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How John Roberts lost control of the Supreme Court · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, June 30th. I'm Shumita Basu. This is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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  The Supreme Court ruled today to reduce the EPA's power to place limits on greenhouse gas emissions. In another case, the Court ruled that the Biden administration can end the controversial Trump-era policy called Remain in Mexico. The policy blocked asylum seekers from getting into America while their cases were being processed. This wraps up a hugely consequential term that saw the Court move further to the Right. In "POLITICO," Josh Gerstein writes that recent decisions, like the one on abortion, are a sign that Chief Justice John Roberts has lost control of the Court.
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  Josh Gerstein: A lot of experts that I spoke to really feel that his influence at the moment, his impact, his persuasiveness with his colleagues, seems to be at a nadir at the moment. That he really isn't able to persuade many of them to come over to his sort of more centrist and restrained approach to judging.
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  If Gerstein's name sounds familiar to you, he's the reporter who got the copy of the leaked draft opinion signaling that the Court was ready to overturn Roe v. Wade. In that decision, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that the right to an abortion was not mentioned in the Constitution and that Roe was "egregiously wrong from the start." The Court's conservative majority signed on to that opinion. The Chief Justice did not. He argued for a narrower ruling, but he got no takers.
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  Gerstein: The five other Republican appointees basically suggested in not so many words that he was chickening out, and rather than taking a clear position on Roe v. Wade, he was opting for sort of a compromise.
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  Typically, courts go down in history under the name of the chief justice. So, while Roberts may think it was wrong to do away with Roe, it will always be part of his legacy, part of the Roberts Court. And that runs counter to the legacy he wanted to build, one that was based on an incrementalist approach. He sometimes joined the liberal justices when he felt it would be what was best for the country. In 2012, when he did this, it basically saved the Affordable Care Act. Gerstein explains why Chief Justice Roberts values consensus.
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  Gerstein: He thinks that the Court's reputation and legitimacy with the public is a very important issue and not one to be taken for granted by the Court. And he thinks that one of the ways that you preserve that public reputation is to avoid the Court being seen as a political actor and also for the Court, to some extent, to try to minimize its presence on the national scene.
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  Gerstein says Chief Justice Roberts seems worried about the Court's rulings getting too far out of sync with how the American public feels. Today, he gets a new colleague, as Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson replaces Justice Stephen Breyer. It may still be the Roberts Court in name, but future terms may see him with less and less control over its direction.
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  Earlier this month, a man in New York started to feel sick. His lymph nodes were swollen, and he had other signs of monkeypox. That's the viral disease that we're seeing an outbreak of right now, though it's rarely fatal. This man went to his doctor, he went to urgent care, the emergency room. And each time, he was told that it was probably something else and that they wouldn't test him for monkeypox. Meanwhile, his symptoms were getting worse.
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  The Biden administration is now expanding access to vaccines to try to get this outbreak under control. But "NPR" points out that this patient's experience demonstrates just how unprepared the U.S. is to deal with monkeypox. Some of the key problems: doctors don't know what to look for, the public isn't being well educated about the disease and tests are hard to get ahold of. Doctors say there's just too much paperwork. Some say they have to sit on the phone for hours to order monkeypox tests. Here's Brown University epidemiologist Jennifer Nuzzo speaking to "NPR."
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  Jennifer Nuzzo: We need to make it as easy as possible for clinicians to send specimens to the laboratories. Time is not on our side here. You know, every delay, we are missing links in the transmission change and allowing this outbreak to grow possibly beyond control.
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  If this sounds a bit like déjà vu, you're not wrong. For doctors and epidemiologists watching all of this unfold, there are a lot of failures similar to what happened at the start of the COVID outbreak or even the HIV outbreak.
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  So far, monkeypox seems to be spreading between men who sleep with other men. It's not technically a sexually transmitted disease. But in "STAT," a leading STD expert writes that the outbreak is a lot like STDs in that there are barriers to detecting it, including social stigma and lack of testing.
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  Another issue, doctors say, these current cases of monkeypox aren't always easy to spot. It could be misdiagnosed as herpes or syphilis. "NPR" spoke to McGill University's Dr. Donald Vinh.
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  Dr. Donald Vinh: I mean, it is extremely subtle. It is not what you're seeing on the Google pictures of monkeypox. And so, this is a bit concerning because if you have subtle lesions, skin lesions, and they're contagious, you can see how this may lead to more propagation that can be missed.
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  The STD expert we mentioned earlier? He's worried. He wants better testing and more funding for sexual health clinics. He says the U.S. needs a stronger response to monkeypox to show that it has learned its lessons from mistakes made fighting HIV and now COVID.
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  There are surprising new details involving an important moment in the civil rights era. Investigators found an unserved warrant related to the 1955 lynching of Black teenager Emmett Till. Family members looking into the case found it in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse.
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  "USA TODAY" reports that the warrant was for the arrest of Carolyn Bryant Donham in connection with Till's kidnapping. She's the woman who accused 14-year-old Till of improper advances. Till's relatives say they want her arrested now. Donham is in her 80s, and she hasn't commented publicly about calls for her prosecution.
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  At the time of her accusation, just two days after, two men, including Donham's then husband, killed Emmett Till and threw his body in a river. They were acquitted of murder despite strong evidence against them. They later admitted to killing Till in a magazine interview.
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  The killing itself was brutal. Till's mother insisted on an open casket. The graphic funeral image outraged the world and helped inspire the civil rights movement.
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  If you're wondering why this arrest warrant was left to collect dust for so many decades, "USA TODAY" reports the sheriff told reporters at the time that he didn't want to "bother" the woman since she had young children to care for.
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  Till's family says the discovery of this warrant amounts to new evidence, and they're hopeful it can re-open the case.
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  Now, a story about empty grocery shelves. But this time, it's not a supply-chain issue. It has to do with climate change.
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  "The Guardian" reports on how heat, storms, droughts, floods and fires are affecting foods that you might have on regular rotation: apples, chocolate, coffee, corn, mustard seeds. Big deal in my house where we make a lot of Indian food. Even sriracha, the chili sauce that has a cult following. One manufacturer paused production because of severe weather and drought conditions in Mexico where the pepper is grown.
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  "NPR" reports on how the sriracha shortage especially is hitting people hard. You can see some people panicking on TikTok.
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  TikToker 1: Yeah, there's a sriracha shortage, so y'all need to go buy sriracha right now.
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  TikToker 2: Oh, my god. Is that it? Let's go! There's four left.
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  TikToker 3: Basically, Mother Nature has said no to sriracha this summer, and sriracha fanatics are stocking up.
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  2: You know, leave some for other people. Three should last me about a week.
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  Now, "The Guardian" points out the people eating these climate-affected foods are missing them, sure. But for the people who farm these crops, this is their livelihood. One food policy researcher described the upcoming challenges as a kind of musical chairs, where farmers will have to figure out where to move their production in order to adapt to warmer temperatures and extreme weather.
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  You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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