events marking the anniversary of the June 4, 1989, massacre of pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square.

Activists outside the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo and other places across Japan called for everyone to never forget Tiananmen Square, South Asia news agency ANI reported.

UPI

German house votes for major appropriation to country’s armed forces

Huge spending increase comes 100 days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Just the News

Ukraine says Russia suffering ‘huge casualties’ in Sievierodonetsk — as it happened

The local governor says Ukraine has “pushed back” Russian forces in the fight for the key Donbas city. Meanwhile, a top official has speculated that the war might last several more months.

Deutsche Welle

UK accused of attempting to deport children to Rwanda

The UK Home Office has been accused of attempting to deport unaccompanied 16-year-olds to Rwanda in the first wave of asylum seekers to be sent to east Africa later this month.

Irish Times

Australia says China threatened plane over South China Sea

Australia on Sunday said a Chinese fighter jet carried out dangerous maneuvers threatening the safety of one of its maritime surveillance planes over the South China Sea and forcing it to return to the base.

AP News

Enemy tongue: eastern Ukrainians reject their Russian birth language

“Unfortunately, I grew up speaking Russian, but it’s not pleasant to speak the same language as the army that is destroying whole areas of our country,” said Zinkivskyi, a 35-year-old street artist widely known to Kharkiv residents, who usually refer to him by his first name.

The Guardian

Yemenis face daily struggle to survive in besieged Taiz

Yemeni cancer patient Mohsen al-Najdi has to drive more than three hours along narrow mountain roads to receive chemotherapy he can barely afford in Taiz, a city which has been largely cut off from the rest of Yemen during a seven-year war.

Reuters