Morning Must Reads: July 3

3 minute read
Capitol
The early morning sun rises behind the US Capitol Building in Washington, DC.Mark Wilson—Getty Images
By Alex Rogers

  • “The abduction and suspected revenge killing of an Arab youth sparked intense clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli security forces in East Jerusalem on Wednesday, raising the specter of wider violence two days after three kidnapped Israeli teenagers were found dead in the occupied West Bank.” [WashPost]
    • “…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies on Israel’s political right appear to have extracted what they wanted from the crisis. And that has been disastrous for Palestinian civilians, who are suffering what, by every indication, appears to be collective punishment by the Israeli government for the actions of a few rogue militants.” [Vox]
  • How ISIS Came to Control Large Portions of Syria and Iraq [NYT]
  • “There’s a battle raging inside the Obama administration about whether the United States ought to push away from its goal of toppling Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and into a de facto alliance with the Damascus regime to fight ISIS and other Sunni extremists in the region.” [Daily Beast]
  • Secretive agency leads most intense anti-corruption effort in modern Chinese history [WashPost]
  • “Relations between the CIA and Congress are more fraught than at any point in the past decade. The source of the tension is the Senate intelligence committee’s classified report on the CIA’s controversial post-9/11 interrogation program—and the agency’s response to it. The bad blood could get worse in coming weeks, when portions of the report and CIA response are expected to be declassified.” [WSJ]
  • With Change Proving Difficult, Barack Obama Returns to Hope [TIME]
    • “That Obama has grown frustrated by Congress is nothing new, but the fact that he is wearing it on his sleeve is.”
  • “The unemployment rate, at 6.1%, is at its lowest since September 2008, the month of the Lehman collapse. However, the labor force participation rate is still at 62.8%—also the lowest ever.” [Reuters]
  • “This week, in the Hobby Lobby case, the Supreme Court ruled that a religious employer could not be required to provide employees with certain types of contraception. That decision is beginning to reverberate: A group of faith leaders is urging the Obama administration to include a religious exemption in a forthcoming LGBT anti-discrimination action.” [Atlantic]
  • “Thousands of Facebook users received an unsettling message two years ago: They were being locked out of the social network because Facebook believed they were robots or using fake names. To get back in, the users had to prove they were real. In fact, Facebook knew most of the users were legitimate.” [WSJ]
  • “Tropical Storm Arthur became a hurricane early Thursday morning and continues to accumulate strength as it approaches the North Carolina coast.” [TIME]

  • “…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies on Israel’s political right appear to have extracted what they wanted from the crisis. And that has been disastrous for Palestinian civilians, who are suffering what, by every indication, appears to be collective punishment by the Israeli government for the actions of a few rogue militants.” [Vox]

  • “That Obama has grown frustrated by Congress is nothing new, but the fact that he is wearing it on his sleeve is.”

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