Welcome to the Overnight News Digest with a crew consisting of founder Magnifico, current leader Neon Vincent, regular editors side pocket, maggiejean, Chitown Kev, Interceptor7, Magnifico, annetteboardman and Besame. Alumni editors include (but not limited to) Man Oh Man, wader, palantir, Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse (RIP), ek hornbeck, ScottyUrb, Doctor RJ, BentLiberal, Oke (RIP) and jlms qkw.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00 AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments...and tonight I will begin with a headline that simply made me LOL…
Chicago Sun-Times: Gov. Rauner says he’s done more for African Americans than any other governor by Stefano Esposito
On Juneteenth, a day that many black Americans consider their Independence Day, Gov. Bruce Rauner touted his achievements for minorities, saying he’s done more for African-Americans than “any other governor.”
“We’ve done historic things for the black community; I would argue, more than any other governor,” Rauner said, speaking on WVON AM radio Tuesday morning. “Creating economic opportunity, making more equality in contracting. We’ve done historic things, and we’re going to keep on fighting.”
A little later, appearing at a church in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, Rauner spoke to a group of mostly black entrepreneurs, saying, “I am all about black business.”
“Black business entrepreneurs take the risk, but they’ve got extra burdens, more barriers, more discrimination, more lack of access,” Rauner said to a largely receptive audience. “And we’ve got to take that down, eliminate those barriers and get equal access.”
LMAO...I mean, I would never vote for Rauner or anything, but at least he tries to get the black vote and I don’t find him to be particularly offensive even if, as far as Republican governors go, he’s no Jim Edgar...and at least he’s stayed out of jail.
Houston Chronicle: Santa Fe High School received nine threats in months before mass shooting by Samantha Ketterer and Shelby Webb
Santa Fe High School received nine threats in the months leading up to the May 18 shooting that killed 10 people and injured 13, including one threat that surfaced nine days before the massacre, according to police records.
Santa Fe ISD Police Chief Walter Braun would not provide details of the threats but said Tuesday that they were not related to the May 18 shooting. He said threats logged by the district do not necessarily mean a threat against the school or student body, or a threat involving a weapon.
“There was no connection to any other event our department handled to the May 18 incident,” Braun said. “There was nothing related to May 18.”
A 17-year-old Santa Fe student has been charged with capital murder in the shootings, and remains behind bars awaiting trial.
The threats were among 114 incidents logged by the Santa Fe Independent School District police from January 2018 through May 18. The calls included automobile accidents, medical issues, disturbances and other suspicious activities, according to documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle under the state’s open records laws.
A coalition of civil rights groups called Tuesday for Minneapolis police to be disciplined or otherwise held accountable for urging paramedics to sedate people with ketamine.
About two dozen people held a rally at Minneapolis City Hall to voice concerns over the ketamine reports, and to ask for an out-of-state investigator with no ties to Minnesota law enforcement to examine the cases. They also want information released about the people being drugged — including race, age and gender — and for those people to receive compensation.
"We find the incidents surrounding the use of ketamine on individuals to be absolutely egregious and unacceptable," said Nekima Levy-Pounds, an attorney and 2017 mayoral candidate. "As you all know, we have had a series of high-profile events over the last several years involving the Minneapolis Police Department that have undermined and eroded the public trust."
The rally came in response to accounts of police officers asking paramedics to use the powerful sedative on members of the public, which were documented in a draft report from the city police oversight office. The Star Tribune obtained a copy of the report.
Los Angeles Times: Poll finds Newsom has a commanding lead over Cox in California governor's race by Seema Mehta and Phil Willon
Democrat Gavin Newsom has a dominant lead over Republican John Cox in California’s race for governor, a contest in which a significant number of voters appear to have cast ballots strategically to sway the outcome of the state’s top-two primary, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.
Forty-five percent of registered voters who said they planned to vote in the November race intend to support Newsom, while Cox won the support of 28% of those who plan to cast ballots, according to the poll. Twenty-seven percent of those voters were undecided.
The post-primary survey also indicated that some Californians are adapting their behavior in response to the state’s relatively new top-two primary, where the pair of candidates who get the most votes move on to the general election regardless of party.
Three out of 10 Californians who voted for Cox said they did so primarily because they wanted to ensure a Republican was on the November ballot, as opposed to supporting him because he reflected their beliefs and values, or some other reason, the survey found.
Bloomberg: Trump’s Immigrant Child Detentions Mean $458 Million for Nonprofit by Alex Wayne, Jennifer Epstein and Jonathan Levin
The Trump administration plans to pay a Texas nonprofit nearly half a billion dollars this year to care for immigrant children who were detained crossing the U.S. border illegally, according to government data.
The nonprofit,
Southwest Key Programs Inc., is to be paid more than $458 million in fiscal 2018, according to the data -- the most among the organizations, government agencies and companies that run a detention and care system for immigrant children on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services. Southwest Key has about a dozen facilities in Texas, including a site at a former
WalMart Inc. store in Brownsville that has drawn attention from members of Congress and national news organizations.
President Donald Trump is facing bipartisan criticism for his “zero tolerance” policy toward families that cross the U.S. border with Mexico illegally. Under the policy, all undocumented adults who cross the border are to be arrested and prosecuted, even if they mean to petition for asylum. As a result, their children are removed and placed in the custody of U.S. authorities -- briefly with Customs and Border Patrol, under the Department of Homeland Security, and then with the Office of Refugee Resettlement at the Administration for Children and Families, an HHS agency.
Associated Press: Youngest migrants held in ‘tender age’ shelters by Garance Burke and Martha Mendoza
Trump administration officials have been sending babies and other young children forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border to at least three “tender age” shelters in South Texas, The Associated Press has learned.
Lawyers and medical providers who have visited the Rio Grande Valley shelters described play rooms of crying preschool-age children in crisis. The government also plans to open a fourth shelter to house hundreds of young migrant children in Houston, where city leaders denounced the move Tuesday.
Since the White House announced its zero tolerance policy in early May, more than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, resulting in a new influx of young children requiring government care. The government has faced withering critiques over images of some of the children in cages inside U.S. Border Patrol processing stations.
Decades after the nation’s child welfare system ended the use of orphanages over concerns about the lasting trauma to children, the administration is standing up new institutions to hold Central American toddlers that the government separated from their parents.
I generally avoid using the Associated Press for anything for reasons that I learned here in the OND but I could not avoid this particular story.
Buzzfeed: Giant Hogweed, The Plant That Causes Burns And Permanent Blindness, Is Spreading In The US by Caroline Kee
Giant hogweed, or Heracleum mantegazzianum, is a large, flowering, perennial plant. It's native to the Caucasus Mountain region in Asia and was introduced to the US in the early 1900s as a garden plant, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC).
It is an invasive species that is known to grow in New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, and Washington. Giant hogweed is listed as a noxious weed by the federal government, which means it's illegal to transport across state lines without a permit.
The Massey Herbarium at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, which researches plant species in the state, wrote in a Facebook post that it had identified Virginia's first giant hogweed population. The organization discovered about 30 plants in Clarke County, which is located in the Northern part of the state, about 60 miles west of Washington, DC.
This invasive species isn't just a problem for the environment — it's also a health hazard.
VICE: Pro-Trump Republiican Corey Stewart Benefited From Illegal Campaign Ads on Facebook by Alex Thompson
In the final weeks before Virginia’s primary elections on June 12, a previously obscure Facebook page,“Virginians against Tim Kaine,” began running ads promoting Republican Corey Stewart, an unapologetic pro-Trump Republican who has made Confederate nostalgia a centerpiece of his campaign to replace Kaine in the Senate.
The 19 ads, which all ran in June, clocked between 28,000 and 95,000 impressions and cost up to $1,900, according to Facebook’s recently launched political ad archive.
But no one knows who paid for the ads. That includes the voters of Virginia who narrowly elected Stewart to be the Republican nominee by just over 5,000 votes. President Donald Trump quickly endorsed Stewart after his victory, despite the fact that the GOP’s own official Senate campaign arm shunned him.
Mother Jones: Latin American Newspapers Have No Trouble Calling Out Trump for Keeping Children in Cages by Tonya Riley
Border Patrol said it was “very uncomfortable” when reporters used the word “cages” to describe the metal, wire structures that are holding children separated from their families at the border. But it seems like the Latin American press didn’t have a problem calling them out for what they are. Many of the major newspapers from Mexico and Central America led with headlines today mentioning them: “Enjaulados Niños Separados en la Frontera” led Honduras’ La Prensa, while Excélsior, a daily newspaper in Mexico City, called out the cages as “indignant.” This comes after a Monday evening briefing when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen denied that migrant children and their parents were being treated inhumanely at border facilities.
Check out some other front page headlines from the countries where many of these migrants are coming from:
Guardian: Far-right Italy minister vows 'action' to expel thousands of Roma by Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Matteo Salvini vowed to turn “words into action” in his drive to root out and expel thousands of nomadic Roma from Italy as he shrugged off critics who said the far-right interior minister was adopting illegal policies reminiscent of the country’s fascist past.
Salvini, who has seen a jump in his approval ratings in the little under three weeks he has been in office, has called for a new census of Roma and for all non-Italian Roma to be expelled from the country.
He also praised on Twitter the demolition of an “illegal” house used by Roma in Turin - which had been ordered by a local council controlled by Salvini’s League party - even as he was condemned by rival politicians and a top Jewish leader.
Salvini’s move against the Roma comes amid a hard line against migrants into Europe, which last week saw him to refuse to allow a ship carrying more than 600 people rescued from Mediterranean from docking in Italy, forcing it to divert to Spain.
AlJazeera: Kashmir: Mehbooba Mufti resigns after BJP withdraws support by Rifat Fareed
Srinagar, Indian-administered Kashmir - Mehbooba Mufti has resigned as the chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir after her coalition partner, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), pulled out of the ruling alliance.
After submitting her resignation on Tuesday, Mufti said "the muscular policy will not work in Kashmir", referring to the hard line policies adopted by the central government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
"Jammu and Kashmir is not an enemy territory," Mufti told reporters in Srinagar, the capital of the region.
The collapse of the government comes days after India's Ministry of Home Affairs refused to extend unilateral ceasefire announced on the eve of Ramadan.
BBC: Canada legalises recreational cannabis use
Canada's parliament has passed a law legalising the recreational use of marijuana nationwide.
The Cannabis Act passed its final hurdle on Tuesday in a 52-29 vote in the Senate. The bill controls and regulates how the drug can be grown, distributed, and sold.
Canadians will be able to buy and consume cannabis legally as early as this September.
The country is the first in the G7 to legalise the drug's recreational use.
Cannabis possession first became a crime in Canada in 1923 but medical use has been legal since 2001.
The bill will likely receive Royal Assent this week, and the government will then choose an official date when the law will come into force.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted that until now, "it's been too easy for our kids to get marijuana - and for criminals to reap the profits".
Don’t forget that Meteor Blades s hosting an open thread for night owls tonight.
Everyone have a good evening!