Friday, June 19, 2020

Your Friday Briefing

The Supreme Court’s DACA ruling, President Trump’s rally in Tulsa, the climate's effect on pregnancy

Good morning. Facebook and Twitter take actions against Trump. Climate change is making babies sick. And the Supreme Court issues its second left-leaning decision in a week.

DACA lives on

Supporters of DACA outside of the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

When this country started hearing a decade ago about Dreamers — people who came to the United States as small children without legal permission — many of them were in their teens or early 20s. These Dreamers are now full adults, with careers and families, and many have spent years anxiously wondering whether they would be thrown out of the only country they’ve really known.

Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, which barred President Trump from deporting the Dreamers anytime soon, came as a tremendous relief to them.

“It feels amazing,” Vanessa Pumar, 31, an immigration lawyer who came from Venezuela at age 11, said. “I have been holding my breath. It feels like I can finally breathe.”

Marisol Montejano, who’s 36 and received a math degree this week from a California university, used the same word: “I feel like I could breathe.” Montejano planned to tell her two children that “it’s going to be OK.”

Joana Cabrera, who is 24 and came from the Philippines at age 9, said, “I’m actually still shaking.” Cabrera added, “I’m unbelievably happy, because I was expecting the worst.”

The decision was the second this week in which at least one conservative justice — Chief Justice John Roberts, in this case — joined the court’s four liberal members to issue a left-leaning ruling. Immigration is proving to be one of the issues (along with L.G.B.T.Q. rights) on which the court is not reliably conservative. Last year, a majority effectively blocked the Trump administration from adding a question about citizenship status to the 2020 census.

Yesterday’s decision was a narrow one, holding that the administration did not follow the proper procedures for terminating President Barack Obama’s policy, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, of allowing Dreamers to stay. Trump quickly suggested that he still planned to end the policy.

But, as The Times’s Miriam Jordan told us, “There’s nothing the Trump administration could do fast enough to get rid of the program before the election.”

Many Republicans may be quite happy about that, anyway. “Polls show extraordinarily broad support for giving legal status to the Dreamers,” said Julie Davis, a Times editor who’s written a book about Trump’s immigration policy with her colleague Michael Shear, “and being on the wrong side of that issue is the last place Republicans want to be five months before an election.”

The dissent: Justice Clarence Thomas argued that Trump had the power to end DACA and the majority of justices were trying “to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision.”

Big impact: Roberto G. Gonzales, a Harvard professor who has been studying DACA since it went into effect in 2012, calls it “the most successful immigration policy in recent decades.”

Gonzales explains: “Within a year, DACA beneficiaries were already taking giant steps. They found new jobs. They increased their earnings. They acquired driver’s licenses. And they began to build credit through opening bank accounts and obtaining credit cards.”

FOUR MORE BIG STORIES

1. Social media vs. the president

Facebook and Twitter both pushed back against Trump’s use of inflammatory material yesterday. Facebook removed advertisements by the Trump campaign that prominently featured a red triangle that the Nazis used to classify Communist political prisoners during World War II. The ad used it in connection with antifa, a loose collective of anti-fascist protesters.

Twitter added a warning — an exclamation point with the label “Manipulated Media” — to a Trump tweet that featured a video of two toddlers running down a sidewalk. The video, which included a headline about a “racist baby,” had been made to look like a CNN segment.

The next source of debate: Tomorrow, Trump will hold his first rally since the coronavirus shut down public gatherings. Critics have condemned his choice of a host city: Tulsa, Okla., the site of a racist massacre 99 years ago this month.

2. Observing Juneteenth

Today is Juneteenth, and a growing number of companies have begun recognizing it as a holiday, in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Times has put together a collection of historical photos, poetry and articles about the holiday, which commemorates the end of slavery in the U.S.

“As someone who has celebrated Juneteenth for a long time, I think we need it now — not in lieu of the freedom, justice and equality we are still fighting for — but in addition, because we have been fighting for so very long,” Veronica Chambers, an editor who spearheaded the project, writes.

More Confederate pushback: Nancy Pelosi ordered portraits of four House speakers who served the Confederacy to be removed from the Capitol. And the Southeastern Conference threatened not to hold future college sports championships in Mississippi unless the state removed the Confederate battle emblem from its flag.

3. Another bleak jobs picture

Another 1.5 million Americans applied for state unemployment benefits last week, a sign that the coronavirus pandemic was reaching deeper into the economy even as the pace of jobs cuts slowed.

“Layoffs that happened at the beginning of this likely were intended as temporary,” said Martha Gimbel, a labor market expert. “But if you’re laying off people now, that’s probably a long-term business decision.”

4. The climate’s effect on pregnancy

Living Art Enterprises, LLC/Science Source

Higher temperatures caused by climate change and increased air pollution have raised women’s risk of giving birth to premature, underweight or stillborn children — and hurt African-American babies most. That’s the finding of a newly published paper, which reviewed data from 57 studies collectively analyzing nearly 33 million births in the United States.

Here’s what else is happening

  • Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota withdrew from consideration to be Joe Biden’s running mate and said she told him he should pick a woman of color.
  • The chief executive of AMC Theaters prompted a backlash after saying moviegoers would not be required to wear masks when AMC theaters reopen next month. The executive, Adam Aron, said, “We did not want to be drawn into a political controversy.”
  • Chinese officials said today that they had indicted two Canadians on espionage charges. The move escalated a conflict that began after Canada arrested an executive of the Chinese technology giant Huawei in 2018.
  • Lives Lived: “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.” Vera Lynn, the “Sweetheart” of the British forces in World War II, sang those lyrics and many more to the troops and to embattled Londoners in the Blitz. In the darkest days, her voice was as familiar to Britons as Churchill’s. She died at age 103.

BACK STORY: A GUIDE TO BIKES

Cycling has become more popular, as the coronavirus has left many people looking both for alternatives to mass transit and for outdoor activities. John Herrman, who covers tech for The Times and has been riding bikes “since before I have coherent memories,” wrote a helpful guide for biking pros and first-timers alike that answers many questions.

“Lots of people just want to climb back on a bike to commute, but they’re confronted with options and hurdles that are awfully discouraging for such a supposedly universal and routine activity,” he told us.

If you’re looking to buy a bike, he suggests reaching out to a local bike shop or REI, or browsing through used bikes on sites like Craigslist. You don’t need to get too fancy; bikes from big box stores like Walmart will work fine for a short work commute.

“A lot of cycling enthusiasts are on what amounts to a very long detour, returning, eventually, to what they knew the first time they kept their balance on two wheels: A bike is a bike, and every ride is a victory,” he said.

PLAY, WATCH, EAT, JUMP

Make some roasted mushrooms

Ryan Liebe for The New York Times

These crispy mushrooms, which use a dry rub adapted from the chef Greg Collier, make a great main course or side. The seasoning works well on a variety of mushrooms. Just be sure to buy the biggest ones you can find. Black oyster mushrooms, white lion’s mane or even portobellos all work.

Beware the trampoline

Sales of outdoor equipment has surged as families try to keep their children entertained while on lockdown. But that has led to a spike in injuries from bikes, scooters, and especially trampolines. Some E.R. doctors have begun referring to trampolines as “orthopedic fracture machines.”

Many injuries occur when multiple children, especially a mix of older and younger ones, are jumping on a trampoline at the same time. That’s what happened to the daughter of our colleague Adam Pasick, who broke her tibia on a trampoline on Wednesday. Stay safe out there, kids!

Watch something … supernatural

“What We Do in the Shadows.”Matthias Clamer/FX, via Associated Press

Our weekly suggestion from Gilbert Cruz, The Times’s Culture editor:

I’ve been watching my share of serious fare these days, but I would be lost without something silly to rely on. “What We Do in the Shadows,” a two-season FX comedy that you can watch on Hulu, is ribald, vulgar and exactly what I’ve needed.

A mockumentary about four idiot vampires (and their human servant) who live together in a mansion in Staten Island, “Shadows” finds its humor in the mundanity of eternal life. Mixed messages, hurt feelings and misunderstandings all assume a ridiculous air when they involve creatures of the night. And while this is a show about the supernatural — werewolves, witches, ghosts and the like all make an appearance — there’s little to keep you up at night other than the delightful way everyone pronounces the name “Colin Robinson.”

Diversions

Games

Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Night sky streaker (five letters).

Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you Monday. — David

P.S. The word “dadliness” appeared for the first time in The Times yesterday, as noted by the Twitter bot @NYT_first_said.

You can see today’s print front page here.

Today’s episode of “The Daily” is about the history of Juneteenth. The latest Book Review podcast features an all-star lineup: André Leon Talley, Claudia Rankine, Jericho Brown and Megha Majumdar.

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Ian Prasad Philbrick and Sanam Yar contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.

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