NEWS Daily Recap w/Sunny

As Florida grapples with a surge of COVID-19 cases, an association of the state’s criminal defense attorneys called on courts Tuesday to return to virtual hearings for non-essential legal proceedings.

The Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is “extremely concerned” about the uptick in infections, said Jude Faccidomo, a Miami attorney and the organization’s president. The Sunshine State accounted for nearly a quarter of all new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. in the past week, according to CNN. Read More 

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Cryptocurrency Has A 'Bro' Problem. Women In The Field Say They Can Disrupt The Bitcoin Brotherhood

 

While some have criticized crypto’s “bro” culture as being sexist, women in the field say that the anonymity of crypto actually allows for more inclusion than other areas of finance and tech. https://t.co/JDra7LzRc9

— San Francisco Chronicle (@sfchronicle) July 26, 2021

Arkansas Governor Heckled After Explaining There Is Zero Evidence Covid Vaccines Cause Infertility

Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson held a town hall to promote Covid vaccinations and was heckled after explaining that there is zero evidence to show that Covid vaccines will have an effect on fertility.

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Extreme Heat Could Also Mean Power and Water Shortages

ACROSS THE WESTERN United States, signs of a parched present—and future—are everywhere. From wildfires burning across the Pacific Northwest to California’s shrinking reservoirs, it appears as if the earth is extremely dry for the second summer in a row. As of July 22, 75.6 million people are living under drought conditions, according to the US Drought Monitor, a report produced weekly by hydrology experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US Department of Agriculture, and the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. One quarter of the continental US is experiencing “extreme or extraordinary drought,” according to the report.

Despite some summer rains in parts of the desert Southwest earlier in July, experts say the situation is likely to get worse in the coming months, and that the region’s cities and farms should prepare for possible shortages of both electricity and water. “The spatial coverage of drought in the West is huge right now,” says Dan McEvoy, assistant professor of climatology at the Desert Research Institute in Nevada, who studies the causes and effects of western droughts. “Nearly every state, or every state in the western US, has some level of drought. And California is pretty bad.” Read More 

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LAWSUIT WOULD OVERTURN TRUMP-ERA RULES ON GENETICALLY ENGINEERED CROPS

The USDA “unconstitutionally delegated its own duties to protect farmers and the environment to GE crop developers” when it exempted most genetically engineered plants from pre-market reviews in 2020, said a coalition of farm, environment, and consumer groups in a lawsuit filed on Monday. In it, they asked the U.S. district court in San Francisco to overturn the Trump-era revisions.

Dubbed SECURE, the new regulation said GE plants needed review by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, whose duties include regulation of agricultural biotechnology, only if developers believed they might pose an environmental risk. SECURE reflected the biotechnology industry’s argument that gene editing is an inherently safe way to produce new plant varieties with traits that could be achieved through traditional breeding methods. Read More

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Bipartisan Group Of Senators Hold Press Conference After Infrastructure Deal Moves Ahead

The bipartisan group of Senators who spearheaded the infrastructure deal hold a press conference after the Senate advances debate.

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Tech Giants to Use Government Intel List to Police Content to Target White Supremacists: Report

A private counterterrorism group formed by the world’s biggest tech companies, including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, will use lists produced by government intelligence agencies to police content by white supremacists, militias and other extremist groups, according to Reuters.

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Newsom Announces California Will Use Surplus To Expand Healthcare Coverage To Undocumented Residents

Gavin Newsom released a video detailing how the state will expand healthcare coverage to low income Californians regardless of their immigration status.

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Kristi Noem Attacks Governors 'Getting Political' And Not Doing Their Job

South Dakota Republican slams the Biden administration's immigration policy

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Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera Unloads On The ‘Arrogant, Selfish’ Unvaccinated

During an off-the-walls argument on The Five that attempted to paint anti-vaxxers as freedom fighters and the CDC as reactionary fascists, Geraldo Rivera single-handedly burst the Fox News bubble by decrying Americans who refuse to get vaccinated as “arrogant, selfish SOB’s.”

Calling the vaccine “bulletproof against this damn disease,” Rivera began by saying how “appalled” he was to hear his co-hosts Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld’s attempts to blame immigrants coming across the U.S.-Mexico border for the rise in cases “without any evidence.” When Watters cited “common sense,” Rivera shot back, “Common sense is not proof!”

From there, Rivera turned to the debate over a vaccine mandate, going after Gutfeld for trying to claim that the unvaccinated are somehow being discriminated against. Read More 

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CDC Says Vaccinated People Should Get Tested After Being Exposed Even If They Show No Symptoms

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that vaccinated people should get tested for Covid-19 if they have been exposed to the virus, even if they haven’t experienced any symptoms.

The revised guidelines for fully vaccinated people comes the same day that the CDC also returned to urging the fully vaccinated to wear masks indoors in some areas of the US that have high levels of transmission Read More 

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England To Relax Quarantine For Vaccinated U.S., EU Visitors

Fully vaccinated travelers from the United States and much of Europe will be able to enter England and Scotland without quarantining starting next week, U.K. officials said Wednesday - a move welcomed by Britain’s ailing travel industry. The British government said people who have received both doses of a vaccine approved by the FDA in the U.S. or the European Medicines Agency, which regulates drugs for the European Union and several other countries, will be able to take pre- and post-arrival coronavirus tests instead of self-isolating for 10 days after entering England.