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Juneteenth scale backs, how the world swears, a singer's protest: Catch up on the day's stories

Juneteenth scale backs, how the world swears, a singer's protest: Catch up on the day's stories

CNN18-06-2025

👋 Welcome to 5 Things PM! Swear words can act as social glue, playing meaningful roles in how people connect and express themselves. How often they're used, though, varies depending on region and cultural differences.
Here's what else you might have missed during your busy day.
1️⃣ At risk: Job Corps centers provide housing and schooling for low-income students aged 16 to 24. The six-decade old program has provided a lifeline for more than two million young Americans, but its fate is now uncertain after the Trump administration ordered its operations to be paused.
2️⃣ Scaling back: Despite Juneteenth's status as a federal holiday, celebrations across the US are being toned down or canceled. Event organizers cite safety issues and political backlash as reasons for the changes.
3️⃣ AI analysis: Outcries about artificial intelligence replacing human jobs have become more common. CNN's Allison Morrow writes that it's CEOs' new way to keep their workers afraid of losing their jobs.
4️⃣ Trash stash: Viral videos of garbage captured by explorers in China's Zhangjiajie Forest — with one explorer describing waste piled seven to eight floors high — have prompted a mass cleanup. From 2010 to 2015, the local government banned trash burning, so dumping in caves became common.
5️⃣ 'I'm standing by them': At the LA Dodgers game this past Saturday, Nezza performed the National Anthem in Spanish in protest of the ICE raids in the city. Before she sang, an unidentified employee told her to sing the song in English.
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🏠 Home alone: The Goodsons have been living off the grid in an energy efficient home prefabricated in a factory. In a housing and construction labor crisis, these modern homes are a growing trend.
Israel and Iran trade strikes as Trump weighs US involvement in conflict
Supreme Court upholds Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth
Fed holds interest rate steady for fourth time in a row
💵 That's how much money drug companies spent on TV ads in 2024 — but that may soon change as Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. considers policies that would alter the ease and price of pushing products onscreen.
🏭 Smokestack impact: Human-caused climate change is not as new of an issue as previously thought. With the help of sophisticated computer models and scientific theory, researchers believe a clear signal can be detected as far back as 1885.
🏀 Caitlin Clark down: The larger-than-life basketball star suffered a poke in the eye following a testy game at the WNBA Commissioner's Cup final. Here's how it happened.
🥃 Liquid Death and WhistlePig partnered to create a new whiskey aged in what?
A. SoilB. A water wellC. A casketD. An oak barrel⬇️ Scroll down for the answer.
🏃 It's a runderful life: Olympic gold medalist Karsten Warholm soared past his own world record time in the 300-meter hurdles last week in front of a home crowd in Oslo, Norway. Although shaving half a second may not sound like much, when the new world record is a mere 32.67 seconds, he's running with the stars.
👋 We'll see you tomorrow.🧠 Quiz answer: C. The new whiskey is partially aged in an actual casket at WhistlePig's Vermont distillery, and made with Liquid Death's mountain-sourced water.📧 Check out all of CNN's newsletters.
5 Things PM is edited and produced by CNN's Chris Good, Meghan Pryce, Kimberly Richardson and Daniel Wine.

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Even so, I am concerned about the Supreme Court's ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor, validating an assertion of religious freedom over a school district's reading program. The case was brought by a group of Maryland parents against Montgomery County's school board, which refused to allow the parents to opt their kids out of the reading and/or discussion of books that depicted people married to same-sex spouses, dramatized a dog at a pride parade, and told other stories whose settings included the recognition and normalization of LGBTQ+ people. In general, I have always tried to honor the beliefs of parents ‒ not just about what to read but also about how they choose to raise their children ‒ whether or not I agree with them. I do this out of respect and also for the sake of kids who are better off without being in the middle of ideological conflict. There are limits, however. 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Even so, it doesn't take much of a leap to get from opt-outs for LGBTQ+ book references to opt-outs for the study or even mention of human evolution. Evolution is foundational to anthropology, human history and civilization, and human biology. Preventing a student from learning about it could set the student behind their peers in their knowledge and understanding of science. Preventing a child from understanding the world beyond their own family and experience is potentially more crippling. The world in which today's children are growing up is diverse. An inability to comprehend it and navigate it can limit their academic and professional horizons. Some kids have two moms and some have two dads. Some kids have a transgender parent. Some are being raised by a single parent or grandparent(s) or in a blended family, some kids are being raised by someone with whom they are not related, and still others are being raised by no one at all. Refusing to allow a child to understand and normalize this diversity marginalizes those kids ‒ many of whom are already marginalized by circumstances. This is what educators think about. We try to look out for all kids, but especially the ones who might otherwise feel out of place. Opinion: If you had a teacher who changed your life, 'find that person, tell that person' More urgently, books that validate all families and all kids can save the life of a child who realizes they are gay or trans and feels alone and terrified by that realization. The imposition of those books to someone's faith seems, by comparison, trivial. Pushing back against that imposition seems utterly selfish ‒ ironic for people of faith. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. At the core of this issue are two fundamental questions: How much power and authority should parents legally have over their children? Are we, as a nation, willing to fully recognize the humanity and dignity of all people, regardless of race, creed, color, or sexual orientation or identity ‒ and regardless of our own comfort level? To the first question I can tell you, as a high school teacher and a parent, that parental power is ultimately mostly illusory, and quite often the tighter the parental grip the stronger the children's resistance. I do not have the answer to the second question, but I do know that on this day, Supreme Court justices tilted us toward no. Larry Strauss, a high school English teacher in South Los Angeles since 1992, is the author of 'Students First and Other Lies: Straight Talk From a Veteran Teacher' and "A Lasting Impact in the Classroom and Beyond," a book for new and struggling teachers. You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court ruling on LGBTQ books worries me as a teacher | Opinion

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