Evening Briefing: Democrats unveil their budget blueprint

August 9, 2021

By Victoria Shannon

Briefings, Newsdesk

Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Monday.

The $3.5 trillion budget calls for priorities championed by progressives, including an expansion of coverage under Medicare.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

1. Democrats unveiled a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that would boost spending on health care, child and elder care, education and climate change.

If the party and its two independent allies can hold together, that measure could pass the Senate without a Republican vote. A separate $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill will likely clear the Senate tomorrow.

The nonbinding blueprint calls for an expansion of Medicare to include dental, hearing and vision benefits, the formation of a Civilian Climate Corps, and funding to establish universal pre-K and grant free community college tuition for two years. The spending would be fully paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, large inheritances and corporations.

The plan does not appear to address raising or suspending the debt ceiling, which the Congressional Budget Office said the country would hit in October or November.

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The Dixie Fire has destroyed more than 600 structures in California.Jungho Kim for The New York Times

2. Devastating effects from global warming are now unavoidable, a major new scientific report found.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of scientists convened by the U.N., concluded that nations have delayed curbing their fossil-fuel emissions for so long that they can no longer stop global warming from intensifying — but there is a window to avert far greater perils.

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"We can expect a significant jump in extreme weather over the next 20 or 30 years," said Piers Forster, a climate scientist who helped write the report. Here are five takeaways.

The Pacific Northwest — including near where the Dixie Fire is burning in California — will be under an excessive heat watch this week. Stifling heat will also be found across portions of the Great Lakes region, the Mid-Atlantic and the Northeast.

The Dixie Fire, which has burned nearly 490,000 acres and is now California's second largest wildfire on record, was only 21 percent contained as of Sunday night. Catastrophic wildfires were also burning in Greece and Turkey.

Soldiers receiving the Covid-19 vaccine at Fort Bragg in North Carolina in February.Kenny Holston for The New York Times

3. A new vaccination mandate, this one for the military.

The Pentagon will seek to make coronavirus vaccinations mandatory for the country's 1.3 million active-duty troops "no later" than next month, the Biden administration announced. The U.S. is now averaging more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day for the first time since February.

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott faced withering criticism for his refusal to enact a statewide mask mandate while he prohibited local officials from doing so in their own communities. The Dallas school district defied that ban by requiring masks for anyone on school property.

And Canada reopened its borders to fully vaccinated citizens and residents of the U.S. for the first time since March 2020. But the reopening is only one way: U.S. officials have said they would not immediately reciprocate.

Hundreds gathered in a Kabul public park after fleeing fighting in northern Afghanistan.Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

4. The collapse of Kunduz, a major city in Afghanistan's north, has set off a new wave of displacement.

Thousands of people are fleeing the city, fearing life under Taliban rule and an escalation of violence as government forces vow to retake the commercial hub.

The insurgents' success in northern Afghanistan is an ill omen for Kabul, the capital. In a matter of days, the Taliban have overtaken six provincial capitals, and the key northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif is now largely surrounded.

The U.S. response has been muted, and the Biden administration has made it clear that America's 20-year war in Afghanistan is over.

Dianne and Robert Teglia with their Tesla sedans at their home in Carmel Valley, a well-to-do neighborhood in San Diego.Roger Kisby for The New York Times

5. Electric cars still cost much more than gasoline vehicles.

That's going to make it hard for President Biden's goal for 50 percent of all new cars sold in the country to be battery-powered by the end of the decade. Sales in the U.S. are less than 4 percent now, a far lower rate than in China and Europe, which offer more generous incentives.

Automakers and their suppliers have steadily reduced the cost of batteries, which are the main reason electric vehicles are expensive. But it will probably take several years or more for them to achieve parity with gasoline vehicles.

The Biden administration wants to invest billions of dollars to build charging stations and to lower the vehicles' cost. But the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the Senate does not expand incentives for E.V. purchases, and would authorize only $7.5 billion for chargers, half of Biden's original request.

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Inflation-adjusted interest rates are negative, meaning savers should expect their purchasing power to diminish.The New York Times

6. It's a terrible time for saving money.

In an upside-down world of financial markets, expected returns after inflation are at record lows.

The combination of high inflation, strong economic growth and very low interest rates has meant that "real" interest rates are lower than they have ever been in modern times, writes our senior economic correspondent Neil Irwin.

"For people who are risk-averse, they have to get used to the worst of all possible worlds," said Sonal Desai, the chief investment officer of Franklin Templeton Fixed Income. "Which is watching their little pool of capital go down in real terms year after year after year."

During World War II, Charles Loeb advanced with U.S. troops into the Philippines and survived a kamikaze attack.Loeb family photo

7. The atomic-bomb cover-ups.

Japan insisted that the atomic bomb's invisible rays at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 led to waves of sudden death and lingering illness. The U.S. denied that charge.

Charles Loeb, a Black war correspondent whose articles were distributed by the National Negro Publishers Association, defied the American military's propaganda, telling how bursts of deadly radiation had sickened and killed the Japanese.

Another reporter, William Laurence, a science writer for The New York Times, aided the U.S. effort to misinform. A recent book by the nuclear historian Alex Wellerstein documents how the reporter known as "Atomic Bill" became an apologist for the military and a serial defier of journalistic ethics.

A close-up of Western false asphodel stems from North Cascades National Park in Washington shows insects trapped on their sticky red hairs.Qianshi Lin

8. This plant has an appetite for insects.

Western false asphodels, which sprout in the Pacific Northwest, produce flowering stems covered in sticky hairs. It was generally believed that the hairs were part of the plant's defense strategy, killing insects that might attack the leaves and flowers.

But research showed it was actually digesting the insects, making it the world's newest and most unexpected carnivorous plant.

The study raises the intriguing possibility that there are other plant species — perhaps even familiar ones — whose insect-digesting ways haven't yet been noticed.

Flavonoids include beta carotene in carrots, flavone in strawberries and anthocyanin in apples.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

9. Eating colorful fruits and vegetables may be good for your brain.

A new study found that flavonoids — which give plant foods their bright colors — may help curb the forgetfulness and mild confusion associated with advancing age.

Higher intakes of brussels sprouts, strawberries, winter squash and raw spinach were most highly associated with better scores on a test of subjective cognitive decline. The effects of onions, apple juice and grapes were also significant, but weaker.

"These are the foods you should be eating for brain health," said Dr. Thomas Holland, a researcher at the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging.

Researchers in Australia found that tickled lab rats generally responded better to human handling.China Photos/Getty Images

10. And finally, the right way to tickle a rat.

Researchers in Australia tickled the rodents every day for a month to see if it would improve their emotional well-being. It did. Because happy animals lead to improved research outcomes, contented rats means better well-being for patients.

There are three proper, scientific ways to tickle a rat. Here's one: Tickle the rat between its front legs and on its chest while applying a firm, constant pressure to keep the rat on its back.

"It's fun," said one certified rat tickler at the University of Wollongong. "The last step is you flip them and let them go, and they'll turn around and come straight back."

Have an amusing evening.

Shelby Knowles compiled photos for this briefing.

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