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The U.S. and Iran expanded their targets in the latest round of strikes on Friday, as fighting over the control of the Strait of Hormuz reignites fears of an all-out war.

(Image credit: AFP via Getty Images)

NPR member station photographers captured images of World Cup watch parties outside stadium gates, on street corners and in public parks and squares as the World Cup became, for a brief period, a part of local life.

(Image credit: Patricia Lim)

Government has ‘last chance’ to get it right, says incoming PM, while anxiety surrounds his choice of chancellor

Andy Burnham pledged to lead a united Labour government free of infighting and factional politics as he took over as leader, despite anxiety on the left of party about the prospect of Shabana Mahmood as chancellor.

Burnham, who will become prime minister on Monday, set out a distinctly leftwing vision for Britain. He promised to undo the Thatcherism of the 1980s, bring in more public ownership of utilities, find the money to fix social care and build a new generation of council homes.

Scientists have started calling it the “Godzilla El Niño.”

The nickname comes from actual climate researchers, which should tell you something; they are not generally in the habit of comparing climatic systems to mega-monsters. What’s building in the eastern Pacific right now is a surge of ocean warming that is likely to make 2027 the hottest year in recorded history, possibly by a lot. The median projection puts next year at about 1.7 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial average. The high end gets close to 1.9, which, until recently, was a number climate models saved for the late 2030s.

David Wallace-Wells has spent a decade thinking about what numbers like that mean for the people who have to live under them, first in his 2017 essay “The Uninhabitable Earth” and the 2019 book that grew out of it, now as a writer and reporter at the New York Times. In a recent piece for the New York Times, Wallace-Wells made the case that 2027 could work as something stranger than a disaster forecast: a preview of everyday life in about 2035. It could be a full year lived at a temperature we weren’t supposed to reach for another decade: fire seasons, atmospheric rivers, disrupted monsoons, strained food systems, and all. 

What’s less certain is if any of this will change our politics. Americans tell pollsters they’re more worried about climate change than ever — more than after Katrina, more than at any point in the Bush, Obama, or Biden years — even as elite discourse on the subject has been waning. Meanwhile, the green transition keeps compounding. More than 90 percent of the new energy capacity built in America last year was green — and under an administration doing its best to stop it.

Sean Illing talked through all of it with Wallace-Wells for this week’s episode of The Gray Area. When Sean asked whether 2027 will be a real test of how much climate disruption we can manage, Wallace-Wells doesn’t blink: “I think it’s going to be a test on that score, which we will fail.” 

So yes, it gets dark. But, it also ends with the most convincing case for hope on climate I’ve heard in a while — and I write a newsletter that goes looking for good news every week. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Just about everybody has heard the term El Niño, but most of us — myself included, until very recently — don’t really know what it is. So let’s just start there. What is an El Niño?

It’s a climatic event that happens irregularly but pretty often — usually about every three or four years, sometimes as infrequently as every seven — in which you get a burst of warmer-than-normal temperatures in the coastal Pacific, off the coast of South America. And that has a lot of amazingly global consequences, in ways that are not intuitive to most normies.

So, in this case, you tend to see a lot more rain across the western US. You tend to see a lot less rain across Brazil and the Amazon. You see disruption to the monsoon season in South Asia; a similar disruption to rain across the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa; and, typically, a suppression of hurricane activity in the Caribbean. Which is all to say: It’s a global disruption to the basic normal patterns that we come to depend on, but the disruption isn’t all in one direction.

At the global level, it makes things hotter — and the one that we’re seeing forming this year may be a record-setting one. I think the best way to think about it is just like we shook up the whole planet’s climate system, and we see a lot more disorder than we see in non-El Niño years.

What is particularly scary about this El Niño? Why do scientists seem to be alarmed?

There are a few different components to it. The first is that we are going to experience it at a much higher baseline of global average temperature than has ever been experienced before. Given that we are warming the planet quite rapidly, just about every year is warmer than just about every year that came before. We’ve normalized it so much that we don’t raise our eyebrows when we set new records for global average temperature. But novel events like an El Niño are happening on top of that baseline.

The things that terrified us into action not that long ago are now our inevitable future.

But another reason why scientists are concerned is because it is a super El Niño. Some of them are even calling it a Godzilla El Niño, which is to say the boost that we’re going to see because of this event may be bigger than any similar event ever observed in modern history.

That’s particularly alarming, because the El Niños of the late 1870s produced perhaps the most human suffering that the modern world has ever experienced: famines that killed tens of millions of people all around the world, from Africa to South Asia to China. I don’t want to suggest that this El Niño is capable of producing that kind of suffering. Obviously, 2026 is a different world than 1878, but it gives you a framework for how the consequences of an El Niño may filter through our political world if, over the next year, we see significant crop failures in multiple parts of the world, which is maybe even more possible because there’s a fertilizer shortage as a result of the war in Iran.

We probably will be able to respond to that such that 10 or 50 million people don’t die, but there will be considerable political disarray that results: bread riots, political protests, civil unrest, perhaps in multiple parts of the world. I’m not saying that’s inevitable, but it reminds us that a huge amount of what we take for granted as stable features of modern life is nevertheless subject on some level to disturbance by the climate system. And this climate system this year is winding up to really give us quite a wallop.

You write that next year, 2027,could be a preview of what everyday life will be like in a decade or so. Talk about that.

So, here we are in 2026, and the global average temperature is about 1.5°C above the preindustrial average. It doesn’t sound like very much, and on any given day that kind of effect is basically imperceptible to the average person. But it is a global average, and it hides a lot of extremes.

Our elite discourse and our elite policymaking has somehow decided to treat those anxieties as irrelevant.

It is also right about what we agreed we would try to limit warming to in the Paris agreement in 2015. We said we would definitely keep warming below 2 degrees, and we would do everything we could to keep warming close to 1.5 — a number that came from emerging science and emerging political sense among the world’s most vulnerable countries that 2 degrees wasn’t enough. That 1.5 degrees was itself going to be quite difficult to manage, but anything north of that was going to be quite catastrophic.

When we signed that agreement just 10 years ago, we were not yet north of 1 degree of warming. We are now, in the long-term average, somewhere about 1.3 or 1.4, [with] a single year at 1.5. And we are heading quite rapidly not just past the more ambitious goal we set for ourselves but toward the less ambitious one: 2 degrees. It now seems, practically speaking, inevitable. We’re heading toward a future that we defined as unacceptable.

And when I say that, I don’t just mean that the scientists at the IPCC defined it as unacceptable. When they published their research into the difference between those two levels that report was the event that gave us the huge global climate awakening of late 2018, 2019, into 2020. It’s the reason we know who Greta Thunberg is. It’s the reason we heard of Extinction Rebellion and Sunrise. It’s the reason we started talking about a Green New Deal. All the lip service that presidents, and prime ministers, and CEOs paid to climate change in the years that followed came out of a report that was basically saying, “We need to limit warming below 2 degrees.”

And we now know that we will be heading north of 2 degrees. The things that terrified us into action not that long ago are now our inevitable future.

Is it your belief that 2027 will be a real no-bullshit test of how much climate disruption we can effectively manage at this stage?

I think it’s going to be a test on that score, which we will fail. And the question is what impact that makes socially and politically. We are already seeing every year, in countless ways, how poorly prepared we are for the climate present, but most of the time it isn’t producing the kind of political and social response that I would like to see. And I worry that the basic pattern is going to continue, even into a much warmer future, where, rather than changing course and designing a much more responsive and resilient future, we will just find ourselves defining more and more suffering as acceptable and normal as the cost of going about our daily lives without being too preoccupied by the course of climate change.

A decade ago, a lot of people — myself included, I guess — really did believe that extreme weather would eventually force climate action. Can we just say by now that that theory has failed?

People are complicated, populations are complicated, and politics is complicated. I think of this story going back to Katrina, which was an eye-opening event more than 20 years ago now. It seemed, for a time, to mark a high point in American climate concern. It helped discredit the presidency of George W. Bush, gave us an upsurge of climate urgency and the election of Barack Obama — who said this would be the moment we looked back on as the moment the seas slowed their rise and the planet began to heal.

We’re going to be muddling through, and the future that we live in as a result will have a lot of bad stuff in it and a lot of good stuff in it.

We’ve seen a bunch of climate disasters just in the United States since then. Again and again, there’s a period of intense national focus and, then, a kind of withdrawing from the story of climate change. But that narrative — that we keep getting knocked back on our heels by climate disasters and then forget about them entirely — is also too simplistic. Looking at the headlines, you might think that everybody moved on from climate. The truth is that when you look into the survey data, we’re basically at the highest point for climate anxiety that we’ve ever been. Americans are more concerned about climate change than they were in the aftermath of Katrina. They’re more worried than they were at any point in the George W. Bush presidency, the Barack Obama presidency, and the Joe Biden presidency.

So, we have an interesting political story here. We’re telling ourselves that the country has moved on from climate. But, in fact, at the level of individual people — how they feel about their lives, the lives of their communities, and the future of their country — they are just about, if not more, worried about climate impacts than they’ve ever been before. And our elite discourse and our elite policymaking has somehow decided to treat those anxieties as irrelevant.

But the question is not whether they’re worried. The question is whether they’re worried enough to actually sacrifice anything in order to make headway.

You often hear from people who think we needn’t worry as much about climate change that most Americans are not willing to pay, say, $10 a month to take action on climate. In some ways, I feel like that’s a way of weaponizing American entitlement against one particular set of policy crusades. But the other thing I would say is that it’s not the case that we need to shoulder burdens in any meaningful sense to take action.

Solar power is dramatically cheaper than any fossil fuel alternative that’s ever been produced — at least by the levelized cost of electricity, which has been the industry standard for a generation. That measure is misleading, because it only accounts for the marginal cost of electricity and not the overall cost of a system; you get more solar when the sun’s shining and more wind when the wind’s blowing, so you have to build out around that to have a reliable supply. But because batteries have now made the same dramatic improvement in their cost that solar did a decade ago, you can use very cheap batteries to even out the distribution of solar and wind power. And that means the overall cost, according to recent research, of renewable power is now lower than any alternative system. We know those price declines are going to continue for renewables, and we know that they will not decline for fossil fuels.

I’m not an economic determinist — politics plays a huge role here, as does culture — but look at the United States right now. We have a president in the White House who is remarkably opposed to renewable energy. He has done an awful lot to try to kneecap the development and rollout of renewables in America. And, yet, last year, when he returned to office, more than 90 percent of all the new energy infrastructure built in America was green. For every unit of new fossil fuel infrastructure we were building, we built nine times as much green energy. This year, the share is going to be even bigger. It’s expected to be 93 percent, which is about what it is around the world entirely.

And with the Iran war, we see many countries around the world looking at the logic of their dependence on fossil fuels and thinking, “Why would I depend on international actors to continuously supply a power source at prices that they determine when I can do a one-time importation of green energy infrastructure and then collect the dividends in the form of sun and wind, which never stop and are domestically controlled?” If you’re talking about this as a race, it seems obvious that the green stuff is winning. The problem is that it’s not winning nearly fast enough to avoid some of these quite scary climate outcomes.

David, I feel smarter at the end of this conversation, because I know more, but I do not feel more optimistic about tomorrow. Do you have any good news that we can dip out of here with?

The world is full of good news. I can be the famous optimist David Wallace-Wells. Just on climate stuff: The green transition is proceeding at a breakneck pace, much faster than even its biggest boosters said was possible 10 or 15 years ago. The battery revolution changing the economic calculus for renewables is really profound. It means that we can probably, in large parts of the world, do 100 percent renewable power, which many people said was going to be completely impossible. And even before we get there, we are already dealing with free electricity in the middle of the day in sun-rich parts of the world. In Australia, they’ve literally passed a law promising citizens that, for several hours every day, they will be guaranteed free electricity.

And that’s just power. With the EV rollout that we’re seeing all around the world, you never have to go to a gas station ever again, because you just charge up at your house. Whenever we electrify anything, it gets dramatically more efficient. And we’re cleaning up air pollution, which is a much larger threat to human flourishing on any conceivable timescale than climate change is. Today, somewhere between 5 and 10 million people are dying every year from air pollution, but we’re past the peak of that. We’re drawing it down. There’s a lot of progress that is really wonderful and worth celebrating.

So, I don’t want to give the sense that, for all of my political despair, and for all of what I would call my climate realism, we are all doomed in some meaningful way. We’re living in an incredibly messy world. We have imposed on ourselves and our future much more suffering and difficulty than we needed to, because climate change will be that disruptive. But that challenge is a political one, it’s a social one, it’s a technological one. And while we are not pursuing each of those paths optimally, in my view, we also shouldn’t assume that we will fail each of those tests like we’re getting a zero.

We’re going to be muddling through, and the future that we live in as a result will have a lot of bad stuff in it and a lot of good stuff in it, which is, of course, human nature and human history. One hopes along the way we will wake up a little bit more — not just on climate, but on politics and governance. My hope, when I’m feeling optimistic, is that these stories are playing out on long enough timelines that we have at least the opportunity to take control of our climate system, our economic system, and our political system in ways that have eluded us in the past.

Listen to the rest of the conversation and be sure to follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts.

The Runner by Scarlett Thomas; The Madman by Henning Mankell; Everything She Didn’t Say by Jane Casey; The Spy and the Snake by MJ Robotham; Murder at the End of the World by Akane Araki

The Runner by Scarlett Thomas (Scribner, £16.99)
Part thriller, part romantic suspense, Thomas’s latest novel begins in Cyprus, where 34-year-old Jay is literally on the run from someone who wants to kill him. Jay (not his real name) is well used to evading hitmen: the attempts on his life began at university, when a Japanese man arrived at his flat with a samurai sword. People have been trying to murder him ever since, the contract on his life traded like a commodity, in bitcoin. Now his only apparent ally is the mysterious Ellie, although – given his track record – it’s quite possible that she’s trying to off him, too. Just before the reader’s sense of intrigue turns to irritated bafflement, the action rewinds to Jay’s childhood in Kent, and the reasons slowly become clear in this quirky, exciting tale that takes in exorcism, dictators, high finance, con artists and marathons along the way.

The Madman by Henning Mankell, translated by George Goulding and Sarah de Senarclens (Mountain Leopard, £25)
Written in the 1970s and published in English for the first time, The Madman is set in a Swedish town in the late 1940s. The country’s wartime neutrality-on-paper continues to divide: the town’s pro-Nazis want the past forgotten, but the communist sympathisers, bitter about having been interned, want a reckoning. When a letter to this effect appears in the local paper, those accused, including the director of the town’s sawmill, claim that newcomer Bertil Kras has been stirring resentment for political ends. When the sawmill burns down, Kras is blamed for that, too, and the disintegration of the life he has tried to make provokes an existential crisis. An older Mankell might have been more concise, but the slow build towards inevitable disaster makes for true emotional depth, and the theme of othering, isolating and penalising people for their opinions remain horribly topical.

The industrial dance duo make music for this summer’s heatwave: filled with dread and jangling with pent-up energy

From Manchester, via Peterborough and Shanghai
Recommended if you like Crystal Castles, Mandy, Indiana, acid house
Up next Festival dates including East London Block Party, Brighton Psych Fest and End of the Road

Salford’s Silverwingkiller sound how this summer’s heatwave feels: delirious, dread-filled and jangling with pent-up energy. Named after the Chinese title for Blade Runner, they build pummelling industrial dance music from nervy breakbeats, the acid sounds of the Roland TB-303 synthesiser and the shared sense of creative freedom that James Baca and Yushang Ni discovered on moving to Greater Manchester, from Peterborough and Shanghai respectively.

Attorneys general from 12 states are suing to block the Paramount-Warner Bros deal they say violates antitrust law

A last-ditch effort to block the merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) is heading to court as 12 Democratic state attorneys general attempt to stop the $111bn deal they say violates antitrust law and reduces competition in both the film and cable television industries.

The lawsuit, which was filed on Monday, faces a crucial hearing on Friday to determine if a judge will temporarily pause the deal or allow it to continue toward approval. The merger was already approved by the Department of Justice in June.

Technical class in the fiercest battles was again lacking at the World Cup but there is hope amid the soul-searching

The post-match inquest into England’s elimination was almost over when Thomas Tuchel offered a revealing analysis of Argentina’s knack of instigating late comebacks at this World Cup.

“In their culture, ball possession plays a crucial role. It starts from a young age,” he said. “That is in the DNA and it demands a lot of self-confidence – natural self‑confidence to always want the ball, to always be in the gaps, to always define yourself through the ball. I think that is a crucial thing: to show courage.”

US president accused China of meddling in his 2020 election defeat and said system was ‘catastrophically’ unfair. Plus Christopher Nolan’s epic take on The Odyssey hits the big screen

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Good morning. Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address that laid bare his continuing obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, but which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms. Trump’s claims are unverified.

In a 25-minute speech, the US president cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process, saying it was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, while vulnerable to trespassing by foreign powers. Democrats warned that Trump was trying to sow confusion, spread misinformation and lay the groundwork to challenge the results of the midterm elections.

What was the aim of Trump’s address? In this analysis piece, Sam Levine explains how the president is using his office and US intelligence agencies to try to undermine confidence in elections. Instead of offering smoking-gun evidence, the release of new papers seemed to be a return to a classic Trump strategy of flooding the zone with information in an attempt to muddy the waters.

What did US networks do about broadcasting Trump’s allegations? The US’s largest television stations split on whether to air Trump’s White House address, which was filled with unproven accusations. While CNN, ABC and NBC chose not to air the speech live, CBS, Fox News and MS Now (formerly MSNBC) aired at least large portions of the speech live.

What did Rubio say? “They can call themselves anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist or Marxist. It’s always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality and justice liberation – an overwhelming need to tear down, to wreck, what is beautiful and what is right on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness,” he said. He called leftists “an encroaching darkness” and “the enemies of civilization”.

The annual World Eskimo Indian Olympics draw hundreds of Indigenous athletes to partake in traditional games and celebrate their heritage

As Nicole Johnson prepared to compete in the Alaska sports arena, she visualized propelling into the air and kicking the ball with both of her feet simultaneously. The Iñupiaq athlete was partaking in the Arctic game of two-foot high kick, long practiced by her community of northern Alaska Natives. When she kicked the ball made of seal skin that dangled from a kickstand, the crowd erupted in cheers. That day in July 1989 at the World Eskimo Indian Olympics (WEIO), Johnson set the women’s world record in the sport by striking the target at 6ft 6in.

For this year’s event, at age 57, she will compete in the dene stick pull, where she and another participant will hold on to the center of a stick covered in grease and attempt to wrest the object from their opponent.

The US state mourns its longest-serving senator while Republicans scramble to choose a successor

The South Carolina state house is a microcosm of the US’s contradictions. Outside there are memorials to the Confederate war dead and African American history. Below a statue of Strom Thurmond, a longtime US senator and racial segregationist, are the names of his five children including Essie Mae, whose mother, a Black maid, was 15 when Thurmond impregnated her.

Thurmond died at the age of 100 in 2003; his successor, Lindsey Graham, a lifelong bachelor who never had children, died last Saturday at 71. His sudden exit leaves a void not just in Washington but the state that molded Graham, elected him to the Senate four times and wrestled with his shape-shifting journey from Ronald Reagan Republican to Donald Trump sycophant.

Update, July 17, 1 pm: On Friday, one candidate — Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez — dropped out of the Wisconsin governor’s race, while another who had exited the race earlier, Milwaukee County executive David Crowley, said he was considering restarting his campaign. The moves raised speculation in Wisconsin media that Democratic leaders are scrambling to rally behind a candidate to defeat Francesca Hong. The article below was originally published earlier in July 17.

Democratic socialists have scored surprising wins in several mayoral and congressional races across the country.

But a swing-state governorship is a different story. In fact, there’s never been a socialist governor in any state in all of American history.

Francesca Hong is trying to make that happen in Wisconsin. A 37-year old former chef and restaurant owner, Hong first ran for office in 2020, when her industry was in crisis due to the pandemic, and won election to the state assembly. After six years there, she’s running for governor.

The primary is on August 11 and, so far, the state’s Democratic establishment has failed to consolidate around one opponent to stop her. (The leading contenders appear to be former lieutenant governor Mandela Barnes and current lieutenant governor Sara Rodriguez.)

Republicans in the state appear to be hoping they’ll face Hong in the general election. One GOP-tied Super PAC is spending $2 million to air ads that heavily feature Hong before the primary. And her past comments on policing — “Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option,” she tweeted in 2021 – will give them some ammunition.

Yet, when I reviewed Hong’s platform, I was struck by its relative pragmatism, especially compared to the grander goals often put forward by socialists running from Congress who have fewer budget and political constraints than governors. Many of her top goals, like expanding access to child care and pushing back on data centers, have been adopted by Democratic leaders elsewhere.

Hong doesn’t see it that way, exactly. “Incrementalism is irresponsible,” she told me. “Pushing for the middle or the moderate has not yielded us the wins that we need.”

But as she acknowledged, many of her ambitions will depend on whether non-socialist Democrats manage to win enough state legislative seats to topple a 16-year GOP majority, and, then, what they’d be willing to pass. 

I spoke with Hong about how she thinks about being a socialist, about how she hopes to govern differently from traditional Democrats, and about how she’d work to use the powers of the governor to advance some of her more controversial causes like police abolition (which she’s said is still “a very long term vision”). Our conversation, which has been condensed and edited, is below.

Would a socialist governor do things differently?

If you win this governor’s race, you’ll be the first socialist governor in United States history. How should we think about what that means? And how would you govern differently from more traditional Democrats, like your state’s current governor?

I think it means that the people are ready for power to answer to them — ready for a new type of politics. The same plays and players, the policies that we have enacted in the past, have gotten us here. With the struggles with affordability, with the climate crisis, all these different existential crises that are happening — folks are pragmatically demanding a new type of government.

And as a democratic socialist, I plan to govern by ensuring that every policy is focused on bringing more democratic control into our economy and making it work for working class people.

So, let’s drill down into the office of the governor itself. I’ve covered a lot of races with different socialists or left candidates around the country. There are a lot of bold sweeping promises that are made in congressional races. 

But, as governor, you’re going to actually have to balance the budget. You’ll have to deal with the legislature. As you were shaping your campaign agenda and your platform, how did you think about these constraints? 

Incrementalism is irresponsible. I’m a community organizer. This is a grassroots powered campaign. We have volunteers and supporters who are talking to their neighbors right now about the importance of winning a trifecta and flipping the legislature in both the senate and the assembly — that the work to govern begins now.

And I think that I’ve built relationships with Republicans and many of my Democratic colleagues, who disagree with me on different issues when it comes to more democratic-socialist-centered policies. The executive has a responsibility to work collaboratively with the legislature, make the decisions in determining when to use executive order, but also be willing to govern unafraid and wield the full power of the executive.

How is Francesca Hong’s platform different from a typical Democrat’s?

So, tell me about some of your top priorities on that front — both what might be able to be done with the executive power of the governor itself and also other things that you would probably need a legislative majority for.

Public education. There is no strong democracy without strong public education.

And so, here in Wisconsin, we’ve been defunding public education under the Republican legislature for the last 16 years. Fully funding public education, to me, means ensuring public dollars stay in public schools, phasing out the voucher program; reimbursing special education at 90 percent; and moving to “two-thirds,” an equitable funding formula [in which two-thirds of public school funding is paid for by the state government].

We have to fund local governments adequately. So many essential programs and services that our local governments provide have been compromised because the state has been hoarding our state dollars and resources and not giving their fair share back to local governments.

And for executive order, I think it’s important to look at what can be done in the calling for special sessions — to bring the legislature in to take up high priority items like a moratorium on AI data centers. We’ve pledged that within the first hundred days, we’d like to see a special session for passing common sense gun safety legislation.

These are bills that Democrats have introduced, that are ready to go. We need that majority to enact them with the swiftness that we need.

A lot of what I see in your platform — public school funding, taxing the rich, child care programs similar to that in states like New Mexico, gun safety — these are definitely strong progressive proposals. But they don’t seem to me inherently different from what Democrats are advocating elsewhere in other states and from what your rivals in this primary are advocating.

What would be the biggest contrast issues where you would be really offering something different, or going further?

When it comes to health care, I have not seen my opponents or heard about their plans to lower health care prices, to look at how our corporate hospitals are taxed here in the state.

How to prevent private equity and take on monopoly by investing in our attorney general’s office — it is the regulation piece of taking on corporate control and corruption that we have not seen very many specifics about from my opponents.

And we are the only campaign to support — and I’ve introduced the legislation — calling for a moratorium on the construction of hyperscale AI data centers.

Data centers and local control

Talk to me about the data center issue, because it’s becoming so important in so many places around the country. What did you see, what did you hear that led you to take this stance and decide that this is what the state needs?

We’re hearing from communities across the state — whether it’s Wisconsin Rapids or Menominee, Beloit, Janesville — that people don’t want to be controlled by big tech and developers. They feel like we’re selling out our natural resources, that we already have rising utility bills, and we’re risking sending those energy costs even higher.

And the reason the moratorium is the most practical and responsible legislation is the scale and speed in which these data center proposals are popping up across the state and the resources that our local governments lack.

We cannot govern by promise. We cannot go into deals with developers where taxpayers could potentially be on the hook. We cannot afford to be Foxconned again. 

We need communities that have a say. We want there to be long-term investment in local economies, and we don’t have the enforceable mechanisms in place to hold polluters and developers accountable so that taxpayers aren’t on the hook.

So, would the goal be to permanently put a halt to this because AI is bad? Or is it more that the goal is to come up with frameworks, a consensus of some kind that can allow maybe certain data center construction that makes sense in certain areas to proceed?

This is very much about local control, with the statewide enforcement mechanisms to protect natural resources, rate payers, and make sure that our local communities have the strongest negotiation tools that they need, should this be something the community decides they want to move forward with.

Israel and Gaza

So, let’s shift gears and talk about another issue that has been really common in these contested primaries around the country, which is Israel and Gaza.

You were part of the “Uncommitted” movement in 2024 to try to pressure Joe Biden to change course on Gaza. You’ve been pretty clear in describing it as a crucial moral cause, a moral test. If you win the governorship, what would be your major priorities as governor on this issue?

Protest is free speech and direct democracy. And right now, we have an anti-BDS [boycott, divestment, and sanctions] law on the books that we’ve had legislation we’ve introduced to repeal, so that the state is not interfering in the right to protest.

We have passed the IHRA definition of antisemitism: the IHRA legislation, here in our state, that was quite controversial. I would be looking at potentially repealing that legislation.

In continuing to make sure communities, all communities, regardless of faith, feel safe, it’s imperative that the executive use their microphone — the governor has one of the largest microphones in the state — to ensure that Wisconsin is not a place that will tolerate hate and discrimination of any kind. 

And I think, oftentimes, the genocide in Gaza has led to a lot of very painful conversations. And I want folks to know that feeling safe and the right to practice faiths is something that is of utmost priority to me and a future Hong administration.

Francesca Hong’s political history

Tell me about how you got into politics, because it’s a very unusual trajectory. You were a chef, you co-owned a restaurant, what inspired you to actually make the leap and say, “I’m going to run for office”?

This was COVID in 2020. And seeing a failure in our state legislature, and responding to a pandemic that was hurting — and so many communities. I think, it wasn’t one moment, it was a combination of grief, frustration, and wanting new leadership and representation.

I was asked multiple times to run. They say you have to ask a woman six times before she’ll run for office.

Who was asking you?

Actually, a couple of fellow chefs. Not a lot of folks who were involved in local politics. But I found out that some of my regulars were actually Republican staffers and folks who worked in the Capitol, because my restaurant was right next to the Capitol.

But I think in times of chaos and crisis, there’s opportunity for change and a desire for change.

I think our community was ready for a foul-mouthed, cussing at [longtime GOP speaker of the Wisconsin assembly] Robin Vos restaurant worker who just wanted to make sure people were fed during the pandemic, too.

What would you say you’ve learned from the legislature? You’ve been there six years, and it’s been Republican-controlled the whole time, so you’ve been in the minority.

I’ve learned being a service industry worker serves you very well in politics. Whether it’s from work ethic — I didn’t go to culinary school, and so when I was line cooking and working my way up to becoming a chef, I had to outhustle everyone. I also learned the importance of working on a team in high-stress situations.

I learned that relationships and information are currency, that you have to be persistent in building these relationships. Did I have beers with Republicans at the bar to talk about economic development? I absolutely did. I also talk to Republicans on the assembly floor. And I passed bipartisan legislation. A lot of folks are surprised that a Madison lib was able to move a bill. It was a bill that would require K-12 public schools to teach Asian American history.

Crime and policing

Of course, the other thing going on in 2020 to 2021 was the racial reckoning and talk of police reform. You came out pretty strong on that, saying things like: “Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option.” 

Some on the left have disavowed those views, but you told CNN earlier this year that this is still “a very long term vision.”

As governor, you’d have influence over the state patrol, prison administration, and pardon power. What sort of things would you do differently with those tools when it comes to criminal justice?

To be tough on crime, we must be tough on causes.

To be serious about public safety requires community investment in our public schools and mental health resources and decriminalizing.

We criminalize poverty. The safest communities in Wisconsin are ones where the people have good jobs with benefits; there are great public parks, community centers; people have housing; there’s not food insecurity; there are lots of grocery stores.

So, building in these investments, but also having a more efficient pardon process. Our governor has a relatively efficient pardon process, he also just reinstated commutation. 

We have some of the highest incarceration rates in the country when it comes to incarcerating Black and brown folks. And our prison system is currently — to folks who are incarcerated, many of the conditions are unsafe and inhumane.

And the cost to this state in both human lives, but also in terms of it costs more to incarcerate an individual in our state than it does for a year’s tuition at UW Madison.

There are practical, common sense reforms that we can do within the state budget and through standalone legislation when it comes to the carceral system, community investments, in ending juvenile life sentencing. We still try juveniles as adults in our state.

So, moving to ensure we have safer communities. Everyone has a right to feel safe. I plan to address all of that comprehensively. And if anyone has been defunding police, it is Robin Vos and the Republicans who have hollowed out our local governments of their funding and shared revenue for the last 16 years.

Can Francesca Hong win?

What do you say to the people who are concerned that you’ve taken positions that are too far left to win and that the party would be better off with a more traditional choice as the nominee?

If you talk to Trump voters, independents, democratic socialists, new voters, the issues and the solutions are more important than the labels.

We’re in a moment right now where there is a working class reckoning, of people feeling like they’re getting screwed — working multiple jobs and still putting bills on hold or not being able to pay them.

This is not left-right. This is about building working-class people power, and the issues are top down.

I think that pushing for the middle or the moderate has not yielded us the wins that we need.

We’re going to need to pass the most comprehensive legislation that will materially improve the people’s lives, in order for folks to look up and say, “Hey, Dems are in power and some good things happen.” Maybe then they’ll want to vote for them again.

The larvae of a beetle native to South and Central America, the critters are the perfect solution to sticky problem: How to prepare an animal skeleton for scientific use.

(Image credit: MirekKijewski/iStockphoto)

We live in an era where you can bet on anything: sports, elections, wars, the temperature in Los Angeles tomorrow, company profits, and everything in between. 

It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that people are spending millions of dollars on online prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket to bet on reality TV. Right now, you could place a bet as to who’s getting eliminated on Big Brother or whether former New York City Mayor Eric Adams will be cast on the upcoming season of Dancing With the Stars. What is shocking is how confident and accurate the calls have been — in the neighborhood of 90 percent and above — on the winners and losers of some of the biggest television shows. 

But who is making these bets and how are they doing it so accurately? 

The obvious answer is that people are trading on these prediction markets with insider information, which is easy to do when shows like Survivor and its results are taped months in advance. Thanks to the gambling regulation gray area that prediction markets currently occupy and the limits of NDAs, there’s plenty of money to be made with very little consequence for anyone who knows how a season of Survivor played out. 

And now that spoiling a TV show has become so profitable so quickly, and because Kalshi and Polymarket are so culturally enmeshed, the show’s biggest fans are paying the price. 

How Polymarket and Kalshi made betting on TV a reality 

As long as there have been reality TV finales and winners, prognosticators have always had some odds-on favorites. Back in 2000, in the first season of Survivor, Vegas oddsmakers thought Sue Hawk — not eventual champion Richard Hatch — was going to win. Similarly, in 2002, Vegas (again incorrectly) placed the odds on Justin Guarini beating out Kelly Clarkson in the American Idol season finale. Since then, linemakers and bookies have sized up shows like The Bachelor (and all of its permutations), Big Brother, The Voice, Amazing Race, Top Chef, and sorted out the favorites and winners. 

But despite the betting lines, you couldn’t legally put money on them. To this day, many states only allow gambling on lotteries, sports events, racing, and in commercial casinos. Only a few allow betting on entertainment awards shows like the Oscars. 

That’s where Polymarket and Kalshi come in. 

Because they’re categorized as federally regulated prediction markets, these apps allow users to wager on “outcomes” that do not officially fall under the umbrella of gaming or gambling, which would be governed by state authorities (Kalshi is currently in a legal battle with New York State over gambling regulation). And so predicting the winners, losers, eliminations and plot developments of reality shows and TV programs for money is — technically — totally legal. At least right now. 

In addition to betting on who’s taking home the prize on shows like Survivor and Top Chef, Polymarket users can also bet on which Big Brother houseguest will get eliminated in week one or whether or not Traitors winner and former Love Islander Rob Rausch will be cast on the 35th season of Dancing With the Stars. Over on Kalshi, there are bets on whether or not Ariana Madix, who was just nominated for an Emmy, will host the next season of Love Island. 

Why betting on reality TV winners is shockingly accurate 

Because reality competition shows are typically shot a few months before they are released to the public, and because they feature a lot of cast members, crew members, and production team members, it’s possible — and easy — for insider information to trickle out before the biggest reveals are aired. 

The networks’ goal is to prevent leaks and spoilers, which would ultimately make the season less exciting to watch and hurt ratings. They do that through NDAs. According to TMZ, Survivor’s contract reportedly has a $5 million penalty for leaks, while shows like The Bachelor, according to former participants, have NDAs that stipulate contestants cannot even reveal they’ve been cast. Ultimately, the goal is to make sure no one knows who won or how far anyone on the show got. 

But even the strictest measures come with gray areas. 

Even though a contestant might be bound by NDAs and contractual agreements, their neighbors, co-workers and acquaintances aren’t. Those people might notice that their neighbor, co-worker, or acquaintance went on a lengthy “vacation” and might be aware that a show like The Traitors or The Bachelor — which they happen to know their buddy applied for — was filming at the same time. If all these pieces fell into place, they could ostensibly put two and two together, figure out if the person in question was cast and how long they were away, and not be subject to any sort of NDA. 

This type of casual investigation is common in reality TV fandoms; aficionados triangulate social media presences, production dates, rumors, and gossip to pinpoint possible future contestants and learn everything about them. 

Opening up Kalshi or Polymarket with this type of information could lead to more informed bets and better winnings. 

And there’s increasing suspicion — though no proof — that people with advance knowledge of the outcomes are using it on prediction markets. 

As Ben Blatt pointed out in The New York Times earlier this year, “enough bets are being placed to move the markets in very clear directions,” noting that two players — “Q” Burdette and Mike White were voted off with 98 percent odds the day their episodes aired. Kalshi even tabbed eventual champion Aubry Bracco as one of its favorites all season — way before Aubry became a player to watch closely — and had her at over 90 percent odds of winning leading up to the finale. 

The accuracy of these bets, along with Survivor being pre-taped, raises the possibility that people with at least some knowledge of how the season played out, were making bets. That doesn’t rule out insider trading or other contractual violations. But it’s also possible that many of these bets came from a legal gray area, with people simply acting on information pieced together from obsessive fan forums and online sleuthing.

In May, Robert Denault, Kalshi’s head of enforcement, wrote on X, “so far, no traders with large positions seem to have a relationship to the show or to the network. Thousands of traders took early positions consistent with the outcome, likely because of public rumors. And public rumors don’t equal insider information.” 

How betting is ruining the best parts of Survivor

Obviously, people placing bets are deeply interested in reality TV winners, but so are these shows’ devout fans. To many of them, especially those who have never been interested in putting down money, the online gambling aspect is yet another way the internet has significantly altered, if not ruined, their favorite pastimes.

To really understand the tension, you have to know that any episode of reality TV — whether it’s Big Brother, The Traitors, or The Bachelor, etc. — is just one part of the experience. There’s joy in speculation, discussing episodes, favorite players, clues, power rankings, and strategy on social media and message boards. For these fans, the important stuff may not be who wins and who gets eliminated, but the way the story unfolds. Griffin Nathaniel Brown, a Survivor aficionado who runs a Survivor and Big Brother fan account, believes Kalshi and Polymarket have trashed this integral component of reality TV. 

“The huge problem with being in these spaces online is that you cannot escape seeing people post about the Kalshi projections,” Brown told me. “Sometimes, I’ll post something speculative about the show, and somebody will just put in the comments who wins. It’s so annoying, and I feel as though I can’t be surprised by the outcomes anymore.”

When it comes to reality TV, Survivor feels like it was built in a lab to satiate predictive markets. Every episode features someone winning immunity, someone getting kicked off, and a vote. There’s also a champion at the end of the season and (usually) a final three. These are all things you can bet on. And unlike shows like Love Island or Big Brother that air their results live, it’s all been taped months before. 

“It’s wild to me that it’s allowed to happen because you’re literally betting on a predetermined outcome. It is a thing that has fully already happened,” said Joe Reid, a senior writer at Vulture, podcaster, and Survivor enthusiast. 

Reid explained that while the show takes steps like the aforementioned NDAs and a live finale, secrecy is brittle because people love to talk. That’s why, he says, the show has always had spoilers about elimination order floating on the internet. But prediction markets and the opportunity to make a profit with little to no consequences have fully weaponized them. 

“The easiest money to be made is if you are one of the 10 people who know who won a season of Survivor,” Reid said. “Aubry has the incentive to not tell anybody because she could lose her prize money. But it’s [spoilers] probably not coming from Aubry. It’s probably coming from somebody who knows somebody who finished 12th that season or something like that.” 

Reid told me that he was spoiled on the most recent season while browsing Kalshi for Oscar odds earlier in the year, before any episode had aired. Once he saw Aubry’s odds flying sky high, it was essentially confirmed for him. But other fans I spoke to said that they’re not even on Kalshi and Polymarket, but because those two platforms have become such big cultural forces, the Kalshi and Polymarket spoilers are impossible to avoid. 

“It would spread all over social media who was being voted out that night,” Zachary Flick, a Survivor watcher, told me. Flick explained that betting would shift the day of an episode airing, and everyone would start talking about the repositioning and irregularities online. 

“I had Dee, Emily, and Ozzy’s boots spoiled for me that way,” he added. 

Polymarket or Kalshi executives are probably not up at night, worried about ruining everyone’s favorite shows when millions of dollars are being traded on reality TV. Neither is the person making thousands (if not more) spoiling each episode. They, like the Survivor winners they’re betting on, have already won. 

Both Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, who led the effort to sunset the foreign aid agency, have said that no deaths have been linked to the cutting of its funding. These parents tell a different story.

(Image credit: From left: David Augustine, Lameck Nyagudi and Kazeem Olawale Nasiru for NPR)

Plus, Trump pays out to E Jean Carroll, somnolent Little House on the Prairie, and why I’ll be avoiding salad in the US

It’s the last week of school and, in our case, the last week of primary school, ever, which I thought wouldn’t be a big deal but now we’re here, I’m sliding off my axis about the cruel passage of time. It’s not about my children, who can’t wait to crack on, it’s about me, me, me.

Update, July 20, 2026, 2 pm ET: This story, first published July 17, has been updated with the current case numbers and developments in the search for the source of the outbreak.

Have you been looking at the lettuce aisle at your grocery store with a wary eye since the diarrhea outbreak began? You’re not alone. This is the summer, which should be high time for fresh produce. But the ongoing emergency has even doctors asking themselves unthinkable questions: Should I stop eating salad? Are any fruits and vegetables safe?

The disease in question, cyclosporiasis, is caused by the parasite cyclospora, which can infect people when it is attached to fresh produce and then consumed. Watery diarrhea — described by public health authorities as “frequent” and “sometimes explosive” — is the most common symptom.

Michigan health officials said last week that they suspect lettuce or bagged salad to be the culprit for the parasite-driven outbreak in the state that has sickened more than 6,100 people. But identifying the specific products to blame has been a challenge. On Thursday, the Washington Post, citing anonymous federal officials, reported the outbreak may trace back to Taylor Farms products that were used by Taco Bell. But then, on Sunday, the FDA said that the tests showing the Taylor Farms product contained cyclospora had been false positives. As of Monday afternoon, the source of the outbreak is still unclear, although Taylor Farms has continued a voluntary recall of its iceberg lettuce products.

I live in Ohio, where there have been nearly 1,200 cases, and I love salad kits. The current outbreak is a major cramp on my lunch plans — and I know I’m not alone. 

So, what do we do? I’ve consulted with a food safety expert and a dietitian to get the answers. The topline message is: Don’t stop eating your fruits and vegetables. They’re good for you. But be smart with your food hygiene.

“I don’t think we’re at that point of shying away from eating your green vegetables,” Francisco Diez-Gonzalez, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, told me. “The benefits overall still outweigh the risks.”

How can we still enjoy our summer produce in this time of cyclospora? Here’s a guide.

Here are the “red light” foods linked to prior outbreaks

While we don’t know for certain the cause of the current outbreak, cyclosporiasis has been linked with specific foods in the past. Let’s start with that list:

• Basil
• Bagged salads and salad mixes
• Cilantro
• Mesclun lettuce
• Parsley
• Raspberries
• Snow peas
• Sweet peas

These foods — either because of where they’re grown or their texture or both — have historically had a higher risk of carrying cyclospora. It might be wise to steer clear entirely for the time being — especially the prepackaged salad products.

The Michigan health department, for example, is urging people to avoid bagged lettuce and salad kits and to purchase whole heads of lettuce instead. And since the outbreak is impacting most states now, it’s advice we’d all be wise to heed.

Then there are “yellow light” foods that need careful cleaning

But for a lot of fruits and vegetables, including whole lettuce, you should still wash them thoroughly — because that’s always a good idea. If you need tips for washing your produce, we’ve got them. For heads of lettuce, for example, cut away the outer layers and wash in between each leaf as best you can. 

“Fresh produce is still generally safe, delicious and nutrient-dense,” Rosemary Trout, a food scientist at Drexel University, told me over email. 

But she gave a yellow light for any leafy greens or fruits and veggies that have textured edible skins. The more texture there is, the more of a risk there is because the parasite can stay attached more easily — even if it’s been diligently washed. Raspberries carry a higher risk than blueberries, for example, and those have been associated with earlier cyclosporiasis outbreaks.

Another point of emphasis: Several doctors have told me that, even if an item says it is prewashed, you should wash it again. And again.

But there are lots of “green light” foods you probably don’t need to worry about

Trout gave a green light to any canned fruits and vegetables, any produce that you cook — importantly, at high heat — at home, and any frozen fruits and veggies.

In general, these are Trout’s safety tips for prepping fruits and vegetables at this uncertain time:

• Be consistent and thorough — at least 20 seconds — when washing your hands and always use hot, soapy water. 
• Peel or remove the outside layer of the fruit or veggies — the rind of a watermelon or cantaloupe, for example, or the outer layer of a head of lettuce.  
• Don’t consume damaged, bruised produce. 
• Keep produce cold in storage, ideally for a relatively short amount of time. 

Get creative with your recipes

If you want to steer clear of any questionable produce or take the safest preparation route that you can, you might want to get a little creative with your recipes. With your lunch salad, for instance, “peeled, shredded carrots, thinly sliced radish, or thinly sliced cooked beets might be a nice substitute for leafy greens,” Trout said.

Heat remains the most surefire way to eliminate any cyclospora parasite that might be lingering on your produce. So look through your cookbooks for any dishes that feature grilled vegetables. Vox Even Better editor Rachel Miller (a more accomplished cook than I) suggested a few recent New York Times Cooking recipes, which you can check out via these gift links:

• Grilled halloumi and vegetables
• One-pan orzo with spinach and feta
• Orzo salad with peppers and feta

Peppers, eggplant, squash, and zucchini are your friends. They respond well to heat, and they are easy to clean. And even some leafy greens — like spinach — hold up nicely to sautéing. 

Support your local farmer’s market

Right now is also a great time to check out your local farmer’s market for produce. 

Dr. Kathleen Linder, who is the hospital epidemiologist at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told me that she has been buying locally since the outbreak began. Prior outbreaks have been linked to produce that was grown elsewhere — whether in the US or internationally — and shipped long distances before it arrived on our grocery shelves. Summer is a crucial season for small farms and farmers’ markets; they shouldn’t be penalized for a health emergency that they had nothing to do with.

Buying locally could reduce the risk that your produce has been exposed to the parasite. Trout said you can ask your local growers about their water supply to make sure that what you are buying is safe.

“Single-source produce from a local farm with good manufacturing/farming practices in place, with a safe water supply, are good,” Trout told me. “Commercially processed, pre-packaged foods are likely combining produce from various farms, which may increase risk, despite good manufacturing practices in place.”

So while cyclosporiasis is an unwelcome concern as we plan our summer cookouts, it doesn’t need to stop you from enjoying fresh fruits and vegetables. Be a little more diligent about your food hygiene, get a little creative with what you’re preparing, maybe stop by a farmer’s market — and you’ll be fine.

Tour de France updates from 12pm BST/1pm CEST
Stage-by-stage guide | Team guide | You can mail Tom

There’s no exlplosion off the start but it’s a narrow road to navigate from the flag drop.

We’re still about 3.5km out from the flag drop. Adam Yates is in need of some technical assistance, but should have time to get that sorted before we begin racing.

Young great white sharks are returning in large numbers, but researchers say humans are not on the menu

Surfers, swimmers and fishermen across California will be sharing the waves with an influx of visitors this summer: young great white sharks.

Juvenile white sharks are already appearing along the coastline, fleeing warmer than usual waters in Mexico during what’s expected to be an incredibly strong El Niño.

Pollution levels in the city were elevated as smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south across a huge swathe of the US

The sun shone feebly through the thick haze. The smell of burning wood hung thick in the air. Many New Yorkers donned masks as the air quality plummeted amid health warnings.

The National Weather Service issued an air-quality alert because pollution levels were elevated as smoke from raging Canadian wildfires drifted south across a huge swathe of the US, reaching all the way to New York City and even beyond out into the Atlantic.

Candidates are betting on affordability as their winning midterm issue, aiming to shift a perception that Democrats deal in the abstract.