The Preamble

A few years ago I had an employee going through a hard time, at work and in her life. I wanted her to know I had her back, so I told her she could message me anytime she needed, day or night. “I don’t sleep much anyway,” I said proudly. Then I watched her expression slowly change to what I can only describe as disgust mixed with sadness. I immediately felt the heat rise in my face. I had expected gratitude. Instead she saw what I couldn’t: a person with no boundaries, who couldn’t stop. She was right.

Seven family names cover nearly everyone. One school. One grocery store, where you place orders months ahead and hope the supplies arrive on schedule. One hospital. No airport. And if you want to leave, you’ll have to catch one of the roughly nine ships that visit each year. Tristan da Cunha (Image courtesy of NASA) Welcome to Tristan da Cunha, a tiny island in the South Atlantic, roughly midway between South Africa and South America. It’s often described as the world’s most remote inhabited island.

Nolan Wells should still be alive. Privilege is not just about what doesn’t happen to you; it is also about what you don’t have to carry or think about. It is the conversations that you don’t have to have with your children. It is the grief and anger you do not have to feel, names you do not have to call, fear that justice won’t be served, circumstances you don’t have to survive.

These are today’s top stories, delivered straight to your inbox. Catch up here on all the news. Trump Must Pay $5M Yesterday, a federal judge ordered that $5.8 million be released to E. Jean Carroll — the amount awarded to her in 2023 by a jury that found Donald Trump liable for sexually assaulting her in the 1990s. The money has been sitting in a court-controlled account while Trump appealed.

On the morning of June 14, an ambulance arrived at Mitch McConnell’s home in Washington, DC. His office announced that the 84-year-old Kentucky senator had been hospitalized and was receiving excellent care. That was basically it. Then came the dispatch audio. Recordings reportedly tied to McConnell’s address described an unconscious person, a possible cardiac arrest, and CPR already underway. McConnell’s office declined to confirm the account or explain what had happened.

These are today’s top stories, delivered straight to your inbox. Catch up here on all the news. Iran War Resumes President Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is over. Yesterday, Iran attacked three commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and the US responded by hitting more than 80 Iranian targets, including air-defense systems and radar sites. Iran retaliated with missiles and drones aimed at Kuwait and Bahrain. No injuries were reported in these attacks by Iran.

Twenty-five years after September 11, most Americans would probably assume the country’s counterterrorism apparatus is used mainly to stop foreign terrorists. They would be wrong. The Trump administration’s new counterterrorism strategy, released in May, names Antifa — the loosely organized, leaderless, “anti-fascist” protest movement with no formal membership or command structure — as a threat.

These are today’s top stories, delivered straight to your inbox. Catch up here on all the news. Platner Pressure Maine’s Democratic nominee for US Senate, Graham Platner, is facing calls to leave the race after a former girlfriend accused him of raping her in 2021. Jenny Racicot, who dated Platner on and off for about two years, told Politico that he entered her home uninvited while intoxicated and forced her to have sex after she told him to stop.

While Donald Trump has always pushed the boundaries of presidential power, his second term has taken things to a new level. According to journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, authors of Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump, a combination of increased legal cover from the Supreme Court, a staff completely stacked with loyalists, and Trump’s own impulses have unleashed the administration to test the limits of executive authority more than any prior president.

These are today’s top stories, delivered straight to your inbox. Catch up here on all the news. Court: ICE Detainees Must Get Hearing Within 90 Days A federal appeals court ruled last week that the Trump administration cannot hold certain immigrants in ICE detention for more than 90 days without giving them a hearing to seek release while their deportation cases are pending.