Your Monday Evening Briefing

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/briefing/california-ncaa-inflation.html

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Good evening. Here’s the latest.

1. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the N.C.A.A. cannot ban relatively modest payments to student-athletes.

The N.C.A.A. has long advanced the notion that students should play sports in exchange for no more than a scholarship, books, room and board, and, more recently, the estimated cost of attending college.

The case before the Supreme Court did not directly touch on whether athletes may earn money off their names, images and likenesses. Above, the lead plaintiff in the case, Shawne Alston.

But next week, student-athletes in at least six states are poised to be allowed to make money through endorsements, after state officials grew tired of the industry’s decades-long efforts to limit the rights of players.

2. Reading inflation tea leaves through the price of lumber.

Lumber futures surged to new heights over the past year, peaking in early May at more than $1,600 per thousand board feet. But since then, prices are down by more than 45 percent.

That has reassured many experts and the Federal Reserve that price spikes for everything from airline tickets to used cars will abate, and that the recent rise in inflation is the result of temporary mismatches in supply and demand.

“We don’t have that kind of buying frenzy that creates sustained inflation,” said Kristina Hooper, chief global market strategist at the investment management firm Invesco. “To me, this is very, very different than the 1970s.”

3. The U.S. economy faces another daunting challenge rooted in the pandemic.

The two pandemic aid packages worth $2.8 trillion were set up to get money out the door fast. Now, to avoid an economic downturn, a huge handoff must occur from government-driven demand to the private sector.

The mainstream view is that this will be successful. But there is no modern precedent for such huge swings in sums the government is pumping into the economy. A crucial question is whether Americans sitting on a vast pool of savings accumulated during the pandemic will spend enough to drive growth.

4. Google executives are seeing problems, despite its success.

Revenue and profit are charting new highs every three months. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is worth $1.6 trillion. And Google has rooted itself deeper and deeper into the lives of everyday Americans.

But a restive class of Google executives worry that the company is showing cracks. They say personnel problems are spilling into the public. Decisive leadership and big ideas have given way to risk aversion and incrementalism. And some of those executives are leaving — at least 36 Google vice presidents since last year.

Many of Google’s problems, current and recently departed executives said, stem from the leadership style of Sundar Pichai, above, the company’s affable, low-key chief executive.

5. Voters head to the polls tomorrow in the biggest U.S. city.

The Democratic and Republican primaries for mayor of New York City will be among the first major contests to be held as the pandemic recedes.

The race in the heavily Democratic city is still believed to be tight enough that at least four of the eight Democratic candidates have a decent chance of winning.

By nightfall, we should know which candidate is leading among the ballots cast in-person. But in the city’s first time using ranked-choice voting, only first-choice votes will be counted right away. Second- and third-choice votes could potentially be decisive.

Election officials must also wait for tens of thousands of absentee ballots to arrive and be counted. A final decision may take weeks.

6. When it comes to big-city elections, Republicans are in the wilderness.

The realignment of national politics around urban-versus-rural divisions has seemingly doomed Republicans in many parts of the country, as surely as it has all but eradicated the Democratic Party as a force across the Plains and the Upper Mountain West.

At the national level, Republicans have largely accepted that trade-off, since the structure of the federal government gives disproportionate power to sparsely populated rural states.

But the party’s growing irrelevance in urban and suburban areas has sidelined conservatives in centers of innovation and economic might, and has turned red states into battlegrounds as their largest metro areas have grown larger and more ethnically mixed.

7. Medicaid enrollment surpassed 80 million, a record, during the pandemic.

Nearly 10 million Americans joined the public health program for the poor since the government declared the coronavirus emergency last year, a government report showed.

The increase points to the program’s growing role not just as a safety net, but also as a foundation of U.S. health coverage. Fully a quarter of the population gets coverage through it.

Medicaid, in which states and the federal government share the cost, covers all adults with income up to 138 percent of the poverty level, which would be about $17,420 for an individual to qualify this year.

8. The Games will go on.

Domestic spectators will be allowed to attend Olympic events in Tokyo this summer, ensuring a live audience after overseas fans were barred in March.

The decision settles the last major logistical issue facing the organizers of the Games, which have been delayed for a year because of the pandemic.

Why are the Olympics still happening? These numbers explain it.

And 11 of the 50 members of the U.S. swim team are teenagers, the most since 1996. The roster, set Sunday, will also be the first in 21 years without the 28-time Olympic medalist Michael Phelps.

Separately, Qatar announced that everyone attending the World Cup there next year must be fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Up to 1.5 million international fans are expected to descend on the Gulf nation next November for the world’s largest soccer tournament.

9. Demand for summer air travel dipped.

Airline ticket sales for destinations within the U.S. fell a little in May after rising steadily in the first four months of the year, suggesting that demand for summer travel might not be quite as strong as airlines had hoped.

It was not clear whether the trend continued into June. But other indications show the demand for travel is strong. On Sunday, the Transportation Security Administration screened 2.1 million passengers at airport checkpoints, the most in a single day since the pandemic began.

If France is on your summer itinerary, here’s some good news: Concerts with a standing audience can resume there on June 30 and nightclubs can reopen July 9.

10. And finally, figuring out how to be a super-ager.

Maybe you know some people in their 80s or 90s who are still sharp as a tack, with brains that function as if they were 30 years younger.

Scientists call these folks “cognitive super-agers,” and researchers in the Netherlands are hoping a study of centenarians may help more of us to get to that stage. Many subjects had substantial neuropathology common to people with Alzheimer’s disease, but they still remained cognitively healthy for up to four years beyond 100.

The researchers hope to identify reliable characteristics and develop treatments that will result in healthy cognitive aging — for those of us who can remain physically healthy that long.

Have a vigorous evening.

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