Your Friday Evening Briefing

June 19, 2020

Your Friday Evening Briefing

By Remy Tumin and Marcus Payadue

Good evening. Here’s the latest.

Chris Creese for The New York Times

1. Tulsa, Okla., is preparing for a convergence of the two crises that have roiled the American public for months.

On Saturday, President Trump will hold his first campaign rally since the coronavirus pandemic. Health officials there have expressed deep concern about hosting a gathering in an indoor arena while cases are still on the rise. The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected a legal bid to stop the event over concerns that it could spread the disease.

The rally was originally scheduled for today, June 19, or Juneteenth — an observance of the end of slavery in America — but was changed after a public outcry.

Mr. Trump began the holiday by issuing a thinly veiled threat to protesters who have been marching against systemic racism and may show up at the rally. He bunched them together with “looters” and warned that disruptions would not be tolerated.

The country’s history of racial violence is painfully significant in Tulsa, the site of one of America’s worst racist attacks. Above, a memorial today. On the eve of the rally, the city’s black residents are sending a message of defiance.

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Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

2. Millions of Americans are observing Juneteenth like never before.

The holiday has a new resonance this year, propelled into the spotlight by national protests over structural racism and the recent killings of black Americans. Juneteenth events are planned around the country, from park celebrations in Flint, Mich., to protests in New York City, above.

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The Times has 14 photographers around the country capturing celebrations and demonstrations. Here’s what they’ve seen.

The day is named for June 19, 1865, when enslaved Africans in Galveston, Texas, learned from Union soldiers that they were free, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Here’s The Times’s front page from 1865 announcing, “THE SLAVES ALL FREE,” and the original handwritten Union Army record of the order.

We asked writers to reflect on the meaning of the holiday. Some are leaning into the joy of tradition as resistance. Others say recognition is not enough.

The New York Times

3. The World Health Organization issued a dire warning that the coronavirus pandemic is entering “a new and dangerous phase.”

More than 150,000 new cases were reported on Thursday, the most for a single day. According to a Times database, 81 nations have seen a growth in new cases over the past two weeks, while only 36 have seen declines.

In the U.S., South Carolina and Florida set record highs for new daily cases repeatedly this week. Texas became the sixth state in the nation to surpass 100,000 infections.

The government’s process for counting coronavirus-related deaths is decades old. Experts say the toll of nearly 120,000 U.S. Covid-19 deaths is most likely an undercount.

Bryan Denton for The New York Times

4. Louisville, Ky., officials are moving to fire an officer involved in Breonna Taylor’s killing, the first such action taken after months of criticism.

The officer, Brett Hankison, was one of three who used a no-knock warrant to enter Ms. Taylor’s apartment in March. Mr. Hankison blindly fired 10 rounds, according to a termination letter. None of the officers have been charged with a crime.

In Southern California, the hanging deaths of two black men, including one in Palmdale, above, were originally ruled suicides and are now being investigated further by the authorities.

And in Atlanta, the encounter between Rayshard Brooks and two police officers lasted 41 minutes and 17 seconds. For the first 40 minutes, it looked like a textbook example of policing. We had experts look at what went wrong in that final minute, in which Mr. Brooks was fatally shot.

Leonhard Foeger/Reuters

5. International nuclear inspectors and the U.S. accused Iran of hiding nuclear activity, setting up a new confrontation.

A tersely worded resolution from the International Atomic Energy Agency (its director is Rafael Grossi, above) noted “serious concern” about Tehran’s failure to allow inspectors into two locations and its unwillingness to answer questions.

It is the first time in more than eight years that Tehran has been accused of obstructing inspections. It was also the first time that the big European powers — Britain, France and Germany — have sided with the Trump administration on a major Iran issue since the president pulled out of the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

6. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube executives made sweeping shows of support of Black Lives Matter. But their own products undermine the movement, our technology columnist says.

The platforms, Kevin Roose writes, have been successfully weaponized by racists and partisan provocateurs. For example, seven of the top-10 most-shared Facebook posts containing the phrase “Black Lives Matter” over the past month were critical of the movement. Above, protesters at the White House this month.

To put it bluntly, “It’s as if the heads of McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell all got together to fight obesity by donating to a vegan food co-op, rather than by lowering their calorie counts.”

Here’s what other companies are promising to do to fight racism.

Barry Cantrell

7. The Confederate flag didn’t bother Bubba Wallace — until it did.

A series of events, particularly the killing of a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, while he was jogging in a predominantly white neighborhood in Georgia, flipped a switch in Wallace, NASCAR’s only top-tier black driver.

Now he has emerged as an impassioned activist who helped to have the flag banned at races.

“My mom texted me just last week to say that God has a bigger plan for me than just being a racecar driver,” Mr. Wallace said. “And she was right.”

8. “We contain multitudes.”

That’s Brad Ogbonna, one of 27 black photographers we asked to share self-portraits that reflect their current view of America. Many of the photographers have been on the ground capturing the national protests over racial injustice, while others have absorbed from a distance.

The artists, writes Deborah Willis, a photography professor at New York University, “explore probing stories about the self, even as they deconstruct and reflect on how the last four months have changed and will continue to shape our world.”

Dominic Valente/Hulu

9. “Taste the Nation,” Padma Lakshmi’s new show on Hulu, isn’t your average food and travel show, one of our restaurant critics writes.

Instead, Ms. Lakshmi, known for her long-running role as a host and executive producer on “Top Chef,” is asking difficult questions, expanding and redefining what it means to be American.

That means traveling to El Paso, above, to investigate the history of the burrito while balancing immigration politics, and focusing on the Gullah Geechee community of the coastal Carolinas, whose enslaved ancestors from West Africa cultivated the rice fields of the South.

Nick Ut/Associated Press

10. And finally, an ode to dad rock.

Like a lot of people, many of our music contributor’s earliest musical memories involve being a captive back-seat listener in her parents’ car. “It was there,” Lindsay Zoladz writes, “that I first declared that the blandest, dullest, most excruciatingly monotonous music I’d ever heard in my nearly decade-long life was Steely Dan.”

And then, all of a sudden, at 32, she entered a Steely Dan phase. The band is pictured in 1977. In her essay, she looks at how dad rock as a genre (including Van Morrison and Wilco) has gone from being an insult to becoming a kind of compliment.

Cheers to dads this weekend and their questionable taste in music.

Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p.m. Eastern.

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