Reading archive 2026-07-01

DC's fireworks supershow this year could be a smoke-filled mess: Disrupted views are a common part of the DC fireworks show, even before it gets supersized like in 2026.

Two Teens Shot While Attending Gun Violence Prevention Program: The teens were attending their first day of a six-week violence prevention training in Northeast D.C. as part of the city's summer youth employment program.

Virginia law will put speed-limiting devices on reckless drivers' cars: Proponents of intelligent speed assistance device (ISA) laws include the mother of a 5-year-old who was hit and killed in D.C. The District allows them, and they're coming to Maryland.

D.C. unveils sweeping master plan for Commanders stadium and RFK campus

ICE’s arrest of nun heading to church fuels bipartisan backlash in South Texas: The president’s deportation drive has riled border areas that supported him in 2024, and a GOP congresswoman joined Democrats calling for the sister’s release.

There’s a new way to treat sprains and strains. Hint: Ice is out.: If you think you need rest, ice and ibuprofen, think again.

Beyond Denial How Oil Execs Shaped a Landmark Climate Study - "For a generation, people learning how to address global warming were taught the ideas in the 'Wedges' paper. 

"What they didn’t learn was this: 'Wedges' was significantly shaped by the British oil giant BP — one of the single global entities most responsible for causing climate change."

A False Pretense of Judicial Modesty: The Supreme Court is remaking the law while claiming to preserve the status quo. - "When the Court does overrule precedent, it is a big deal, as in yesterday's decision in Trump v Slaughter. The opinion officially overturned Humphrey's Executor, a 90-year-old case. But the separation-of-powers practice formalized in Humphrey's Executor goes back at least 50 years before the Court decided it. Relying on Humphrey's allowed Congress to build the modern federal government, insulating agencies from the whiplash of electoral politics and channeling bipartisanship, expertise, and continuity into technical policy making. These agencies will now be upended in ways their creators never anticipated. 

"Precedent, of course, is not a magical constraint that produces mechanical results. A better way to think of it, as the philosopher Ronald Dworkin put it, is as a 'gravitational pull' on judicial reasoning. Respecting it grounds judges in traditions larger than themselves and guards against overreach. If following Humphrey's Executor served those values faithfully, its overturning reflects the triumph of something else: faddish theories of the moment-here, the theory of the unitary executive-and the hubris of a Court that thinks it knows best. The Court has replaced the gravitational pull of accumulated wisdom with the gravitational pull of itself."

Ukraine’s Plan to Unnerve Putin: Recent drone attacks in the Moscow area reveal a multifaceted strategy.