How to protect lawmakers, infinite workday, al fresco dining: Catch up on the day's stories
Here's what else you might have missed during your busy day.
1️⃣ 'We're not safe': The deadly shootings targeting Minnesota state lawmakers and their families have reignited the long-standing question of how to protect elected officials. In an increasingly toxic political environment, threats of violence against politicians are at an all-time high.
2️⃣ Legal nightmare: College sophomore Baylie Grogan passed away after a night out in Miami went horribly wrong. Because she hadn't named a health care proxy, her family couldn't make decisions about her treatment. Her mother has a message for other parents.
3️⃣ Artificial colors: Kraft Heinz will remove them from its products by the end of 2027 as synthetic food dyes face scrutiny from consumers and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The brands affected include Kraft Mac & Cheese, Heinz ketchup and Jell-O.
4️⃣ Infinite workday: New research by Microsoft finds that the average worker is interrupted every two minutes by a meeting, an email or an instant message. It doesn't necessarily stop after they log off, and employees are struggling to cope.
5️⃣ Rats and regulations: Al fresco dining exploded in New York during Covid, creating a landscape of makeshift shacks and a new set of problems for the city. Some people aren't happy about how things have turned out.
☀️ Sizzling views: Solar Orbiter, a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency, is providing images of the sun's south pole. This never-before-seen footage gives scientists a chance to better understand the effects on Earth.
• Trump demands 'unconditional surrender' in warning to Iran• DHS reverses course, allowing immigration raids to resume at farms, hotels, restaurants• NYC comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander released after arrest by immigration officers inside court
💰 That's the federal minimum wage proposed by Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. If the bill moves forward, it could pave the way for the first increase in 16 years.
🇮🇹 'We will block the canals': Ahead of billionaire Jeff Bezos' wedding to journalist Lauren Sanchez in Venice, Italy, later this month, protests against the event have gained traction across the city. Residents have vowed to disrupt what is rumored to be a $10 million celebration.
🏎️ Racer's high: The star says his emotions while portraying race car driver Sonny Hayes in the upcoming 'F1: The Movie' differed from how he acts behind the wheel in his everyday life, when he is simply 'trying to be calm.'
🌎 Group of 7 leaders are meeting this week in which Canadian province? A. QuebecB. AlbertaC. ManitobaD. British Columbia⬇️ Scroll down for the answer.
🐕 'Top paw-spect': Bruce the Bat Dog made his Major League Baseball debut this weekend with the Washington Nationals. The golden retriever showed off his bat retrieval skills and leads the team in head pats and belly rubs.
👋 We'll see you tomorrow. 🧠 Quiz answer: B. The G7 summit is taking place in Kananaskis, Alberta, although President Donald Trump left early.📧 Check out all of CNN's newsletters.
5 Things PM is edited and produced by CNN's Chris Good, Meghan Pryce, Kimberly Richardson, Sarah Hutter and Morgan Severson.
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38 minutes ago
DOGE sprouts in red states, as governors embrace the cost-cutter brand and make it their own
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- The brash and chaotic first days of President Donald Trump 's Department of Government Efficiency, once led by the world's richest man Elon Musk, spawned state-level DOGE mimicry as Republican governors and lawmakers aim to show they are in step with their party's leader. Governors have always made political hay out of slashing waste or taming bureaucracy, but DOGE has, in some ways, raised the stakes for them to show that they are zealously committed to cutting costs. Many drive home the point that they have always been focused on cutting government, even if they're not conducting mass layoffs. 'I like to say we were doing DOGE before DOGE was a thing,' Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in announcing her own task force in January. Critics agree that some of these initiatives are nothing new and suggest they are wasteful, essentially duplicating built-in processes that are normally the domain of legislative committees or independent state auditors. At the same time, some governors are using their DOGE vehicles to take aim at GOP targets of the moment, such as welfare programs or diversity, equity and inclusion programs. And some governors who might be eyeing a White House run in 2028 are rebranding their cost-cutting initiatives as DOGE, perhaps eager to claim the mantle of the most DOGE of them all. At least 26 states have initiated DOGE-style efforts of varying kinds, according to the Economic Policy Institute based in Washington, D.C. Most DOGE efforts were carried out through a governor's order — including by governors in Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, New Hampshire and Oklahoma — or by lawmakers introducing legislation or creating a legislative committee. The state initiatives have a markedly different character than Trump's slash-and-burn approach, symbolized by Musk's chainsaw-brandishing appearance at a Conservative Political Action Committee appearance in February. Governors are tending to entrust their DOGE bureaus to loyalists, rather than independent auditors, and are often employing what could be yearslong processes to consolidate procurement, modernize information technology systems, introduce AI tools, repeal regulations or reduce car fleets, office leases or worker headcounts through attrition. Steve Slivinski, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute who researches state government regulatory structures, said that a lot of what he has seen from state-level DOGE initiatives are the 'same stuff you do on a pretty regular basis anyway' in state governments. States typically have routine auditing procedures and the ways states have of saving money are 'relatively unsexy," Slivinski said. And while the state-level DOGE vehicles might be useful over time in finding marginal improvements, "branding it DOGE is more of a press op rather than anything new or substantially different than what they usually do,' Slivinski said. Analysts at the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute say that governors and lawmakers, primarily in the South and Midwest, are using DOGE to breathe new life into long-term agendas to consolidate power away from state agencies and civil servants, dismantle public services and benefit insiders and privatization advocates. 'It's not actually about cutting costs because of some fiscal responsibility,' EPI analyst Nina Mast said. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry rebranded his 'Fiscal Responsibility Program' as Louisiana DOGE, and promoted it as the first to team up with the federal government to scrub illegitimate enrollees from welfare programs. It has already netted $70 million in savings in the Medicaid program in an 'unprecedented' coordination, Landry said in June. In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt — who says in a blurb on the Oklahoma DOGE website that 'I've been DOGE-ing in Oklahoma since before it was cool" — made a DOGE splash with the first report by his Division of Government Efficiency by declaring that the state would refuse some $157 million in federal public health grants. The biggest chunk of that was $132 million intended to support epidemiology and laboratory capacity to control infectious disease outbreaks. The Stitt administration said that funding — about one-third of the total over an eight-year period — exceeded the amount needed. The left-leaning Oklahoma Policy Institute questioned the wisdom of that, pointing to rising numbers of measles and whooping cough cases and the rocky transition under Stitt of the state's public health lab from Oklahoma City to Stillwater. Oklahoma Democrats issued rebukes, citing Oklahoma's lousy public health rankings. 'This isn't leadership,' state Sen. Carri Hicks said. 'It's negligence." Stitt's Oklahoma DOGE has otherwise recommended changes in federal law to save money, opened up the suggestion box to state employees and members of the general public and posted a spreadsheet online with cost savings initiatives in his administration. Those include things as mundane as agencies going paperless, refinancing bonds, buying automated lawn mowers for the Capitol grounds or eliminating a fax machine line in the State Board of Licensure for Professional Engineers and Surveyors. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order in February creating a task force of DOGE teams in each state agency. In the order, DeSantis recited 10 points on what he described as his and Florida's 'history of prudent fiscal management' even before DOGE. Among other things, DeSantis vowed to scrutinize spending by state universities and municipal and county governments — including on DEI initiatives — at a time when DeSantis is pushing to abolish the property taxes that predominantly fund local governments. His administration has since issued letters to universities and governments requesting reams of information and received a blessing from lawmakers, who passed legislation authorizing the inquiry and imposing fines for entities that don't respond. After the June 30 signing ceremony, DeSantis declared on social media: 'We now have full authority to DOGE local governments.' In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders launched her cost-cutting Arkansas Forward last year, before DOGE, and later said the state had done the 'same thing' as DOGE. Her administration spent much of 2024 compiling a 97-page report that listed hundreds of ways to possibly save $300 million inside a $6.5 billion budget.
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Does new S.F. skyscraper proposal signal a timeline for the city's comeback?
San Francisco was challenged. The city's weakened economy, still recovering from financial catastrophe and political uncertainty, was at a crossroads when developer Hines pitched what would be the city's tallest building. The year was 2012. Thirteen years later, the same company is looking to do it again, with a new skyscraper proposal on Friday at the former PG&E headquarters that would be even taller than Salesforce Tower. But times are so different than they were in 2012. San Francisco is now beset by an even deeper office market slump than the wake of the 2008 Great Recession. Pandemic-fueled remote work habits pushed the vacancy rate above 30%. And the city budget faces a record-high deficit that could reach $1 billion, with declines in property taxes and the threat of federal aid being choked off by President Donald Trump Hines is betting that the second half of the 2020s will echo the late 2010s tech boom, with office demand overcoming the post-COVID hangover. But there are many hurdles and a long path ahead: Hines' new proposal, if it moves forward, will require years of approval, financing and construction. Hines already paid PG&E $800 million for the property and construction costs of other supertall buildings have topped $1 billion. Salesforce Tower took about a decade to conceive and complete. And forecasts for when the city's core will reach a pre-pandemic sense of normalcy have been varied and without consensus. Stanford professor and remote work expert Nicholas Bloom last fall said San Francisco's recovery was five years away. Months earlier a report from real estate firm Avison Young suggested San Francisco won't fully recover until 2042. Real estate experts have said this year that the comeback has started, thanks to the surge in artificial intelligence companies leasing swaths of office space and the vacancy rate falling in the second quarter. But downtown will need more to recapture the heady days of 2018, when tech giants gobbled up almost every vacant listing, they said. 'First and foremost, San Francisco is notorious for being a boom and bust market and 2030 could look very different than today — especially if we can create a more mixed-use environment downtown,' said Robert Sammons, senior research director at real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. Making downtown more attractive could mean more housing — Hines' plan calls for 120 new homes in what's now an office building at 25 Beale St. — as well as more events, restaurants and reasons to come outside the workday. City efforts like making Front Street an outdoor-drinking 'entertainment zone' and hosting parties on the Embarcadero are helping draw thousands to downtown and boosting bars and restaurants. Still, completing a skyscraper of any size has eluded almost every developer since the pandemic. The 395-foot 415 Natoma St., the city's tallest building completed since the pandemic, is 97% vacant. (The Brookfield-owned building is part of the 5M project and Brookfield's partner is Chronicle owner Hearst.) Some new office and residential buildings at Mission Rock have filled up, in one of the city's post-pandemic success stories. Hines' own Parcel F project has been stalled for years since its approval, after Salesforce cancelled a lease in 2021. And nearby Oceanwide Center, which began construction in 2017 with approval to be San Francisco's second-tallest tower, is frozen after its Chinese developer collapsed. One of Hines' best assets is location, real estate experts said. The PG&E site is on one of the only development sites on Market Street, adjacent to BART and a few blocks from the waterfront. 'You could call this arguably the best office development site in the city. It's just a fantastic location,' said Derek Daniels, Bay Area research director at real estate brokerage Colliers. And while the citywide office vacancy rate is around 30%, Daniels notes that the category of the highest-quality highrise space with great views has a rate that's under 10%. Rents in premium towers, like the Transamerica Pyramid, can exceed $200 per square foot annually, some of the highest rents in the country. It remains to be seen what form the proposed Hines tower will take, without a design firm attached to the project. But it will likely be built for top quality, or Class A, office space, similar to nearby Salesforce Tower and 181 Fremont. 'We are definitely seeing an interest for those (great) view, high-quality assets,' said Alexander Quinn, Northern California senior director of research at brokerage JLL. 'There is more scarcity.' In contrast, South of Market condo prices remain below 2020 levels, according to residential brokerage Compass. An earlier, shorter tower plan by Hines at the same PG&E site had called for more housing, but the current plan is primarily office, with a massive 1.6 million square feet that would be 200,000 square feet more than Salesforce Tower. Though the office market still has plenty of struggles, Daniels believes that vacancy has already peaked and the city is on the path to recovery. Colliers tracked 3.2 million square feet of new and renewed leases in the second quarter, the highest level in the city since mid-2019, he said. Notably, the crypto company Coinbase leased 150,000 square feet at Mission Rock, a reversal of its exit from San Francisco during the pandemic. Mayor Daniel Lurie was eager to highlight Hines' tower project. In an Instagram video, he stood in front of the former PG&E site. 'This is going to be a neighborhood that has got live, work and play opportunities,' he said. 'It is a signal to the world that San Francisco is on the rise.'
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
How can Boston mayoral candidates reach voters during the summer slump? Take to the airwaves.
It's also yet another indication that in this Ads aren't a silver bullet for winning a campaign. But at this point in the summer, 'it's all you can do, really,' said Cam Charbonnier, a Boston political consultant who ran a mayoral campaign in 2021. 'People aren't really making a decision at this point, and a lot of people aren't totally focused on it,' he added. 'But by the time they start to think about it, you don't want it to be the first time they're hearing about your candidate. You want them to have an idea that's formed.' Related : Advertisement New ads are launching this week and next on behalf of both Advertisement The Kraft campaign on Friday launched its first television advertisements, a series of at least six 30-second spots that feature people Kraft has worked with or for during his years as a nonprofit leader in Boston. While Kraft only spent three decades at the Boys & Girls Club of Boston, including 12 years as its head. One of the new ads features Jonte Joseph, who met Kraft at the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club when Joseph was only 9 years old. Kraft, Joseph said, saw him through difficult moments, understanding that 'people sometimes need help to get back on track.' 'Josh helped change my life,' Joseph says in the Other commercials highlight other friends and former colleagues who praise Kraft for everything from helping the Muslim community in Hyde Park find a The positive ads present a contrast with the commercials put forward earlier this year by a super PAC aligned with Kraft. The PAC has A spokesperson for the campaign did not say how much Kraft's team will spend on the new television commercials. But the commercials are a notable flex of the campaign's ample finances — boosted in recent months by a $2 million cash infusion from Kraft himself. Conventional campaign wisdom dictates that once advertisements go up on air, they should not come down, suggesting Kraft's team may be preparing to keep the ads running for months. Related : Advertisement On Monday, a Wu-aligned super PAC, Bold Boston, is launching a 60-second radio ad that takes aim at Kraft for his past support for Republican political candidates. The commercial aims to tie Kraft to President Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill,' which is expected to 'You know, Josh Kraft donated to Republicans who got the law passed,' says one voice in the commercial. Kraft, who is now a registered Democrat but has also voted for Republicans over the years, has donated in the past to some The Wu-aligned PAC also has not said how much it will spend to air the ads. In-person events have slowed down somewhat for the summer, though both Wu and Kraft are expected to appear Tuesday evening at an event Campaigns also spend the slow summer months lining up endorsements, organizing volunteers, and launching canvasses. Wu's campaign has canvasses planned this weekend in East Boston, Mattapan, Charlestown, and half a dozen other neighborhoods. The mayor rolled out an endorsement this week from the Boston Teachers Union. Advertisement For his part, Kraft on Thursday held a press conference to announce a He said his campaign is not slowing down during the summer stretch. 'I'm gonna keep doing what we're doing — showing up everywhere and anywhere,' Kraft said Thursday. 'Just showing up and listening to people.' DaRosa, one of the 'The majority of my community doesn't have the luxury to take off for the summer,' he said. He sees indications that voters remain engaged, and said he is working to meet residents in person at supermarkets and train stops. 'There's more interest than is being projected out there,' he said. 'Folks are not interested in a lot of the BS that's going on between Michelle and Kraft, the back and forth bickering over whose bank account is bigger. Folks are more interested in the solutions and how we're gonna go about moving the city forward.' Globe correspondent Jade Lozada contributed to this report. Emma Platoff can be reached at
