Immigration, World Cup, Solstice: Your Thursday Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/briefing/immigration-world-cup-solstice.html

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Good morning.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Days after saying “you can’t do it through an executive order,” President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday meant to end the separation of immigrant families who are detained at the border.

But there are still legal and practical obstacles to ending the practice, and the fate of the more than 2,300 children already separated from their parents is unclear. Here’s what Mr. Trump’s order does and does not do, and how immigrant detention policies have evolved since the Obama administration.

Hundreds of migrant children have been sent to New York City, but Mayor Bill de Blasio said the federal government had refused to tell city officials where they were being housed.

At a rally in Minnesota on Wednesday night, Mr. Trump vowed to be “just as tough” on immigration as before: “They’re not sending their finest. We’re sending them the hell back.”

• In border states, Republicans say that whatever sympathy they feel for divided families is complicated by frustration over the flow of undocumented immigrants.

• The politics of rage that drove President Trump’s political rise now dominate the national discourse.

Two of our White House correspondents examine how the president’s coarse talk has inspired opponents to respond in kind.

“We know that incivility is contagious,” a Georgetown professor said. “It’s like a bug or virus. It’s not only when people experience incivility, it’s when they see or read about it.”

• The spectacle has played out on cable news and social media. “We now know the sound it makes when human decency dies,” our chief TV critic writes: “Womp womp.”

• In July, the economic recovery will reach the nine-year mark, making it one of the longest in modern history.

For much of that time, the engines of the U.S. economy weren’t synchronized, but now the different parts appear to be operating as one well-oiled machine. The economy is on course to expand this year at the fastest rate in more than a decade.

That gives President Trump leverage as he takes a confrontational approach with China and others. But his threats also carry a risk, economists say. Read more here.

• Separately, Mr. Trump wants to reorganize the federal government, administration officials say, with a possible merger of the Education and Labor Departments. The plan would move many safety net programs into a megadepartment that could include the word “welfare” in its title.

• A U.N. commission investigating war crimes in the country’s seven-year civil war released a report on Wednesday that didn’t include disturbing information contained in an earlier draft.

The report examined how the government of President Bashar al-Assad recaptured a suburb of Damascus using bombardments, mass starvation and chemical weapons.

• A member of the commission said that many of the details in the earlier draft needed corroboration or clarification and might be included in a later version.

• Luis Soto is narrating Peru’s first appearance at the World Cup since 1982 in Quechua, the language of the Incas, for hundreds of thousands of listeners.

He hopes to be able to announce his first “Gooooooool!” (understandable, even if you don’t speak Quechua) when Peru plays France today.

Separately, our correspondent traveled to the Russian city of Ulan-Ude, 3,500 miles and five time zones from Moscow, to see if the World Cup spirit extends to Siberia.

• On the field, Spain defeated Iran, 1-0, on Wednesday. Portugal (led by its goal-scoring machine, Cristiano Ronaldo) and Uruguay also won. We’ll have live coverage of today’s big match, Argentina vs. Croatia, at 2 p.m. Eastern.

The N.B.A draft is tonight, beginning at 7 p.m. We’ll have live, pick-by-pick coverage of the first round.

• Intel, the world’s largest maker of semiconductors, said today that its chief executive, Brian Krzanich, resigned over a past consensual relationship with an employee.

• Elon Musk is drilling tunnels, electric scooters are peppering sidewalks, and Amazon is throwing its weight around in Seattle. Welcome to the technocapitalist city of the future.

• Firefox is back. Mozilla’s redesigned web browser — with strong privacy features intended to compete with Google Chrome — is worth considering, our tech columnist writes.

• U.S. stocks were mixed on Wednesday. Here’s a snapshot of global markets today.

Tips, both new and old, for a more fulfilling life.

• It’s summer! We have a guide to summer hair and seven tips for keeping your bedroom cool.

• Recipe of the day: Keep things simple with loaded baked potatoes.

• Listen to “Caliphate”

The Islamic State has attracted tens of thousands of followers from all over the world. But what, exactly, is ISIS? Our podcast “Caliphate” follows Rukmini Callimachi, a foreign correspondent for The Times, on her quest to find out.

Binge-listen to all 10 episodes here.

• The solstice and the search for life

Astronomers debate whether the Earth’s tilt toward the sun helps make life on our planet, or others, possible.

• The glamorous grandmas of Instagram

“I’m not 20. I don’t want to be 20, but I’m really freaking cool.” Lyn Slater is among the women over 60 who are showing on social media that “old” isn’t what it used to be.

Here’s more from this week’s Styles section.

• New kid on the block

Sabaa Tahir’s “An Ember in the Ashes” debuts on our highly competitive children’s series best-seller list. Jeff Kinney’s “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” has been on that list the longest, at 483 weeks. Find all of our best-seller lists here.

• Best of late-night TV

Jimmy Kimmel noted President Trump’s new executive order: “Thank you, Mr. President, for lighting the house on fire and now taking credit for putting the fire out.”

• Quotation of the day

“I want a free country, where it’s not a crime to be young.”

— Sara Maritza Oporto, whose 23-year-old son was arrested during a bloody crackdown on protests against Nicaragua’s president, Daniel Ortega, who has dominated the country’s political life for nearly 40 years.

• The Times, in other words

Here’s an image of today’s front page, and links to our Opinion content and crossword puzzles.

• What we’re reading

Jennifer Jett, a senior staff editor in Hong Kong, recommends this piece from The Economist: “Plastic pollution has been in the news a lot lately, but should it be our biggest concern? This article argues that plastic pollution is less costly than carbon emissions or fertilizer runoff, and that some anti-plastic initiatives — like using cotton tote bags — may actually harm the environment more.”

Female athletes gained a prominent new stage on this day in 1997, when the Women’s National Basketball Association began play.

With backing from the N.B.A., the women’s league initially featured eight teams and a distinctive orange-and-oatmeal-color ball.

The inaugural game brought together teams from two of the nation’s biggest markets, the New York Liberty and the Los Angeles Sparks.

But before the game was even set to tip off, a frenzy ensued. The musician who was supposed to sing the national anthem before the game, Jeffrey Osborne, was late.

“He was stuck in traffic,” Val Ackerman, the league’s first president, told ESPN for a story about the 20th anniversary of the game. “So that created some chaos at the beginning. They had to use a recording of the anthem.”

That snag did nothing to ease doubts about the league’s potential for success, but Rebecca Lobo, who played for New York in that first game, urged naysayers to give it a chance.

“People can say whatever they want at this point, but they should turn on the game and make their judgments,” she said.

The league’s attendance eclipsed one million in its first year and finished last season above 1.5 million.

Adriana Lacy wrote today’s Back Story.

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