Good morning.
Texas Democrats have fled the state in an escalation of one of the most high-stakes battles over voting rights in the US.
In flying to Washington DC, they once again deny Republicans the required two-thirds quorum needed to conduct business, this time in a special session called by the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, specifically to pass a voting restrictions bill described by the left as “Jim Crow 2.0”.
Texas Democrats thwarted Republican efforts on this bill once before when they walked out of the state capitol in May. Abbott had the authority to call a special session that is basically legislative overtime, which he promptly did.
A special session can last a maximum of 30 days, and Republicans have already vowed to use “every available resource” to secure quorum and call Democrats back.
Democrats face potential arrest, as Republicans can authorize law enforcement to haul the Democratic legislators back to the state. They did so in 2003, when Democrats fled the state over electoral maps.
This bill seeks to lower the bar for overturning an election, ban 24-hour and drive-thru voting, restrict the use of drop boxes and make it a state jail felony for a public official to proactively solicit or send vote-by-mail applications.
Texas is already one of the hardest places to vote in the US. It is one of the few places that does not have online voter registration nor does it allow everyone to vote by mail, and it had one of the lowest voter turnouts in 2020.
Biden to call out Trump’s lies about stolen election in Tuesday speech
Joe Biden is due to deliver a speech from Philadelphia today aggressively denouncing Donald Trump’s “big lie” about a stolen election and talking about how it directly led to the 6 January insurrection and a rash of voter restrictions.
After months of dancing around conflict with his predecessor in an effort to cool the political climate, Biden will call out “the greatest irony of ‘the big lie’”, said the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki: “No election in our history has met such a high standard.”
Wildfires burn across western states as heatwave reaches new highs
There has been little relief in the west, as wildfires blazed in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Idaho amid record-breaking temperatures.
State regulators are asking consumers to voluntarily “conserve as much electricity as possible” to avoid outages, with one fire in Oregon disrupting service on three transmission lines providing up to 5,500 megawatts of electricity to neighboring California.
The west is caught in a cycle of extreme heat, drought and fire, all amplified by the climate crisis, experts warn.
Severe drought is now threatening the Hoover dam reservoir, and thus the water supply to much of Arizona and Nevada.
Forty-three bodies found in Arizona’s borderland amid heatwave
The heatwave continues to take its toll on the west, with a border not-for-profit reporting that an unusually large number of migrants who died in Arizona’s borderlands are being recovered this summer amid record temperatures.
The 43 bodies were found last month, during the hottest June on record for Phoenix.
In other news …
The Cuban president blamed the US for the widespread anti-government protests, saying the demonstrators were either backed by the US or stirred up by a social media-driven plot meant to overthrow the Cuban regime.
The death toll in the Miami condo collapse has risen to 94, with a Bay of Pigs veteran among the deceased.
France has mandated Covid health passes, meaning that anyone entering a restaurant, cafe, shopping centre, hospital or taking a long-distance train must present a special health pass starting in August.
Stat of the day: 31,069 immigrants in the US are forced to wear electronic ankle monitors
In an alternative to immigrant detention, some are forced to wear electronic ankle monitors, which impose an emotional, mental and physical toll.
Don’t miss this: How Miami became the nexus for an assassination plot
For decades, Miami has been the launching pad for half-baked plots and coups. The mysterious assassination of the Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, is just the latest.
Last Thing: Something fishy
Authorities in Minnesota sent out a plaintive appeal to aquarium owners after fishing several goldfish that had grown to gigantic proportions out from a local lake: please stop releasing your pet fish into waterways. Apparently, released goldfish can not only survive in the wild, but grow to several times their normal size and wreak havoc on local ecosystems.
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