D-Day, Mexico, French Open: Your Thursday Evening Briefing

[ad_1]

(Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the sign-up.)

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

1. 7,000 vessels, 11,500 airplanes, 156,00 Allied soldiers.

World leaders gathered in Normandy, France, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day, one of the most consequential military operations in history. Above, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and French officials at Juno Beach.

“We are gathered here on freedom’s altar,” President Trump said. He left it to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to praise the institutions built after World War II that are fraying under populist movements.

2. Mexico and the U.S. made progress toward a deal to avoid tariffs that would require migrants to seek asylum in the first safe country they enter. Above, an immigration checkpoint in Tapachula, Mexico.

Mexico has also pledged to send thousands of troops to the border with Guatemala, if a deal is reached, and could also expand an American program in which asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases are processed. Any final agreement would await President Trump’s return from Europe.

If Mr. Trump does impose the tariffs, it would be an atypical use of his emergency powers. Here’s what that means, and here are the states that would be hardest hit.

3. Republican Senators have threatened to revolt against President Trump’s tariff proposal. But that aside, the Senate tends to be where action goes to die.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has allowed barely a dozen roll-call votes this year on bills, amendments and legislation. Around 20 bills have been signed into law since January.

Mr. McConnell, who has called himself the “grim reaper” of Washington, has devoted the Senate floor almost exclusively to confirming conservative judicial nominations and Trump administration appointees.

_____

4. The car industry is begging to keep strong emission standards.

In a letter signed by 17 companies including Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Volvo, the world’s largest automakers told President Trump that his rollbacks of the standards threaten to hurt their profitability and produce “untenable” instability.

5. We told you last week about revelations in the files of a deceased Republican strategist that undercut the Trump administration’s rationale for adding a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

We now know the files contained much more. Thomas Hofeller, the mastermind behind the G.O.P.’s gerrymandering strategy, left behind four hard drives and 18 thumb drives containing more than 75,000 files that were found by his estranged daughter after his death in August.

A group challenging the map for North Carolina’s state legislature says the files show that Republicans misled a federal court to prolong the life of gerrymandered districts.

Separately, security experts warn that time is running out for campaigns to create protections against the cyberattacks and disinformation seen in recent elections.

_____

6. “The actions taken by the N.Y.P.D. were wrong, plain and simple.”

New York’s police commissioner apologized for a violent raid that set off the 1969 Stonewall uprising, speaking just weeks before the 50th anniversary of the milestone for gay rights, which coincides with World Pride month celebrations.

“The actions and the laws were discriminatory and oppressive, and for that, I apologize,” Commissioner James O’Neill said. “I vow to the L.G.B.T.Q. community that this would never happen in the N.Y.P.D. in 2019. We have, and we do, embrace all New Yorkers.”

History lesson: The Gay Liberation Front was the first queer activist organization formed after Stonewall.

_____

7. An Australian doctor, above, has implanted a device he invented into thousands of opioids abusers there.

Now, American researchers are exploring whether the implant, which blocks physical cravings, could be an effective new tool in the U.S.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, awarded Columbia University $6.8 million over the next two years to begin clinical trials of the implant.

An Ohio doctor accused of deliberately prescribing fatal doses of painkillers has been charged with 25 counts of murder. It is one of the state’s largest murder cases in history.

_____

8. The Toronto Raptors took Game 3, but the N.B.A. finals aren’t over.

So says our sportsl columnist, who writes that last night was a reluctant giveaway. (Also, the N.B.A. is investigating a Warriors owner who shoved Kyle Lowry of the Raptors and has barred him from games.)

From the basketball court to the tennis court: Ahead of a Friday semifinal at the French Open, Rafael Nadal’s coach told our columnist about the challenges the tennis ace has faced in recent years and how, like Roger Federer, he had revived his career.

_____

9. And now our music critic goes out on a limb. At its peak, he says, Hootie & the Blowfish was a genuinely excellent band.

In the 25 years since the release of “Cracked Rear View,” one of the defining albums of the 1990s, the band has been generally reviled, or shrugged off, or forgotten. Now, it’s time for a reassessment.

“To become aggressively uncool, you have to at least engage with the axis of cool,” Jon Caramanica writes. “But Hootie never even bothered. Its music was a refinement of an intensely vernacular sound.”

Separately, we’re compiling a playlist of songs that are about, evoke or otherwise have some connection to California. And we want to hear from you.

_____

10. And finally, an ode to washing dishes.

In this week’s “Letter of Recommendation” in The Times Magazine, one writer meditates on cutting through clutter, in life and the kitchen sink. Washing dishes by hand afforded him time to remember that the ordinary isn’t the enemy of experience, but its bedrock.

“Look at dishes this way and washing up isn’t the shouldering of a burden,” he writes, “but a renewal of the conditions by which all this — the talking, the eating, the communion — can happen again.”

Have a spick-and-span night.

_____

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing. Sign up here to get it by email in the Australian, Asian, European or American morning.

Want to catch up on past briefings? You can browse them here.

What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at [email protected].

[ad_2]

Source link