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NBA Finals The San Antonio Spurs beat the New York Knicks 115-111 at Madison Square Garden on Monday, trimming New York's lead in the NBA Finals to 2-1. The game also drew national attention as President Donald Trump became the first sitting US president to attend an NBA Finals game, prompting enhanced security and boos from some attendees when he appeared on the Jumbotron. Read more. WATCH: Trump reacts to being booed at Madison Square Garden

Voters in four states head to the polls today to choose the candidates who will compete in November's midterm elections. Here's a closer look at some of the key races: Maine: Among the most closely watched contests is Maine's Senate race, where incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins is seeking another term. Democrat Graham Platner is expected to win his party's nomination despite growing scrutiny over allegations about his past treatment of women and a recent extramarital sexting scandal. WATCH: Women in Maine have mixed feelings about Graham Platner Nevada: The Silver State is also drawing national attention as Democrats look to reclaim the governor's office. LIVE RESULTS: Track results across Maine, Nevada, South Carolina and North Dakota. First polls close at 7 p.m. ET.

6.1 magnitude earthquake near Cuba shakes buildings in Havana and Florida HAVANA (AP) — A 6.1 magnitude earthquake struck near western Cuba on Monday afternoon, shaking buildings in Havana and Florida as far north as Orlando. No injuries or damage was reported. https://apnews.com/article/cuba-earthquake-tremor-florida-a19cd2298c241bb21412824f366a893f? 32,000 people displaced by the Philippine earthquake that killed at least 37 GENERAL SANTOS, Philippines (AP) — Rescuers searched ruined buildings in the southern Philippines on Tuesday to ensure no one was still trapped a day after one of the strongest earthquakes to hit the country in a half-century killed at least 37 people and displaced more than 32,000. https://apnews.com/article/philippines-earthquake-2907e17ea68fca76cb4c6fde3e15f139?

A flesh-eating cattle parasite spreads beyond Texas as new screwworm cases are found Three more cases of the New World screwworm have been confirmed, including one outside the main cluster in Texas, demonstrating the difficulty of stopping a resurgent pest that could devastate the nation’s cattle industry, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Monday. https://apnews.com/article/screwworm-flesh-eating-parasite-cattle-texas-a7459200cef00d658d877755ad761f41?

Federal judge strikes down Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston sided with 20 states, saying the executive branch exceeded its authority. Read more. What to know: H-1B visas are meant for high-skilled jobs that are difficult to find American workers to fill. The administration announced the much higher fee in September as a way of preventing foreign workers from taking American jobs. The announcement set off a wave of panic among confused employers, students and workers in the United States and abroad and led to several lawsuits. In this case, states argued that using the H-1B program for much-needed doctors and teachers was already difficult before the higher fee. The ruling contradicts an earlier federal court decision that upheld the increased fee. There's still another federal case in San Francisco, setting up the possibility for appellate court clashes. RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Somali referee won’t officiate in World Cup after being denied entry into US Trump administration will offer expedited visa interviews at select embassies for $750 Attorneys urge release of mosque leader, saying he’s been denied diabetes care in ICE custody ICE facility in Louisiana reports its second detainee death in less than 2 months A watchdog report flags security risks in the IRS-ICE taxpayer data-sharing deal What to know about the growing opposition to Trump family-linked resort in Albania Republican senators warn surveillance program may lapse after Trump intel pick backlash Pentagon labels tech giant Alibaba and electric car maker BYD as aiding Chinese military Vance adds a chicken coop to the vice president’s residence Trump booed by the crowd prior to Game 3 of the NBA Finals

June 9, 2026 By Sam Sifton Good morning. The Spurs slipped past the Knicks last night, 115-111, ending a 13-game winning streak that lasted more than a month. President Trump and Zohran Mamdani were there. There’s more news below. I’m going to start today, though, with some great American sentences. Word choices Here’s a great sentence now: “The United States was written into being 250 years ago.” My colleagues wrote it to introduce a project we’re unveiling today. It’s about six sentences that have shaped the American story over the past two and a half centuries. I love theirs because the words “written into being” say so much about the birth of our nation — conjured not out of conquest or lineage, but out of shared principles and philosophies that led to our independence from the British crown. We write laws, literature, songs and speeches to tell us who we are. And when we write them well — with precision and rhythm that match our ambition, our bravado, our anger, joy, grievances or dreams alike — we can imagine a kind of American exceptionalism that derives not from power or politics, but from language itself. Here’s the first of the six. It’s the most famous sentence of the Declaration of Independence, written quickly and collectively in Philadelphia in 1776: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Our A.O. Scott wrote about that one. As he notes, many pages have been written about these 35 words, about the ideology that girds them, about the history that led to them, about where in classical and early modern thought they emerged. That makes them no less remarkable for their sweep, and for their radicalism, he says. We are equal. We have rights. Those rights define our humanity. National Archives Of course it’s a slippery bit of poetry, too, both a sacred text and a promise that, for many, has yet to be achieved. He writes: Even the simplest gloss — the near-heretical attempt to put the language of the Declaration “in other words” — hints at the complexities rippling through the crystalline clarity of the prose. Every word is a fighting word, begging to be contested. What exactly did they mean by “equal”? By “Creator”? By “Liberty”? By “We”? Yesterday, I called Tony (A.O.’s been Tony to me since … college) to ask him about what it was like to write about these words we’ve all seen so many times. “There’s real gravity and authority to them,” he told me. “We call it a ‘founding document’ and ascribe a lot of complexity and baggage to it. But the most accurate description of what kind of writing it is? It’s a memo.” And yet, what a memo. “It goes so far beyond anything that they could have imagined,” Tony said. “That’s fascinating to me. Words are words. Sentences are sentences. But this writing is not static. It has the power to endure, even to change over time. And it gave me a little chill to realize that.” Please explore the whole package here, starting with Tony. Together the sentences provide an American narrative, a way of reading our history that helps us to understand our present — and to think about our future. American Sentences All this talk of American sentences reminded me of the poet Allen Ginsberg, who wanted to create an American version of haiku, the Japanese poetic form that calls for stanzas of five syllables, then seven syllables, then five once more. Ginsberg proposed the American Sentence instead, a 17-syllable single-line poem, no other rules. He put a lot of them into his 1994 collection, “Cosmopolitan Greetings.” Some may say something about the American story, too: Put on my tie in a taxi, short of breath, rushing to meditate. Get used to your body, forget you were born, suddenly you got to get out! To see Void vast infinite look out the window into the blue sky. THE LATEST NEWS War in the Middle East In Tehran. Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times Iran and Israel paused fighting after a day of tit-for-tat strikes. Trump called Benjamin Netanyahu and asked him to stop, officials told The Times. The brief fight shows that Israel is in a bind, our Jerusalem bureau chief writes — apparently beholden to Trump, and up against an Iran unafraid to restart the war. A U.S. Army helicopter gunship went down near the Strait of Hormuz. It had two crew members, who were rescued. The framework for a peace deal is clear but negotiators are struggling to present it in a way that lets both sides claim victory. Elections The second runoff spot in the Los Angeles mayor’s race went to a progressive councilwoman, Nithya Raman. She beat a conservative reality star, Spencer Pratt. Trump baselessly denounced that result — maintaining his habit of casting doubt on election outcomes he doesn’t like. Today is Primary Day in several states including Maine, Nevada and South Carolina. In Maine, Graham Platner is seeking the Democratic Senate nomination. Politics Todd Blanche Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times Trump formally nominated Todd Blanche as attorney general, setting up a confirmation fight. A federal judge struck down a Trump administration policy to impose a $100,000 fee on companies seeking H-1B visas for skilled foreign workers. A push by Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, to investigate a supposed cabal against Trump unleashed a crisis and undercut prosecutors’ credibility with judges. N.B.A. Finals In New York last night. Vincent Alban; Angelina Katsanis for The New York Times; Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times The Spurs won with help from Victor Wembanyama, who scored 32 points. The Knicks lead the series 2-1. Trump watched from a luxury box. The crowd booed when he appeared on the video board. Courtside seats at a Knicks game are always full of celebrities. See who was there. Other Big Stories The U.S.D.A. will speed up efforts to fight screwworm, a parasitic fly recently found in Texas livestock. The United States declared it eradicated in the 1960s. Banks hope to woo the superrich with exclusive access to SpaceX leadership before the company’s I.P.O. Health risks from alcohol start at one drink a day, a new government study found. OPINIONS Historic outbreaks with suspected and confirmed cases since 1995. Current outbreak using only confirmed cases. By Taylor Maggiacomo The current ebola outbreak could become the worst ever. It can still be contained, Jeremy Konyndyk writes, “but only if the world finds the will to do it.” About a quarter of wild-caught seafood comes from boats that scrape the bottom of the ocean with giant weighted nets. The technique kills thousands of marine species. There are better ways to fish, Paul Greenberg writes. Human made. Human played. 75% off. Subscribe to New York Times Games for 75% off your first year. Our best offer is only available for a limited time. Relax and recharge with our full portfolio of games, including Wordle, Spelling Bee, Connections, the Crossword and more — all mindfully made by humans. MORNING READS In Mexico. Luis Antonio Rojas for The New York Times Artisanal or exploitative? Viral videos claim Adidas exploited Indigenous women to sew World Cup jerseys. The women say they like the work. Screen theory: Modern smartphones hit shelves in 2007. Fertility rates began falling that year. Two studies say there’s a connection. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was a spaghetti carbonara recipe. Windsurfer: Hoyle Schweitzer helped create a sailboard that allowed people to glide across lakes and oceans. It was a garage experiment that grew into a global sport. He died at 93. An excerpt from the 2021 documentary “Broken Molds,” about the invention of the windsurfer. TODAY’S NUMBER 31 — That is how many religious affiliations the Defense Department now allows service members to choose from for their personnel records, down from more than 200. Among others, the list no longer includes atheist, pagan, Unitarian Universalist or Wiccan. SPORTS College football: A Texas state court granted a temporary injunction that will let the Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby play this fall, despite his admission that he made at least 40 bets on Indiana football when he was on the Hoosiers’ 2022 roster. World Cup: The former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel said no to hosting games in this year’s tournament. He doesn’t regret it. RECIPE OF THE DAY Christopher Testani for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. I suppose you could make this recipe for easy chicken tacos easier by using a rotisserie chicken instead of cooking boneless, skinless thighs. But you’d miss out on the silky gravy, which soaks into tortillas beautifully, and the dry white meat would bum you out. Serve with diced raw onion, cilantro, wedges of lime and a hot sauce with backbone — Crystal, say. I don’t recommend Tabasco. A HOLLYWOOD ICON Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum, for The New York Times Popular movies bond us to one another, no matter what’s happening in the world, writes Wesley Morris in a sprawling, lovely profile of Steven Spielberg. And Spielberg’s films have been a top-shelf glue. Wesley talked to the director about fear, catharsis and being human. “I can’t express enough how therapeutic and healthy it is for me to keep doing this job over and over and over again,” Spielberg said about making movies. “I work so much out through this process. So much out. I get to bleed off some of the darkness instead of letting it fester inside me. You get to let it fester inside you.” More on culture The hard-boiled, staccato and super-dark crime writer James Ellroy has a new novel out, “Red Sheet,” and our Book Review got the novelist William T. Vollmann to review it. He’s also fairly dark. “Whenever I start another Ellroy novel,” he writes, “I become a fly, buzzing ghoulishly over multiply stabbed corpses and taking refreshment from some backdoor schemer’s cask-strength whiskey bottle.” “Backrooms” and “Obsession,” two low-budget horror films that have both soared past $100 million at the box office, offer a lot to unpack about the YouTube-to-cinema pipeline and the anxieties of a younger generation. The culture critics Alissa Wilkinson and Jason Zinoman discuss. They’re so smart. Late night hosts roasted Trump for walking out on “Meet the Press.” THE MORNING RECOMMENDS Nicolas Cage in “Spider-Noir.” Prime Watch “Spider-Noir” on Amazon Prime. Our critic calls the show “a superhero story dressed up in classic-Hollywood drag: gangster violence, smoky musical numbers, screwball patter, mad-doctor horror.” Fun. Blast away grime and moss and just about anything else with the best pressure washers recommended by the wet-shoed property managers at Wirecutter. Exercise outside. There’ll be plenty of time for the gym come winter. GAMES Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was objected. And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Crossplay and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times and me. See you tomorrow. — Sam Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Host: Sam Sifton Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Evan Gorelick, Brent Lewis, Lara McCoy, Karl Russell Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Editorial Director, Newsletters: Jodi Rudoren

taher [02891] and tsadak [06663] used in parallelism in Job. A parallelism is a literary structure used in Hebrew. In Job 4:17 tsadak and taher are used in a parallel structure. Job 4:17 Shall mortal man be more just <06663> than God? shall a man be more pure <02891> than his maker? In this passage "be more just" and "be more pure" are used together. This use indicates that "just" [06663] and "pure" [02891] can have the same meaning. The Hebrew word for justify [06663] is used in parallel with another word in Job and Psalms. That word is זכה zakah [02135]. This indicates that taher and zakah can have the same meaning:‎ Job 15:14 What [is] man, that he should be clean <02135>? and [he which is] born of a woman, that he should be righteous <06663>? Job 25:4 How then can man be justified <06663> with God? or how can he be clean <02135> [that is] born of a woman? Ps 51:4 Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done [this] evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified <06663> when thou speakest, [and] be clear <02135> when thou judgest. ‎

🎆 1 for the road: D.C.'s 250 anxiety Map: Danielle Alberti/Axios America's 250th birthday celebrations are being billed as can't-miss events that will bring the whole country together — but many D.C. residents are straight up dreading them, Axios D.C.'s Mimi Montgomery writes. Why it matters: Washingtonians have to live among everything that accompanies a lineup of this magnitude: Road closures, intense security, huge crowds and off-limits areas. 🏎️ Mapped above: Downtown D.C. is full of events this summer, including celebrations for America's 250th on top of a World Cup watch zone and more. The IndyCar Freedom 250 Grand Prix will be the final big tourist draw, for a 1.7-mile race through the National Mall on Aug. 22–23. Keep reading.

🌴 California's "red mirage" feeds MAGA frenzy Illustration: Brendan Lynch/Axios. Stock: Getty Images Axios' Zachary Basu writes from L.A.: California's plodding, weekslong tally of mail-in ballots has become Exhibit A in President Trump's campaign to delegitimize the November midterms. Why it matters: Glacial vote-counting in the nation's most populous state has produced a familiar, flammable ritual: Late mail piles up, officials plead for patience, and early Republican leads slowly vanish. 🔎 Zoom in: Spencer Pratt, the reality TV star running a viral campaign for L.A. mayor, has become MAGA's latest election martyr after five days of mail-ballot counting erased his grip on second place — and his spot in November's runoff. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who was 8 points behind Pratt in early returns on election night, has dominated the late mail vote and clinched the second runoff spot against Mayor Karen Bass. Via Truth Social Between the lines: Pratt's campaign primed the right to believe L.A. was ready for a political earthquake. In reality, the baseline math never changed: Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 3-to-1 in L.A. County, and Trump's toxic national brand overwhelmed Pratt's effort to run as a local insurgent. But to MAGA audiences sold on Pratt's online momentum and strong election-night position, Raman's late surge looked and felt like a mathematical impossibility. 👀 What we're watching: The local blowup over the L.A. mayor's race is serving as a tactical dry run for a much larger federal offensive against California and other blue states' election infrastructure. Keep reading.

Trump pre-blames Europe for World Cup Ebola Photo Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios. Photos: Win McNamee/Getty Images The Trump administration, fearing international travel could turn the World Cup into an Ebola superspreader, is pressuring Europe to dramatically step up infection prevention, sources tell Axios' Alex Isenstadt. Top Trump aides are frustrated with Europe's limited travel restrictions and want it to abandon the World Health Organization's Ebola playbook in favor of Washington's tighter rules, a senior official said. The implied message: Any Ebola outbreak in the U.S. would be Europe's fault. The World Cup kicks off Thursday with a record 48 teams and 104 matches in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The State Department estimates the tournament will draw 5 million to 7 million international visitors to the U.S. — including players, staff and fans from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the outbreak is centered. 🔬 Zoom in: The State Department last week sent European countries an extraordinary request calling for travel restrictions from Central Africa, where the outbreak began. Keep reading.

Confessions of an AI lab rat Illustration: Lindsey Bailey/Axios Axios CEO Jim VandeHei previewed his lab-rat learnings in his weekly newsletter for CEOs, Axios C-Suite, and wrote this broader version for Axios AM: I've spent the past year using AI obsessively — inputting copious amounts of personal and business data, turning myself into a lab rat for Axios and our readers. Why it matters: This experiment has shown me in unmistakable, hands-on ways the superhuman possibilities — and real-world limitations — hitting and awaiting us. In short: AI is way better, more accurate and mind-expanding than most think. (Sorry, it's true.) But it's colliding with hard human realities, making it confusing, clunky and chaotic for lots of people in its current form. How I did it: Over the past year, Axios aggressively tested AI (mainly OpenAI's Codex and Anthropic's Claude Code) across every layer of every department. We provided access and instruction to every employee. Most of my leadership team operates with chief-of-staff agents, and we're knee-deep in agent-to-agent prep. I personally use ChatGPT or Claude for one to two hours daily, usually in the early mornings, and control an AI personal operating system via my phone. That's connected to an always-on computer that runs several agents, including one that scans daily for CEO-relevant data and trends. I've dumped every medical record and blood test into it, and detailed my diet, workouts and supplements. It knows more about my health than my wife does! So here are my takeaways: It's way better than most think. I've spent the year with my head buried in this, while talking to the smartest people in tech, politics and business. AI is smarter than 95% of the people on 95% of topics, 95% of the time. Even for someone using it obsessively with real discipline, I'm still discovering it's way better than I thought possible. Its ability to think creatively and research deeply is extraordinary — if and only if you know how to use it. It takes real work. You can't wing it. You need to work at it daily, so AI learns you — and you learn AI. That's when the magic happens. You have to feed it copious amounts of information and persistently tell it what works and what sucks. This feedback loop creates a new form of super-knowledge about you — and super-skills for you. Most people get unimpressive results and move on, assuming it's overhyped. Don't. It's the smartest doctor I've met. I fed AI every medical record I have — MRIs, blood work, heart rate — and told it to be clinical and brutally honest. I've run most solutions past my doctor, and almost every time, he agrees. I still validate with physicians. But if I had to pick someone to diagnose something, I would turn to AI over human docs for anything complicated. Short-term job losses are overhyped. A year ago, I assumed AI's story would be subtraction: automate ruthlessly, cut costs, shrink headcount. That's real. We've done it at Axios. But over the last three months, my view shifted. The bigger opportunity isn't efficiency. It's new business lines that were economically impossible before AI. We're exploring three new revenue-generating projects that simply weren't possible without AI. I now believe many specific jobs here will change, but that we'll end up hiring more people over time than I would've thought a year ago. Business gains are overhyped, too — for now. As good as it is, AI hits internal walls when it comes to human use, security, connections to other systems and decisions about what data it can access inside companies. In most cases, it's simply not ready for deployment at scale. This problem is getting worse because agent-to-agent work is a mess. If AI transforms our business — and I think it will — agents need to work flawlessly with other agents. This is the unfolding frontier. My exec team has chief-of-staff agents, but we hit constant walls in determining what they can know, share and act on once the agents collaborate. This must be fixed before companies experience what I have at an individual level. A new class of super-worker is born. Here's the best news: We're spotting rank-and-file workers daily whose brains are wired for AI. It's been easier than expected to spot them, then train them to be AI accelerators on their team or across the company. These people are not technologists. You don't need to be an AI savant or lab rat. But every person reading this should figure out ASAP how AI can augment their work. If your company does not have AI teaching, demand it. It's affected my mind, mood and performance. I'm not a coder and rarely use AI for more than that hour or two per day, but these stories about people in Silicon Valley getting swept up in a manic AI fever — AI-pilled! — hit home for me. On the good side, I've jumped out of bed at 3 a.m. more than I care to admit, jazzed to test or explore a new idea. At 55, I've written and accomplished a lot more than any other time in my life. But you must train it to challenge and expand your thinking — not replace it. On the flip side, I find myself waking up after shorter bursts of sleep with more anxiety. Maybe it's coincidence, not causation. But I doubt it. The bottom line: We're living history. For $20 a month, any of us can experiment with exceptionally advanced AI models. Be clear-eyed about the good, bad and ugly. Most importantly, be curious. Use it daily. Read about it regularly. Figure out what parts of you can be vastly improved with AI — and then do it. Screenshot: Axios 📱 Watch a video of Mike quizzing Jim about his lab rat learnings (34 mins. ... Executive producer: Jimmy Shelton). ... Share this story. Tell us what you think: finishline@axios.com.

US says it has begun strikes against Iran following crash of Army Apache helicopter off Oman coast DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The U.S. military said Tuesday it has begun strikes against Iran following the crash of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter off the coast of Oman that U.S. President Donald Trump blamed on the Islamic Republic. https://apnews.com/article/iran-us-ceasefire-helicopter-hezbollah-israel-9-june-2026-50d7a8ecbb2cf33836af152679adb40e? Netanyahu and Trump are at odds over the war they started together President Donald Trump had publicly warned Israel not to strike Beirut in its war with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants. When it did, on Sunday, Israel traded strikes with Iran, with which Trump has been engaged in weeks of high-stakes negotiations. Read more. Why this matters: The latest strikes made it clear that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu want different things. While the fighting has since died down, the differences between the two leaders are likely to persist. That’s because Trump, whose party faces elections later this year, wants to wind down an unpopular war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ease gas prices. Netanyahu, who also faces elections this year, is under pressure to stop Hezbollah's attacks and prove that he is winning the war with Iran and its allies. RELATED COVERAGE ➤ Israel and Iran exchange strikes after Beirut attack, in photos WATCH: Trump says pilots are fine after US helicopter crashes near Strait of Hormuz A very online Israeli army spokesman is the face of war for millions of Arabs War in the Middle East is flaring again. Here’s how each side sees the stakes After morning of sirens, Israelis fall back into well-worn war routines

THIS DAY IN HISTORY June 9 1973 Secretariat wins Triple Crown in breathtaking style With a victory at the Belmont Stakes, Secretariat becomes the first horse since Citation in 1948 to win America’s coveted Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes. read more Sponsored Content by REVCONTENT 19th Century 1893 22 die in collapse of Ford’s Theatre, site of Lincoln assassination 1856 Handcart pioneers depart for Salt Lake City Arts & Entertainment 1956 Best-selling crime novelist Patricia Cornwell is born Cold War 1954 “Have you no sense of decency?” Sen. Joseph McCarthy is asked in hearing Vietnam War 1964 CIA report challenges “domino theory” World War I 1915 William Jennings Bryan resigns as U.S. secretary of state

We always see the same side of the Moon, no matter where we stand on Earth. James

How are Americans doing financially? In 2025, nearly a third of US adults reported being worse off than in 2024, with 91% stating that price increases were their main financial concern. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-are-americans-doing-financially/? How much debt does the US have? The US has $39 trillion in debt as of April 2026. The federal government borrows money when its spending and investments cannot be funded by federal revenue alone; this debt enables the government to pay for programs and services when funds aren’t immediately available. https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-debt-does-the-us-have/country/united-states/? One last fact The US inflation rate, a measure that considers costs for everything from healthcare to gas to food, was 3.8% as of April 2026. Transportation prices rose by 7.1% from April 2025, housing costs rose 3.6%, and food/beverage costs rose 3.1%.

A School Bus Killed a 5-Year-Old. The Crash Is Among Dozens Missing From the Bus Company’s Federal Safety Record. On the day 5-year-old Lens Joseph was killed by a Boston Public Schools bus last year, the driver had already struck a postal truck, ignored a stop sign and missed several stops, prosecutors said. When he got to Lens’ house, he dropped him off on the wrong side of the street and then ran over the kindergartner as he crossed in front of the bus. https://www.propublica.org/article/boston-school-bus-crash-record-lens-joseph-transdev? What ProPublica Found in the Genetic Code of America’s Measles Outbreaks American children lined up for the world’s first measles shots in the early 1960s, but it took nearly 40 years of shoring up immunization programs before the infamous contagion had been so thoroughly controlled that a panel of experts declared in 2000 that the United States had eliminated measles within its borders. https://projects.propublica.org/measles-outbreak-analysis-utah-texas/ Founder of Kentucky Drug Rehab Center Indicted on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges Timmy G. Robinson Jr., founder and owner of what was once Kentucky’s largest drug addiction treatment company, was criminally indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. https://www.propublica.org/article/tim-robinson-indicted-addiction-recovery-care? North Carolina Democrats Propose Changes to Block GOP Power Transfers and Secrecy Democratic lawmakers in North Carolina introduced a trio of constitutional amendments this week aimed at protecting traditional powers of the state’s governor and reforming oversight of its court system. https://www.propublica.org/article/north-carolina-legislation-governor-power? These Republican Lawmakers Challenged Abortion Bans. Then They Faced Backlash. If Eric Murphy loses his primary election on June 9, he believes he already knows one reason why. https://www.propublica.org/article/republicans-face-backlash-after-challenging-abortion-bans? In This Church, Child Sexual Abuse Has Gone Unchecked for So Long That It Spans Generations They were pillars of their church, congregants in a little-known denomination that sets itself apart from the world and teaches that even the most unconscionable acts can be wiped away — not just forgiven, but forgotten and never spoken of again. https://www.propublica.org/article/old-apostolic-lutheran-church-generational-sexual-abuse?

St. Pete Council OKs study to review costs, benefits of owning its own utilities Responding to the frustrations expressed by local residents, the St. Petersburg City Council has taken a major step towards potentially jettisoning its longtime relationship with Duke Energy Florida and creating its own city-run electric utility. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/06/05/st-pete-council-oks-study-to-review-costs-benefits-of-owning-its-own-utilities/? Black midwives are suing Southern states, claiming regulations make it harder to help patients Black midwives in the South, a region rife with racial disparities in maternal health access and maternal mortality, are leading lawsuits over state regulations that they say limit their ability to provide care. https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/06/08/repub/black-midwives-are-suing-southern-states-claiming-regulations-make-it-harder-to-help-patients/?

The One War Trump Is Winning Is the One Against Us Trump may not be able to beat Iran, but he sure is kicking the crap out of America. Why did tens of thousands of Albanians take to the streets to protest a corrupt land deal engineered by President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, while Americans who face far greater threats from the president and his family spent the weekend barbecuing and at the beach? Why do Ukrainians fight Trump’s Russian allies even though the odds are against them? And even though the costs in life, human suffering, and economic terms are immeasurably high while Americans passively accept the far greater threat that Trump poses to our national security and that of our allies? Snap out of it, America! Give yourself a good hard slap across the face. Douse yourself with ice water. Wake the eff up! Henry Kissinger once said the most powerful force in Washington is inertia. The same could be said of the entire country. We’re too comfortable. The proof is in how disproportionate our response is to the threat Trump poses to our country. The problems are piling up under the demented and incompetent leadership of the president and his cronies. Gas prices are up. Food prices are up. Millions of Americans are unable to afford healthcare. And the evidence of far greater problems to come is abundant. We are in the midst of a national crisis that is every bit as much an existential threat to the nation and the well-being of its people as any battle we have faced since Appomattox. The president is literally decaying before our very eyes. Not only can he barely walk or stand, he cannot stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time. It’s not an exaggeration. We all saw it last week in an Oval Office meeting in which he slumped in his chair and passed out while the aides around him, on live television, pretended to ignore it. Pretended, just like tens of millions of Americans do every day. It’s Weekend at Donny’s: The Oval Office Edition, and far too few people seem to give a damn. (Who’s surprised? In the last election, despite knowing Trump was our worst president ever during his first term, far more people chose not to vote than voted for either Trump or Kamala Harris.) We have seen the president unable to maintain a coherent thought. He couldn’t remember the name of the Washington Monument. He regularly can’t control his anger. He threatens wars and demands payoffs for insurrectionists around the clock. He posts AI slop glorifying himself as a god or a warrior or as a heavily-muscled football icon with half-naked young men dancing in tribute to his manliness. This weekend, on the anniversary of D-Day, he launched attack after attack on Americans and the world and not once saluted the sacrifices American soldiers and sailors made to defend the democracy he is destroying. His dimwitted lackey at the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth, compounded the offense by appearing at D-Day commemoration ceremonies and attacking our allies and equating the flows of immigrants into Europe with the threat posed by our WWII enemies. Our European friends were disgusted. On Sunday, we saw Trump blow up during a Meet the Press interview with Kristen Welker when she did what too few journalists do and fact-checked him in real time. He lost it. He stormed off the set. Watch the video. Read the transcript. He is not in command of his emotions. He is a threat to those around him. He belongs under the care and constant supervision of mental health professionals. Yes, he’s a madman. But, yawn. Let’s post something on X or Bluesky about it and go to a rally every couple of months. Maybe put up a yard sign. Never mind that Trump can, on his own, launch a nuclear attack where, within a couple of minutes, missiles will leave their silos. Never mind that we have already seen him launch multiple illegal wars, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives and the destabilization of the world and the global economy. Never mind that he is promising more such wars. Never mind that he is lying about their consequences and then following the lies by saying he doesn’t care what they may mean for the lives of average Americans. Never mind that he has appointed a man with zero intelligence experience to lead our intelligence community, or that he says that man’s mission is to gut our intelligence resources and help undermine faith in our elections. Never mind that his secretary of defense has done the same to the Pentagon—firing scores of talented top leaders, shutting down vital programs, and making the place less transparent to the public than ever before. Never mind that he has allied us with war criminals while undermining our crucial relationships with our friends. Never mind that he is appointing insurrectionists to sensitive national security positions. Never mind that I am only listing attacks on our national security that have occurred in the last week alone. That’s right. Each and every week, he is weakening us and strengthening our enemies. Each and every week, he is squandering resources on vainglorious, dangerous, or corrupt projects. Each and every week, we become more vulnerable to overseas threats even as he conspires to create greater ones at home—threats to our elections this fall, threats to our fundamental freedoms, threats to our way of life. He’s doing all this while gutting our healthcare and leaving it in the hands of a no-show, deranged ex-drug addict and his friends who advocate junk science. All this while raping the environment and seeking to destroy free speech at our universities and in the press. All this while stealing, stealing, stealing and ignoring the law, obstructing justice, attacking the courts, protecting pedophiles, and granting pardons to undeserving felons. Imagine you read about such attacks on any country anywhere else. You would say it was not only at war with a dangerous foe but losing, losing rapidly, losing precious ground with each passing day. But that war—a real war with a real toll waged by real enemies with help from foreign adversaries—is invisible to most Americans. Most of us, you see, can still afford to shrug it off. We’re a rich country. Most of us are not really suffering yet. We lived through his first term—except for the 1.1 million who did not because of how grievously he mismanaged the COVID pandemic. We’ve lived through a year and a half of an even more twisted version of Trump—unlike the million who have died worldwide due to DOGE-Rubio cuts to U.S. aid flows, or the perhaps 13 million more who will die in the next few years, or those who will die of Ebola and other epidemics because we have cut funding for the health services that protect us, or those lying dead in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, or elsewhere in the Middle East because of wars founded on lies or at the service of a foreign power like Israel (which we have just learned is ramping up its spying efforts…against us). In Albania, they took to the streets because their country is poor and collapsing. People are going hungry and unable to get basic healthcare or enjoy services Americans take for granted. So of course, when spoiled oligarchettes like Ivanka Trump try to scoop up an island and turn it into a resort for the rich in ways that will hardly benefit Albania at all, naturally, the people are angry and won’t take it. They realize that squandered resources cost them. We’re too rich as a country to feel that yet. But watch this space. At the rate we are going, we will. In Ukraine, they fight because the alternative is to lose their country to the Kremlin and the aging war criminal at its helm. We don’t fear such things. After all, we weren’t invaded. There are no missiles obliterating our schools and hospitals. No missiles. No drones. Just Supreme Court rulings that strip away the right to vote or that grant ever greater power to the rich or more latitude to an out-of-control chief executive. Just an administration that scoffs at the Constitution, arrogates all power onto one man, and shows blind loyalty to him even as he descends into madness. No bombs going off. Just the gradual destruction of our national security apparatus. The NSC is effectively gone. Most ambassadorial appointments remain unfilled. Thousands of State Department, FBI, and DOJ jobs that protected us are gone—the ones that protected us against foreign election interference, foreign corruption, terrorism, and key nuclear threats. Some of the best and brightest at the Department of Defense have been kicked out or silenced. The same is happening in our intelligence community. The officers who remain in place have had to do so at the cost of their reputations, agreeing to fight illegal wars and violate international law. No bullets flying. How would we know if they were flying anyway? The president has his friends buying up key media outlets and his FCC and DOJ and State Department intimidating the others. The reason it was shocking to watch Trump lose it with Kristen Welker, in part, is because so few journalists are willing to do the bare minimum their jobs require. Heck, the White Correspondents’ Association—even in the face of Trump’s war on the First Amendment and unceasing attacks on its members—is going to hold its annual gala again in July to accommodate the president, the man committed to destroying truth in America. We have an election coming up. At least we think we do. That could offer the chance to reverse some of these trends. That could give us an opportunity to stand up for our rights as a people. But we know the president is mobilizing his entire government to ensure those elections are not free and fair. They are cheating right now, before our eyes. They are gerrymandering. They are seeking voter rolls. They are positioning troops and others to go into the streets. They are seeking to end mail-in voting. They are questioning legitimate election results. It may be that November is our chance to emulate the citizens of Albania and Ukraine and other freedom-loving people everywhere. Maybe. Or maybe November will be too late. Maybe when a country is facing threats like those we face today—and we’ve never faced threats like these before—maybe we should see the red lights flashing, maybe we should realize the crisis is now. Maybe every journalist should fact-check the president. Maybe every one of us should be doing more, thinking about how we can do more, giving more time and money, and taking more risks. Maybe it is time we realize the fight is not somewhere else, it is here—not at some time in the future, but that it must be now. https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-one-war-donald-trump-is-winning-is-the-one-against-us/?

‘Alarm Bells’ Ringing as Key Voters Turn Against Trump The president’s luck with young female conservatives appears to be running out. Donald Trump is bleeding support ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections among a key demographic that helped him retake the White House in 2024. Support for the president among young women ages 18 to 29 shifted from 33 percent in 2020 to 40 percent ahead of Trump’s victory against Kamala Harris, a crucial shift. Those numbers would now appear to be falling again as Trump fails to deliver on his campaign promises, especially on the economy. “Promises that were made have not been delivered on at all, and I think young women are realizing that,” Savanna Faith Stone, a prominent right-wing Christian influencer, told Politico. “They’re realizing, ‘Hey, you promised to lower gas prices. You promised the economy would be better. Like, that’s why we voted for you.” Trump’s approval rating has lately plummeted to just 38 percent, with the president polling especially poorly on economic performance after his campaign pledged to reverse what he billed as gross mismanagement over four years under Joe Biden. His war on Iran, amid the wider economic uncertainty sparked by his abortive tariffs regime last year, has hit consumers especially hard. The Islamic Republic has effectively shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow shipping lane through which a fifth of global oil supply passes, since the conflict began in late February. That closure has sent gas prices skyrocketing. Estimates put the national average price per gallon around $4.19 at the latest count, up from $2.98 before Trump launched his war with the regime. Politico spoke with a host of prominent young female conservatives at Turning Point USA’s Women’s Leadership Summit, held by the organization of that name set up by late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, in Texas over the weekend. “I cannot express to you the level of alarm bells that should be ringing for the GOP,” Alex Clark, a prominent conservative influencer, told the outlet of the general feeling among right-leaning women who voted for Trump in 2024. “I straight up told [the White House], ‘People want ‘fight, fight, fight Trump.’ They don’t want ‘ballroom Trump,’” she added of the president’s ongoing plans to construct a $400 million, possibly $1.4 billion new ballroom on White House grounds. “I feel like some of the magic and the spark that helped us win 2024 is missing,” she went on. The Daily Beast contacted the White House for comment on this story. “President Trump is proud to have delivered on the most pro-woman agenda in American history,” spokeswoman Anna Kelly said. “The MAGA coalition is stronger than ever, and women continue to play a powerful role in the movement.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-alarm-bells-ringing-as-young-female-conservative-voters-turn-against-trump-ahead-of-midterm-elections/? ps:So to offset this he's trying with the help of SCOTUS to gerrymander the vote!!!!!

Fuming Trump, 79, Fires Off Ominous Late-Night Election Post The president’s message is veering into darker territory. Donald Trump posted a worrying warning about the California elections while spewing unsubstantiated claims that the results will be illegitimate. In a typically deranged late-night Truth Social post, the 79-year-old continued to suggest, without evidence, that Democrats are rigging the Los Angeles mayoral and California gubernatorial primaries, while suggesting there would be “great trouble and consternation” if the Republican candidates lose. The menacing threat from Trump arrived as Democrat Nithya Raman overtook MAGA reality TV star Spencer Pratt after several days of counting mail-in ballots in the Los Angeles mayoral primary, and is now projected to advance to the runoff. Los Angeles incumbent Mayor Karen Bass has already advanced to the runoff in the all-party primary. “Has anybody been watching the CROOKED Election going on in California,” Trump posted at 11:02 p.m. ET. “Two great Republican Candidates are being cheated, and so is America, which if the Dumocrats are able to fulfill their mission, great trouble and consternation will follow. Watch this ‘Election’ closely!!!” Elsewhere, votes are still being tallied in California’s all-party primary for governor. With 72 percent of the vote counted, former Biden-era Health Secretary Xavier Becerra has advanced, while Republican former TV host Steve Hilton and billionaire Democratic climate activist Tom Steyer are battling it out for the second spot in November’s election. Just as he did in the months ahead of the 2020 election, Trump has been laying the groundwork to wrongly suggest the California elections are rigged if Republican candidates lose, while lashing out at his longtime bugbear, mail-in ballots. California has a long history of vote counting continuing for days beyond Election Day because of the high number of late-arriving mail and drop-off ballots. Historically, Democratic voters cast many more ballots by mail than Republican voters, who tend to vote on Election Day. A number of MAGA figures are also already acting like sore losers by desperately suggesting that Democrats are trying to cheat Pratt, a former star of The Hills, out of advancing in the Los Angeles mayoral election. “The Mayoral election in Los Angeles is being stolen from Spencer Pratt in real time! Where is the DOJ?” far-right influencer Laura Loomer wrote in one of several X posts attempting to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the results. On Sunday, the 79-year-old president had a monumental tantrum after being asked to provide any evidence that the elections in California are being “rigged” against Republican candidates. When pressed by NBC’s Meet the Press host Kristen Welker for proof of those unsubstantiated claims, Trump said: “All I have to do is look.” Trump then completely lost it and stormed out of the interview when Welker suggested: “That’s not evidence.” “You’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked, and so is ABC and CBS and CNN. One-sided crooked networks. Let’s call it quits, because I’ve had enough,” Trump raged. “Thank you, darling. Have a good time.” The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment. https://www.thedailybeast.com/fuming-trump-79-fires-off-ominous-late-night-election-post/? ps:Here we go again, and once again with no evidence!!!!!

Republicans Rage at Pentagon Pete Over ‘Repugnant’ Religion Move The self-declared “Secretary of War” has angered Mormons by suggesting that the Defense Department no longer considers LDS part of the Christian faith. Pete Hegseth has enraged top Mormon officials in the Republican Party by declaring that their faith no longer counts as Christian belief as far as the Defense Department is concerned. “It’s just repugnant to any sense of decency, any sense of our common heritage and our common belief that the government needs to not weigh in on doctrinal disputes between various religious denominations,” Mike Lee, the MAGA Republican Senator for Utah and himself an adherent of the Mormon faith, said in a video tirade posted on X late Sunday. Lee began his clip by describing prohibitions on government interference with religious belief as a key tenet of the freedoms afforded to Americans under the Constitution. “I’m imploring people at the Pentagon to reconsider this—and not just reconsider it, but undo it,” he concluded. “Secretary Hegseth—tear down that wall! This is not cool! Get rid of it, get rid of it now!” The Defense Department announced Friday that it is cutting down the number of religious identities servicemembers can register on their personnel records from more than 200 to just 31. Members of the military can now identify as Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, Hindu, Baha’i, or agnostic, but not Wiccan, pagan, humanist, or atheist. There remain 22 Christian denominations to choose from. Mormonism is not one of them. Hegseth’s press secretary, Sean Parnell, described it as a “long overdue move.” He insisted the department is not casting aspersions on the sincerity of religions removed from the list, so much as trying to streamline support for religious servicemembers. “This decrease in religious affiliation codes is not designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of “officially approved” religions,” he said. “Rather, it is designed to allow chaplains to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for warfighters of all faith groups,” he added. Ranking Mormon members of the Republican Party are having none of it, and Lee is certainly not alone in his outrage. “The Pentagon’s decision to list The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apart from other Christian faiths is wrong and needs to be corrected,” Rep. Mike Kennedy, also of Utah, wrote in an X post Sunday. “[We] stand alongside many Christians of every tradition in following the teachings of Christ. We only ask to be accurately portrayed. I strongly urge the Department to correct the record,” he added. Lee’s fellow Utah senator, John Curtis, also a Mormon, slammed the exclusion on the grounds that members of his faith “are among the most patriotic, service-oriented individuals in our country.” “They are also unequivocally Christian—just look at who is in the name of the Church,” he added. “It is unacceptable for a government entity to characterize a faith in a manner that contradicts the religion’s own foundational tenets. I am working now to ensure a correction is made.” The Daily Beast has contacted the Pentagon for further comment on this story. https://www.thedailybeast.com/republicans-rage-at-pentagon-pete-hegseth-over-repugnant-removal-of-mormon-church-from-dod-religion-list/?

Was Edom Originally Nomadic? Finding social complexity in desert archaeology https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-places/was-edom-originally-nomadic/? Miniature Writing on Ancient Amulets Ketef Hinnom inscriptions reveal the power of hidden writing https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/inscriptions/miniature-writing-ancient-amulets-ketef-hinnom/?

All About Triglycerides Written by Paul Frysh Medically Reviewed by Mahammad Juber, MD on February 19, 2026 https://www.webmd.com/cholesterol-management/ss/slideshow-about-triglycerides?