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A version of this story first appeared in the Climate is Everything newsletter. If you’d like sign up to receive this free once-a-week email, click here.

Tuesday was the first day of the Atlantic hurricane season, but across swaths of Central America, thousands of people still haven’t recovered from the last one. Last November, back-to-back hurricanes pummeled millions of people across the region, destroying infrastructure and cropland, and leveling thousands of homes. In regions of Honduras and Nicaragua, many of those displaced by Hurricanes Eta and Iota—Category 4 storms that hit within two weeks of each other in November—are still living in fragile temporary shelters, contending with a spike in COVID-19 cases and associated deaths in a region where less than 1% of the population has been vaccinated against the virus.
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And unfinished recovery efforts from the last disaster have made communities there more vulnerable to what may be coming next. For instance, rivers around San Pedro Sula in Honduras flooded their banks during the November hurricanes, and in many cases, water control systems haven’t been restored. That means even a smaller rainfall event could much more easily unleash disastrous flooding again.

And more rain is almost certainly on its way: Forecasters are predicting an above-average hurricane season this year, with between 13 and 20 named storms potentially forming. Last year, a record-breaking hurricane season saw 30 named storms in the Atlantic, the most ever, in the fifth consecutive year of above-average hurricane activity.

Climate change may at least partly account for that trend. Over the past hundred years, the surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean have risen, a phenomenon linked to climate change and humanity’s emissions of greenhouse gases. Warmer waters tend to form storms with higher wind speeds and more rainfall, a trend that is likely to become more pronounced as the climate continues to grow warmer in coming years.

People living in the path of hurricanes and other powerful storms strong enough to merit naming by the meteorological authorities have seen the effects of those climate forces firsthand—and in some cases, have also suffered from a lack of local environmental mitigation measures, which could perhaps have lessened the severity of the disaster. In Honduras, for instance, massive deforestation has left many areas in the mountainous country more vulnerable to flooding and landslides. Climate refugees may soon be on their way, with observers predicting that the new devastation, unseen since Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras and Nicaragua more than 20 years ago, may bring tides of migrants to wealthier countries like the United States.

Adaptation strategies may be able to lessen some of the blows. Early warning systems in Nicaragua, for instance, enabled local authorities to begin evacuating vulnerable areas days before last November’s hurricanes made landfall, and the country reported just a fraction of the fatalities that resulted from a previous major hurricane about a decade earlier. Experts have suggested that homes be moved away from hillsides that could collapse in rainstorms, and that local populations should be relocated away from low-lying coastal areas. Also proposed would be to switch crops in flood-prone areas to more resistant species. Rice, for example, could survive flooding, while native maize cannot.

But those initiatives haven’t always been at the top of the agenda in regions beset by debt and widespread poverty. In the meantime, relief organizations are already planning for this new world of climate-worsened disasters. The International Red Cross, for instance, said in its 2021 global plan that climate change has prompted an “urgent” need to scale up humanitarian work to meet “unprecedented needs,” with the organization attempting to triple the size of its emergency disaster-relief fund in the next four years. At Project HOPE, relief organizers say that a warming climate is having a substantial effect on their work, with the organization expanding its emergency response teams and recruiting more volunteers in order to deploy to multiple disasters at a time. “Both the scale and the frequency of the disasters that we’re responding to are like nothing we’ve seen in our past,” says Project HOPE Americas Regional Director Andrea Dunne-Sosa. “It’s not only anticipated. It’s been happening.”

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AMC cinema chain issues warning to small investors

Issuing a new share sale, the firm warned investors could lose their money if they bought at current prices.

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'Good feeling': Ai Weiwei picks Portugal for new show, home

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Lewis Hamilton backs Naomi Osaka and explains why young sportspeople need more support - Sky Sports

Lewis Hamilton backs Naomi Osaka and explains why young sportspeople need more support Sky Sports
If you can't handle the pressure, don't play the game: As Naomi Osaka quits the French Open Daily Mail
Naomi Osaka shames those who ignored her pleas for help The Guardian
Naomi Osaka’s unexpected strength Financial Times
'Venus said it best' Serena Williams agrees with sister on Naomi Osaka row Metro
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Supreme Court limits prosecutors' use of anti-hacking law

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Twitter Blue subscription service launches in Australia and Canada

Australia and Canada are the first two countries to get access to the enhanced Twitter product.

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Woman screams as police detain partner after pair refused travel on Merseyrail - Liverpool Echo

Woman screams as police detain partner after pair refused travel on Merseyrail Liverpool Echo

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Cannes Film Festival 2021: Sean Penn's Flag Day among line-up - BBC News

Cannes Film Festival 2021: Sean Penn's Flag Day among line-up BBC News
Jodie Foster gets honorary Palme d’Or from Cannes film festival The Guardian
Cannes reveals 2021 Official Selection: follow live | News | Screen Screen International
Sean Penn, Wes Anderson to headline Cannes return Geo News
Cannes film festival set for bumper year – but no Britons in 2021 competition The Guardian
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B&M discount chain doubles its annual profits

The retailer reports group pre-tax profits of £525.4m, thanks to strong trading during lockdowns.

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Derek Chauvin’s lawyer tells court police officers have lower life expectancy so the killer cop should be spared prison time

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First priority for anti-Netanyahu coalition: Stay united long enough to get sworn in

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Apple wants staff back in offices by September

The tech giant says staff will be required to work at least three-days a week at their desks.

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Apple wants staff back in offices by September

The tech giant says staff will be required to work at least three-days a week at their desks.

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BBC Question Time 'has lost it!' Viewers furious at BBC panel choice 'Bunch of nobodies!' - Express

BBC Question Time 'has lost it!' Viewers furious at BBC panel choice 'Bunch of nobodies!' Express

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Norton antivirus adds Ethereum cryptocurrency mining

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Norton antivirus adds Ethereum cryptocurrency mining

The software security firm is adding Ethereum mining to its products.

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Concrete Genie Developer Is Making a New PS5 Game Using Unreal Engine 5 - IGN

Concrete Genie Developer Is Making a New PS5 Game Using Unreal Engine 5 IGN
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Concrete Genie studio PixelOpus is making a new PS5 game with Sony Pictures Animation Video Games Chronicle
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Concrete Genie Dev Studio, PixelOpus, Is Working On a New PS5 Title Twinfinite
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A year after a showdown on 'the roof of the world,' India is gearing up to take on China at sea

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Veteran’s mic turned off as he detailed Blacks’ role in founding Memorial Day

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Spiders: Scientists warn of surge in false widow bites in the UK that can require hospital treatment - Daily Mail

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A 7-Year-Old Was Accused of Rape. Is Arresting Him the Answer?

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A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.

By Patricia Mazzei from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/3uKcmP5

Thursday, 3 June 2021

Rare Mineral Discovered in a Living Organism for the First Time - SciTechDaily

Rare Mineral Discovered in a Living Organism for the First Time SciTechDaily
Researchers leverage rare iron mineral found in “wandering meatloaf” mollusk teeth for 3D printing bioinks 3D Printing Industry
Meet The “Wandering Meatloaf”, The First Living Creature With Iron In Its Teeth IFLScience
This homely mollusk's rock-hard chompers are made of rare minerals Science Magazine
The surprise hidden in the teeth of the 'wandering meatloaf' Nature.com
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Nicola Sturgeon spent outrageous sum of taxpayers' money for failed Brexit case - Express

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Rioter Who Gave Capitol Cop a Concussion Has Horrific History of Beating Women: Feds

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DeSantis vetoes $1.5B in signing Florida’s first $100 billion annual budget

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Rand Paul gives 2-word response to Fauci's unearthed emails

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Covid infection rates rising in 68 per cent of areas in England - see full list - The Mirror

Covid infection rates rising in 68 per cent of areas in England - see full list The Mirror
Covid-19: UK's data encouraging, says government adviser BBC News
Watch live: Latest COVID-19 data from UK and around the world Sky News
Vaccines for Blackburn's 12-18-year-olds need to be approved by Government as soon as possible, says health boss Lancashire Telegraph
Latest weekly Covid-19 rates for local authority areas in England Yahoo News UK
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Blue singer charged with driving offences - Kent Online

Blue singer charged with driving offences Kent Online

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US wields $2bn tariff threat against 6 nations over digital taxes - Financial Times

US wields $2bn tariff threat against 6 nations over digital taxes Financial Times
US sets – and quickly suspends – tariffs on UK and others over digital taxes The Guardian
US delays tariffs in 'tech tax' row BBC News
U.S. Imposes Tariffs on Six Countries Over Digital Taxes The New York Times
US announces new delayed tariffs against six countries in response to taxes targeting large tech companies CNN
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Naomi Osaka and the Power of ‘Nope’

By Lindsay Crouse from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/2SMphD5

Peacock’s All-Girl Muslim Punk Band Comedy We Are Lady Parts Is a Rockin’ Good Time

For any band formed outside a boardroom, the disastrous first gig is a rite of passage. KISS debuted to an audience of fewer than 10 in Queens. The Velvet Underground regaled an incredulous New Jersey high school with their classic song “Heroin.” And in a new comedy series from Peacock, a fictional London punk act called Lady Parts takes the stage for the first time in a neighborhood pub filled with Union Jacks and jeering white guys. “Your husband let you out the house tonight, did he?” one man cracks when the all-female, all-Muslim quartet takes the stage. They launch into a noisy but triumphant rendition of Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5,” trading looks of pure, astonished joy as the crowd remains bemused.
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The scene has infectious energy. Yet what’s remarkable about it is that although it takes place two-thirds of the way through We Are Lady Parts’ electrifying premiere season, it constitutes the show’s first substantive depiction of misogyny and Islamophobia. That’s not to say that the five young women at the center of this show live in some untroubled fantasy-land, or that they don’t struggle over how to navigate their hybrid identities. But creator Nida Manzoor, who wrote and directed the entire six-episode season, understands that it’s possible to tell a culturally specific story without reducing the experiences of so many discrete characters to a constant confrontation with politicized adversity.

Like most young adults, the members of Lady Parts are busy forming relationships, carving out careers and just generally deciding what it is they want out of life. Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), the band’s brash front woman, works a day job at a halal butcher’s shop and grapples over whether committing to a boyfriend would mean sacrificing her radical ideals. Bassist Bisma (Faith Omole), the only mother of the bunch, draws a comic about “a group of women who all become homicidal maniacs when they’re on their period.” When she’s not pounding drums, surly Ayesha (Juliette Motamed) drives an Uber, blasting metal to drown out rude customers. Rumored to wear a face covering because she’s in hiding, Type A manager Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse) hypes up the band using skills learned hawking lingerie.

We Are Lady Parts - Season 1 — Laura Radford/PeacockAnjana Vasan as Amina in ‘We Are Lady Parts’

They find an unlikely lead guitarist in the show’s protagonist, Amina (Anjana Vasan), a timid microbiology grad student who’s dutifully pursuing an arranged marriage but can’t seem to make a good impression. A combination of propriety and vomit-inducing stage fright has always kept her from going public with the virtuosic guitar chops she learned by emulating folkie heroes like Don McLean. But, in a frantic attempt to keep pace with her seemingly perfect, newly engaged bestie Noor (Aiysha Hart), she agrees to join Lady Parts for an audition in exchange for a setup with Ayesha’s hot brother Ahsan (Zaqi Ismail). The arrangement is supposed to be temporary. Yet the experience of playing punk songs with other Muslim women reveals how much she has in common with these misfits—namely, a thirst for rebellion and an untapped reservoir of rage.

Cross-cultural comedy has been a staple of primetime ever since the Jeffersons moved into the Bunkers’ neighborhood. Recent examples include Fresh Off the Boat, Ramy and Peacock’s own Rutherford Falls. Even Chuck Lorre, the human sitcom factory who spent decades churning out overwhelmingly white hits from Roseanne to Two and a Half Men to The Big Bang Theory, has recently pivoted to stories of culture clash. Bob Hearts Abishola traces the love affair between a white sock magnate and his Nigerian-born nurse; United States of Al brings an Afghan interpreter to live with his Marine buddy.

Shows like Lorre’s have evolved enough, over the years, to avoid simply exoticizing everyone who isn’t white, Christian or born in the West. Instead, the recurring joke is that white Americans and their immigrant and minority neighbors find each other’s customs equally perplexing. This represents some measure of progress. But it also flattens characters on both sides of any given cultural divide into mere representatives of their majority or marginalized identities.

There is a lot to love about We Are Lady Parts. The dialogue is sharp and funny (“You guys are serving up a real feminist power that has me actually dead,” gushes a trendy influencer). Vasan’s performance is endearingly vulnerable. There are trippy animations, clever pop-culture homages, catchy original songs with titles like “Bashir With the Good Beard.” Rarer is the way Manzoor lets the characters speak for themselves, declining to explain their feminism, or their religious beliefs, or their headscarves or lack thereof to viewers used to being spoon-fed such information. They don’t come to their first gig looking to shatter stereotypes or teach drunk white dudes a lesson in tolerance. Like KISS and VU before them, Lady Parts are here to rock.

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Joe Biden Is Chasing a Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal That May Never Materialize

This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday.

It wasn’t that long ago that a go-to joke among insiders was that it once again was Infrastructure Week in President Donald’s Trump’s Washington. It was a lingering promise of normalcy that never quite came. The shorthand served as a coded reminder that no matter how well-planned his aides’ effort to curb his sprawling spitefulness and errant tweets, they were destined to go off the rails. Infrastructure Week came to represent the increasingly distant dream of a bipartisan delivery on a set of concrete projects that are broadly popular services of government, such as roads and bridges.
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Well, Trump is gone. But Infrastructure Week is still with us, albeit in a much different form. President Joe Biden continues to chase the same list of goals that are popular across the political spectrum. (He also has a secondary wish-list of an agenda that includes more help for families, more free education for students and boosted cash for teachers. That’s seen as an add-on to this and not really central to this effort.)

Call around Washington these days and ask about the prospect of this infrastructure push, and the optimism is about the same level as during the Trump years. It has nothing to do with middle-of-the-night tweets of grievance as was the case for the last four years and everything to do with this universally agreed-upon fact: a handful of Senators hold potentially trillions of dollars in spending hostage and every one of them has a parochial reason for rejecting the proposal, at least for now.

In the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team have no grand designs on bipartisan support for anything that gives Biden a win, and they don’t need it. Pelosi has a narrow, eight-vote majority at the moment. It can be dicey at times, but on big-agenda items, no one holds a caucus together with a blend of sticks and carrots as Pelosi. Imagination is the only limit on what Democrats could do with infrastructure in that Lower Chamber.

Where things get tricky, though, is the Senate. In that Upper Chamber, barring a dramatic procedural loophole being deployed, things need bipartisan support. Democrats have the majority, but only with the help of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote in the 50-50 chamber. That’s typically insufficient on all but a few select votes, given the current rule that most things require 60 votes to end a filibuster and proceed to actually act. In practicality, that means 10 Republicans need to join Democrats, assuming the Democrats can hold rogue lawmakers in line.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been as plain as ever when he declared Biden’s first proposal, clocking in at $2.3 billion, a non-starter for him and his team. But he is also not blocking the likes of Sen. Susan Collins of Maine from talking about a scaled-back version that could win the backing of enough moderates in her caucus to get the plan over the line. Nor is McConnell putting the kibosh on the talks with the White House led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. The latest round of those efforts came again today, with Biden sitting down in the Oval Office with the West Virginia Republican to follow-up on staff meetings that both sides cast as productive. In a signal that it’s more than a photo-op, cameras weren’t allowed in.

Inside the Biden White House, the official line is that a deal is possible and no one is better at crafting compromise in the Senate than Biden himself. It’s a skill he’s been honing since 1973, when White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain was 12. Publicly, White House advisers are touting that they have scaled back their offer by $600 billion in a sign of good-faith talks while Republicans rightly note that much of that has been off-loaded into other legislation already, moving through Congress under different banners. Meanwhile, Republicans bent on finding a deal have raised their package from a topline of $568 billion to $928 billion. (In one of those only-in-Washington moments, those figures actually include leftover COVID-19 relief funds and represents just $257 billion in new spending. The PBS NewsHour’s “Here’s The Deal” newsletter rightly described this as a $1.4 trillion gap.)

The Senate has changed since Biden last served there in 2009. The Tea Party revolution brought in firebrands like Rand Paul, Ron Johnson and Ted Cruz, for whom compromise is a grievous sin. By every measure, partisanship is at an historic high with both parties pulling further afield. While what Biden is pitching is popular even among Republicans, the substance isn’t what is problematic right now. It’s that delivering on this gives Biden a big-headline win he can use if he seeks re-election in 2024 and puts a target on the back of every Republican who backs it in their home-state primaries for years to come. The far-right has already shown signs of strength, channeling Trump-style politics of zero-sum consideration. Any win for Biden is anathema to their pure version of obstruction.

Several Democrats outside the White House have been agitating for Biden to give up the bipartisan chase. No Senate Republicans backed his pandemic-relief plan and only six voted in support for a commission to study the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. Biden’s chase of a deal already is showing a lot of similarities with the Obama-era pursuit for months of Republican votes on the Affordable Care Act.

Biden’s advisers have a clear-eyed answer to this criticism at the ready. Absent robust and sincere efforts to get Republicans on board, it’s impossible to sell this package to the likes of Senators Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly. As this newsletter has noted repeatedly, all face tough re-election bids and none is a true-blue Democrat. If it looks like a partisan power grab, count them out. Eventually, Democrats may have to go it alone, as they did on the latest stimulus package. But they will need every Democrat to stay united, and that’s easier if they have a long record of all the times they tried to meet halfway.

A secondary reason to chase a deal—at least for a while—is that it’s on-brand Biden. He won the election on the most progressive platform in history but campaigned as a center-of-the-road, reasonable man. Later, Biden can legitimately say that he tried and tried and tried for a deal, but those Republicans in Washington couldn’t get to yes no matter what. In some ways, the longer this drags on and the more attention Biden’s talks get, the more it may help him in 2024. It’s tough to attack someone for chasing something ambitious and working with opponents to get it done. This is why the Infrastructure Week joke sticks around, but has taken on new meaning with a new team in the West Wing.

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Meghan Trainor opens up for the first time about her son's scary birth

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Devon Conway’s superb debut century puts New Zealand on top in first Test - The Guardian

Devon Conway’s superb debut century puts New Zealand on top in first Test The Guardian
England v New Zealand: Joe Root wants home side to entertain Lord's crowd BBC Sport
England and New Zealand cricketers share 'Moment of Unity' in fight against discrimination Sky Sports
First Test: New Zealand 246-3 at stumps on day one v England – as it happened The Guardian
Recent Match Report - New Zealand vs England 1st Test 2021 ESPNcricinfo
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Bride ‘dies on her wedding day so groom ties the knot with her younger sister as victim lay dead in next r... - The Sun

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Hillsong staffer accuses Carl Lentz of sexual abuse

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James Peppiatt charged with Tony Eastlake's murder in Islington - Daily Mail

James Peppiatt charged with Tony Eastlake's murder in Islington Daily Mail
Man charged with murder of London flower seller The Guardian
EXCLUSIVE Police investigating murder of 'flower man of Islington' raid home of his ex Daily Mail
Man, 21, charged with murder of London flower seller stabbed to death Tony Eastlake Metro.co.uk
Man charged with murder of flower seller Bournemouth Echo
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SpaceX signs bulk deal for three private Crew Dragon missions - The Verge

SpaceX signs bulk deal for three private Crew Dragon missions The Verge

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RNC threatens Republicans will boycott 2024 presidential debates unless changes are made

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Man shot stepfather in Wake County before 100 mph chase, arrest in Orange, sheriff says

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God of War: Ragnarok delayed into next year, now confirmed for release on PS4 - Eurogamer.net

God of War: Ragnarok delayed into next year, now confirmed for release on PS4 Eurogamer.net
God of War 2 delayed to 2022 GamesRadar+
Gran Turismo 7 and God of War Ragnarök will be released for PS4, Sony confirms Video Games Chronicle
PSVR 2 for PS5 will have experiences 'synonymous with PlayStation' Tom's Guide
Days Gone studio is building on "deep open-world systems" with a new game IP GamesRadar
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The rush to cancel Ellie Kemper is based on a lie

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Lumber prices still sky-high amid COVID shortage. What’s being done to get costs down?

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Florida pastor helps bust a man who was seeking sex from a 16-year-old girl, deputies say

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Wednesday, 2 June 2021

Bridesmaid's husband gets uninvited to wedding due to his height: 'She is being shallow'

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Chicago barber accused of killing client who refused to pay for haircut

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Video shows Kansas City police confront Malcolm Johnson in gas station before shooting

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In Unanimous Ruling, SCOTUS Affirms Authority of Native American Tribal Governments and Police Forces

In a broad ruling reaffirming the sovereignty of Native American tribes, the U.S. Supreme Court declared unanimously on Tuesday that tribal police officers have the power to temporarily detain and search non-Native Americans on tribal land if they’re suspected of violating state or federal law.

The case, United States v. Cooley, involved a 2016 incident on the Crow Reservation in Montana where the defendant, Joshua James Cooley, was arrested after a Crow Police Department officer searched his vehicle and found weapons and methamphetamine.

Cooley was later indicted by a federal grand jury on drug and gun charges, but submitted a motion to suppress the drug evidence arguing that the tribal police officer lacked the authority to detain and search him because he is not Native American. The District Court and the Ninth Circuit Court had ruled in favor of Cooley’s argument, which the Supreme Court overturned.
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“This is an extremely important ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court,” Colette Routel, the co-director of the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, writes TIME in an email, explaining that the “decision was made on broad grounds” that extend beyond the Crow tribe’s specific treaty rights, and was unanimous, which “is rare in Indian Law cases in recent decades.” Routel adds that she views the ruling as part of a larger shift by the court to respect tribal sovereignty and treaty rights, explaining that the court has decided in favor of tribal interests in the past five cases that have gone before it.

The landmark Supreme Court ruling Montana v. United States in 1981 said tribal governments don’t have jurisdictions over non-members on “fee lands” (and, in a 1997 expansion of the ruling, roadways where the federal government has the right of way, like the public highway Cooley was on when detained) with two exceptions: if the non-native person has a consensual relationship with the tribe, like an employment contract, or if their behavior “threatens or has some direct effect on the political integrity, the economic security, or the health or welfare of the tribe.” Tuesday’s decision is the first time the court has applied that second exception.

The ruling could impact the ability of tribal governments to enforce their laws over non-native people amid the crisis of violence against Indigenous women, which Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has said she will make it a priority to combat. “With the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP), it is absolutely essential that tribal law enforcement be able to lawfully detain anyone within the tribal boundaries that poses harm to others, whether a tribal member or non-member,” writes Angelique EagleWoman, the co-director of the Native American Law and Sovereignty Institute at Mitchell Hamline, in an email.

According to the Indian Law Resource Center, more than four out of five American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence, and more than one in two have experienced sexual violence. Per the U.S. Department of Justice, American Indian women also face murder rates over 10 times the national average.

“[The] impact of the case will be to better protect residents of reservations,” writes Joseph William Singer, a professor at Harvard Law School, “and to restore the notion that Indian nations in the U.S. have the legitimate sovereign power to act to protect both their people and anyone within the reservation from harm.”

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Covid UK: Every adult will be able to get vaccinated within weeks - Daily Mail

Covid UK: Every adult will be able to get vaccinated within weeks Daily Mail
UK Covid dashboard showing ‘zero deaths’ but also flashing warning signals The Guardian
Maps show worrying spread of Indian variant in just three weeks Yahoo News UK
"We need bigger study" about the new indian variant of coronavirus, UK Microbiologist's says FRANCE 24 English
Scientists call on UK to speed up second Covid jabs as India variant spreads The Guardian
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‘I Don’t Want To Be a Trend.’ Leyna Bloom on Opening Doors for the Next Generation of Transgender Talent in Film and Fashion

There are two words Leyna Bloom uses to describe ballroom culture: “walking magic.” “It’s a source of being, it’s the blueprint of a lot of courage in the world,” says the actor, dancer and model.

Viewers get a glimpse of that magic in Bloom’s film Port Authority, which premiered at Cannes in 2019 and arrives on demand and digital on June 1 following a limited theatrical release. With the film’s selection for the world’s most prestigious international film festival, Bloom became the first openly trans woman of color to lead a feature-length movie at a major festival. Next month, she’ll be pioneering another first, becoming the first Black and first Asian openly trans woman in the pages of the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. For Bloom, who has long campaigned for greater inclusivity in the fashion industry, it’s a euphoric moment. “We’re living in a new world right now,” she says. “I’m just glad to be born at this time so I could really be the first one to do things, so the next generation can have the resources, information or inspiration to do what they need to do.”
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Port Authority centers on the blossoming relationship between Paul (Dunkirk’s Fionn Whitehead), who has recently left home in Pennsylvania for New York City, and Wye, played by Bloom, a young trans woman who is part of the city’s ballroom scene. Writer-director Danielle Lessovitz, who is white and queer, told IndieWire last year about her goal of acknowledging the privilege of herself and audiences, while “[entering] the space in a loving respectful way, to honor the cultural contributions of this community.”

Bloom was drawn to the story for its many parallels with her own life: when she was 17, she moved from Chicago to New York City, taking a Greyhound bus and arriving at the city’s notoriously dingy Port Authority Bus Terminal. From a young age, Bloom aspired to turn her passion for dancing into a career; she had scored a prestigious scholarship to the Chicago Academy for the Arts. But the institution refused to recognize her gender as a woman, and Bloom decided to pursue her dreams in New York instead. It was there that, between waiting tables and searching for a more permanent home, she began to carve out a career as a model, and in 2017, became the first openly trans woman of color to feature in Vogue India.

She also became a renowned member of the ballroom community, known for walking in the category of “face,” one of several categories where contestants are judged based on certain skills or techniques. Bloom felt a sense of responsibility to represent the culture authentically in Port Authority. “It’s a place where I found refuge, where so many people can find inspiration, can find who we are, in this world that has rejected us.”

Ballroom culture, which traces its origins to the Harlem Renaissance, is both a social movement and an art form, pioneered by Black, brown and Latinx transgender and gender nonconforming folks who established LGBTQ networks in underground nightclubs, at a time when discrimination was pervasive in all aspects of life. The 1990 documentary Paris is Burning helped bring wider attention to what was then described as a subculture, and in recent years, depictions on the fictional FX television series Pose (Bloom is currently starring in its third and final season) and HBO Max’s reality competition Legendary have helped lead to its mainstream recognition.

For Bloom, that growing popularity is helping cement ballroom’s dominance and keeping those traditions alive. “Queer, brown, Black trans bodies may be at the bottom of the food chain in some aspects, but over the years, the world has really dived into our core of who we are,” she says. “I feel like the more people tap into ballroom and queer culture, they will see the essence of where it started, and know where it began.”

Photo courtesy of Momentum PicturesLeyna Bloom as Wye and Fionn Whitehead as Paul in ‘Port Authority’

As well as sensitively approaching the themes of interracial relationships and the experience of being a trans woman of color, Port Authority leans into the concept of chosen families. In one scene, Paul asks Wye whether the other performers in her house are her real brothers. “Not in, like, the most traditional way,” she replies. That sense of uplifting and inspiring one another has meant a great deal to Bloom during her time in the ballroom community, as have her relationships with her biological family—among them dancers, entertainers and visual artists. She recounts watching the film recently with her father, and reflecting on her childhood, when her mother was deported to the Philippines, and she, her father and her older brother became homeless for some time. “To see us go from that to where I am right now is just really powerful for him. He always grounds me and says okay, this is amazing, what’s next?”

The next first for Bloom will come in July, with her appearance in the annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Participation in the shoot for the issue in Tampa was a profound moment, which came a couple of years on the heels of a viral campaign Bloom had launched in 2018, calling for Victoria’s Secret to include her as the first transgender woman of color to walk a runway show. (Bloom didn’t get the gig, and the following year, Victoria’s Secret hired Valentina Sampaio, an openly trans model from Brazil, for an ad campaign.) And even though things may have progressed slightly since then, Bloom feels there’s still a great deal of work to be done within the fashion industry and beyond to ensure inclusive values are consistent, and come from a genuine place. “I don’t want to be a trend. I want to be taken seriously,” she says. “I would like my child to be born in a world where when they wake up, and they walk outside, they look left, or they look right, and they see people from all different walks of life. I want representation to be fluid, universal and heartfelt.”

For Bloom’s future projects, “it’s always going to be purpose over popularity,” she says, referring to barrier-breaking “gladiators” that came before her including pioneering actor Dorothy Dandridge and model, activist and Paris is Burning subject Octavia St. Laurent. “When I leave, I want to leave something [behind], so people can live off of it forever. That’s what I was brought here to do: to be walking magic.”

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In Texas, Democrats Go All In to Fight Voting Restrictions

With the midnight deadline for the Texas legislature to pass any more bills less than two hours away, State Rep. Chris Turner sent his fellow Democrats a text that helped seal the plan to kill a sweeping voting restrictions measure. “Leave the chamber discreetly. Do not go to the gallery. Leave the building,” said Turner, the chair of the House Democratic Caucus. (The text was first obtained by The Texas Tribune.) More than 60 Democrats poured out of the Capitol building on Sunday night and made their way to a predominantly Black church in Austin, where they held a press conference criticizing the bill.
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In taking their leave, Democrats ensured there was no longer a quorum for a vote on a bill that would have set new limitations on voting by mail and voting hours, among other restrictions. The measure had the support of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and the GOP majority of members of both chambers. It’s one of hundreds of bills Republicans in other state legislatures are pursuing to impose fresh voting restrictions after the 2020 elections.

The Texas measure is dead for now, but probably not for long. Abbott has already signaled that he intends to call for a special session to allow lawmakers to approve the legislation. That could be as early as this week or in a few months. Either way, Democrats have vowed to fight on, cementing Texas’ place as one of the few epicenters of the fight over voting rights in the nation.

TIME spoke with Turner about why Democrats staged the walk-out and why he opposes the bill on Tuesday morning. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TIME: How are you doing? I’m guessing this wasn’t how you expected the legislative session to end.

Turner: It was definitely an unusual ending. The short answer is tired but gratified for the few dozen members of the House Democratic caucus who made a strong stand.

You sent a text message to fellow Democrats asking them to leave the chamber discreetly. How did you come up with that strategy?

So it was very much a collective idea from the Democratic Caucus. Big picture: we were determined to do all we could to fight this bill. We had a few options. Sunday, when we staged the walkout, was the last day that the Texas legislature can pass bills. We knew we had an opportunity to push this bill back, closer to the midnight deadline, to get it in the danger zone. So we worked to first bring up other non controversial bills or bills that had bipartisan support, partly because we wanted them approved but also to bide more time.

Was it a challenge to get everyone on board?

The majority of our Democratic caucus was definitely on board with leaving the Capitol to ensure the House had no quorum. Had they not been, it would not have worked. Even for the Democrats who did remain in the House, they may not have supported that particular tactic, but they were just as strongly opposed to the bill and were fighting it in different ways.

Some might ask what’s the point of doing this if Republicans are just going to call a special session to pass the legislation? What’s your response?

Well, we can’t control what the Republicans decide to do; we can only control what we do. In Texas, only the governor has the ability to call a special session, for which he also determines the agenda. That’s an immense amount of power. The governor is going to do what he wants to do and then it will be our job to figure out the best way to continue to protect our constituents. If the governor chooses to put a needless voter suppression bill on the agenda for a future special session, then we’re going to fight it just as hard as we fought it this week.

Gov. Abbott has said that he intends to cut funding for the legislative branch, threatening that there would be “no pay for those who abandon their responsibilities.” What’s your reaction to that?

I mean, it’s absurd. First off, the governor doesn’t have the ability to individually cut specific members’ pay. Further, every member of the House and Senate makes $600 a month. We do get a per diem during the session. If you calculated it out—if you took the hour and a half where there was no quorum before the midnight deadline—I think it comes down to about $16 a person. So it’s just a silly diversionary comment. Our constitution sets up three equal branches of government. The executive doesn’t get to defund the people in the legislative branch of government.

What specific provisions of this bill worries you?

This bill was problematic for a number of reasons. First, it empowered partisan poll watchers to potentially harass and intimidate voters and election officials. Texas already has an issue of vigilante poll watchers stirring up trouble. Secondly, the bill would have restricted early voting on Sundays, when many African American churches in Texas and across the country do Souls to the Polls events where the congregation goes to vote after attending church. (The legislation said early voting may not occur before 1 p.m. on Sundays.) Church service is usually in the morning. That’s straight up voter suppression. Thirdly, limitations on being able to send vote by mail applications to voters and people who qualify to vote by mail is simply a needless and a suppressive tactic.

Do you have broader concerns about the bill?

It’s based on Donald Trump’s false narrative that he actually won the last election and that it was stolen from him due to voter fraud, which has been consistently and thoroughly debunked. Republicans in Texas and across the country, in their fealty to Donald Trump, continue to promote and give credence to that Big Lie and say we have to pass these so-called voter fraud bills. And that is just a noxious form of lawmaking that is really insidious, and has no place anywhere in America.

We often see lengthy debates when controversial bills emerge in state legislatures. What was it about this moment that made so many Democrats feel it wasn’t enough to just talk?

The Texas Legislature has a number of hard deadlines on passing bills as they make their way through different chambers. As the minority party in the House, we use every tactic we have. Extending debates to push things past the deadline is something we’re very used to doing and we’re pretty good at it. Earlier this session, we extended debate to kill bills that would have restricted abortion or harmed transgender youth.

In this case, this bill was before us with this hard deadline at midnight on Sunday. And our first line of attack was to extend the debate and push the bill past midnight and kill it the same way. However, we also knew that there was a procedural move the Republicans were going to use to cut off all debate and force an immediate vote on the bill. And as we got closer to midnight, it was increasingly clear that that attempt to cut off debate was imminent. And that’s when the last members who were still there made the decision to leave.

There was a lot of talk related to this bill about singling out Harris County, which in last year’s election allowed 24-hour voting and drive-thru voting. This bill would have banned both. Why does Harris County keep coming up?

First of all, Harris County is home to Houston and it’s the largest county in the state of Texas. Harris County has increasingly become more Democratic over the last several elections and shows that Texas is increasingly becoming a competitive state. In last year’s election, the Harris County election officials were innovative in expanding voting access. So yes, they did allow for overnight voting because you know what, when people that work the night shift get off work at 4 a.m. and want to come vote before going home to sleep, they should be able to do so.

Drive thru was partly a convenience thing, but also a response to the fact that we had a pandemic taking place during the last election. Republicans don’t like that, because they don’t want voting to be more accessible to all voters. They want to make it harder to vote. And so that’s why they very intentionally targeted those innovations in Harris County.

What is the message you want to send not just to Texans, but to Americans in general, by doing this?

I hope that all Texans and all Americans understand that the unified Democratic opposition to voter suppression measures is driven by our belief in democracy—that a democracy is healthiest and strongest when it is open and accessible to all eligible voters in our nation, and attempts to make it harder to vote for eligible voters, making it harder to register to vote or vote by mail is antithetical to who we are as as a country.

My colleague and dean of the House Democratic Caucus Senfronia Thompson articulated it well. How can Americans try and promote democracy abroad but not reflect on what we are doing in our own country? I hope that our efforts in Texas this week will add impetus and urgency for Congress to pass strong federal legislation to prevent subsequent voter suppression bills and stop discriminatory and unfair redistricting.

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Wife of man in jail for killing alleged burglar at his business: ‘My heart is broken’

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