2022
June
30
Thursday

Monitor Daily Podcast

June 30, 2022
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As summer heat waves start hitting, I think of my childhood in the California desert towns of El Centro and Blythe – often the nation’s hottest spots.

As staff writer Luke Cregan reports today, a heat wave is relative: It’s the lingering of “abnormally” high heat. But what about a place where three-digit temperatures are not abnormal – when every summer day hits 100-and-something?

I know heat waves can be deadly, but where desert heat is the norm, it can actually be a fond memory. That’s especially true for those of us 1950s, ’60s, ’70s kids who ran barefoot like wily coyotes from one telephone pole shadow to the next and on white painted road lines which were “cooler” than the sizzling asphalt. I know this from experience, but also from desert community Facebook pages where I posted the question: “How did we do it?”

I got more than 200 comments. Desert natives are proud of their toughness under the searing sun and nostalgic about the trade-offs. They recall stepping out into 120-degree air wearing hoop earrings that burned their neck before they got to the car. They remember the bank sign on Main Street that blinked “114-degrees, 9:40 p.m.” But then they could detour to the lavish chill of AC at the public library or movie theater, float a hundred-pound block of ice in a swimming pool, or stop to sip from any old garden hose (no one carried water, no one).

Commenter Dennis Schwettman recalls that his mom – a waitress – owned a house near El Centro in the 1950s with no AC, no evaporative “swamp” cooler. “I didn’t know it was a hardship” to sleep in 100-plus-degree heat wrapped in a wet sheet, he told me by phone.  

How did we do it? We adapted.

We’re adapting still.


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Today’s stories

And why we wrote them

J. David Ake/AP/File
The Dave Johnson coal-fired power plant is captured in the early morning light, July 26, 2018, in Glenrock, Wyoming. On June 30, 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants in the broad manner outlined in an Obama-era plan.

Today the Supreme Court addressed a balance-of-powers question: the role of Congress versus agencies in setting federal regulations. The ruling complicates the already-difficult politics of addressing climate change.

Patterns

Tracing global connections

Without the rule of law, democracy is a dead letter. Protecting courts from political pressure is a key path to protecting judicial independence and credibility.

The Explainer

Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times/AP
Children play in the Crown Fountain on Michigan Avenue in Chicago on June 14, 2022. Unusually high temperatures reached much of the nation during parts of June. As summer begins, many communities are thinking about how to help residents stay cool and mitigate "urban heat islands."

Heat waves are getting hotter, longer, and more frequent around the world. Here’s what communities are doing to beat back the heat and protect public health – including for the most vulnerable populations.

SOURCE:

International Research Institute for Climate and Society

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Jacob Turcotte/Staff

For Indian Muslims, what makes a space safe? Amid escalating violence and recent demolition drives, many are seeking security in Delhi’s majority-Muslim enclaves. But ghettoization comes with risks.

Film

Courtesy of the Cohen Estate
Leonard Cohen prepares for a tour more than a decade ago. “Hallelujah,” his most celebrated song, has been called “a modern prayer.”

Leonard Cohen spent seven years perfecting his most celebrated song, “Hallelujah.” A new documentary uses the birth of that piece to lay out the musician’s spirituality – and hope.


The Monitor's View

AP
President Joe Biden meets with South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol, left, and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, during a NATO summit in Madrid, June 29.

Japan and South Korea are only a ferry ride away from each other. Their economies are among the world’s largest. Their democracies and their cultural ties are as strong as ever. Yet their diplomatic ties have been cold for years over historical and legal disputes – that is, until this week. At a NATO meeting in Spain, the heads of each country hinted at putting the future over the past.

The two leaders, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, met briefly at a dinner and then joined U.S. President Joe Biden for a trilateral summit – the first such gathering in five years. The United States needs two of its closest allies in Asia to get along. With an eye toward rising threats from Russia, China, and North Korea, both Japan and South Korea now seem inclined.

For his part, Mr. Yoon suggested that democracies must work together to protect “universal values” that some countries deny. His Japanese counterpart said cooperation has never been more vital because of threats to the rule-based international order.

Once Japan holds a parliamentary election in July, the two leaders could possibly meet in a one-on-one summit. And in August, both countries will join the U.S. in holding naval exercises off Hawaii to improve their surveillance of North Korea.

“I am convinced that Prime Minister Kishida can become a partner who can solve issues between Korea and Japan,” said Mr. Yoon after their meeting.

Resolving the thicket of issues left over from Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula will not be easy. One compromise, however, may be in the works. Reports in South Korea indicate the two sides are discussing a face-saving way to compensate former Korean wartime laborers with private money. For its part, Japan expects South Korea to abide by a 1965 treaty that normalized bilateral relations and included compensatory grants and loans.

Helping Japan and South Korea to reconcile is one of Mr. Biden’s top 10 priorities for the Asia-Pacific region. The two Northeast Asian neighbors certainly know they have shared threats – from a bullying China and a North Korea on the verge of another nuclear test. To overcome their respective deep resentments, their leaders may now be looking for a common tool of reconciliation: shared values in need of safekeeping.


A Christian Science Perspective

About this feature

Each weekday, the Monitor includes one clearly labeled religious article offering spiritual insight on contemporary issues, including the news. The publication – in its various forms – is produced for anyone who cares about the progress of the human endeavor around the world and seeks news reported with compassion, intelligence, and an essentially constructive lens. For many, that caring has religious roots. For many, it does not. The Monitor has always embraced both audiences. The Monitor is owned by a church – The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston – whose founder was concerned with both the state of the world and the quality of available news.

Taking an honest look at how we might improve ourselves can be unnerving. But starting from the basis of our nature as God’s children dissolves self-condemnation that can hinder progress and opens the door to hope and healing.


A message of love

Fred Schilling/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States/AP
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signs the Oaths of Office at the Supreme Court in Washington on June 30, 2022, as Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts and her husband, Patrick Jackson, watch.
( The illustrations in today’s Monitor Daily are by Jacob Turcotte. )

A look ahead

Thanks for joining us today. Tomorrow we’ll have the final installment of our Education and Democracy series with an article on parental participation in schools. You can find the first three articles in the series here:

Part 1: Do Americans agree on the importance of common schoolhouses? Do they still hold that public education is fundamental to democracy?

Part 2: How should schools teach children what it means to be an American?

Part 3: Are we better off as a nation investing in a system where talented students can soar, or one in which everyone is educated equally? Can’t we have both?

More issues

2022
June
30
Thursday

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