Axios

Three unnamed, but fully vaccinated, Democratic members of the Texas House have tested positive for the coronavirus, the state's House Democratic Caucus said Saturday.

The big picture: The three lawmakers are among dozens of state House members who fled to Washington, D.C., earlier this week who said they would stay away from Texas until they achieved their goal of blocking Republicans from passing new voting restrictions.

Child cancer patients and HIV-positive Mexicans have increasingly had to put life-saving treatments on hold as public hospitals run out of the medications they need.

The big picture: Activists say around 1,600 children with cancer have died from the lack of oncological meds.

TurboTax maker Intuit announced Thursday that it will leave the IRS' Free File program, which has offered free tax filing to millions of Americans for 20 years.

Why it matters: The departures of Free Files' two largest participants — Intuit this year and H&R Block last — leaves the future of the program uncertain, ProPublica reports.

Alaska's Supreme Court ruled Friday that the recall campaign to oust Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy is legal and may proceed, Reuters reports.

The big picture: The governor's political opponents, who are leading what they say is a bipartisan campaign, argue that Dunleavy has abused his power and is unfit for office.

The State Department announced on Friday it started investigating mysterious health incidents impacting U.S. diplomats, as well as other government employees, in Vienna, Austria, per the Associated Press.

Why it matters: Some of the symptoms resemble "Havana Syndrome," which has been used to describe mysterious brain injuries suffered by embassy staff in Cuba in late 2016 and the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, in early 2017.

Congress is mulling a number of proposals aimed at investing in technology and traditional scientific research and development that could make huge strides on racial diversity in science.

Why it matters: The proposals come as science institutions face pressure to hire and cultivate more teachers of color, diversify research fields and ensure that there is greater diversity in the STEM workforce overall.

The representation gap in STEM jobs is largest among Hispanic workers, according to data from Pew Research Center, and that could consign them to lower paying jobs.

The big picture: STEM occupations, which tend to be higher-paying, are projected to grow in the next decade, especially in computer science and information security. Black and Hispanic people, especially women, may not benefit from that job growth because, as the Pew authors write, education trends "appear unlikely to substantially narrow these gaps."

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a theoretical physicist at the University of New Hampshire, is one of about 100 Black American women physicists, but she nearly left the field in her first semester in college. She isn't the only scientist of color who thought of giving up before her career began.

Why it matters: Scientists and institutions have stepped up efforts in the year since George Floyd's murder to redress the underrepresentation of people like Prescod-Weinstein and other scientists of color among their ranks. That marginalization affects not only who pursues science as a career but the problems scientists address.

Students from underrepresented communities are earning more Ph.D.s, yet doctoral degrees in science and engineering are still overwhelmingly conferred on white students, according to an analysis from the National Science Foundation.

Why it matters: Today's doctoral candidates are tomorrow's teachers, mentors and researchers who can help the next generation of students see themselves as scientists and guide the areas they explore.

By the numbers: In 2019, nearly 70% of doctorate recipients who were U.S. citizens or permanent residents were white.

• 10% were Asian, 8% were Latino, 7% were Black and 3% identified as more than one race.
• Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans earned about 5,500 doctorates in 2019, a 6.7% jump from 2018.

Black, Latino and Native American students are least likely to have a parent with a bachelor's degree or higher, and often enter programs with an immense lack of diversity — two major factors that block the pipeline to higher education.

• About 75% of doctorate recipients who were Asian or white came from families with at least one parent with some type of degree in higher education, compared with between 49% and 59% of doctorate recipients who were Black, Latino or Native American.

“Trust the science” are this year’s buzzwords. But from astronomy to zoology, systemic racism keeps people of color from practicing science or from benefiting from its findings.

More than 1 million people in Cuba every day are using an anti-censorship tool supported by the U.S. government to circumvent their own government's social media blackouts, Bloomberg reports.

The big picture: Censorship-circumvention software company Psiphon Inc. has facilitated the transfer of over 600 terabytes of data from users in Cuba since Sunday, per Bloomberg.

Iran's deputy foreign minister said Saturday that efforts to finalize an agreement with Iran to return to the 2015 nuclear deal must wait until hardliner Ebrahim Raisi assumes the presidency.

Why it matters: The Biden administration has said it would like see a deal in place before Raisi's inauguration next month.

Diplomats making up the international Core Group, which includes the United States, called on Ariel Henry, the man slated to succeed Jovenel Moïse, to form a new government in Haiti, according to a statement released on Saturday.

Why it matters: Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph has assumed the acting presidency following Moïse’s assassination though he and Henry are two of four who have claimed such power, underscoring the depth of the country’s democratic and political crisis.

The fight for voting rights ramped up this week, coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the death of Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights activist who fought for equal voting rights throughout his life.

Driving the news: Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, was arrested Thursday along with eight people in a voting rights demonstration in Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, Texas Democrats fled the state this week in an attempt to block Republicans from passing new voting restrictions.

The families of five Maryland newspaper employees who were killed in a mass shooting in 2018 and some of the employees who were in the Capital Gazette newsroom during the attack have sued the parent company, alleging it did not do enough to prevent the attack.

Driving the news: Two lawsuits were filed on June 24 and were unsealed on Thursday, according to the Baltimore Sun, which is also named as a defendant.

Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas is traveling around the state and meeting face-to-face with residents in an effort to combat vaccine hesitancy as COVID-19 cases rise and vaccinations remain low, AP reports.

Why it matters: Hutchinson's statewide vaccination tour — which has drawn skepticism and in some cases, hostility from residents — distinguishes the governor from other Republican elected leaders, who often portray health leaders as adversaries even as they try to bring down cases, per AP.

More than 300 words and definitions newly appeared on Dictionary.com this week, to better "mirror the world around us," the site's managing editor said of the update.

Driving the news: Words made popular during the COVID-19 pandemic and others that reflect the race and justice dialogue that followed last year's police-killing of George Floyd were added to the web-based dictionary based on the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

Wall Street moguls are urging their bankers to get off Zoom and visit corporate clients before others do, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Why it matters: Wall Street executives have been pushing to move away from the remote work structure that has taken hold during the coronavirus pandemic.

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, feared President Trump might provoke war with Iran as he tried to cling to power, Susan Glasser writes in The New Yorker.

Flashback: Iran was repeatedly raised in White House meetings with Trump in the months after the election, and Milley repeatedly argued against a strike, Glasser reports:

This may be hard for some of you to stomach, but it's worth grappling with — it captures a rising dynamic in American politics.

What they're saying: Andrew Sullivan, once influential but now on an island, writes in his Substack newsletter, "The Weekly Dish," of a "sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites" — a "moral panic," he calls it.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said Friday that his department would not enforce an L.A. County mask order, saying it is "not backed by science."

Driving the news: Villanueva's statement comes one day after L.A. county officials announced a new mask mandate for residents in indoor public locations regardless of vaccine status, effective Saturday at 11:59 p.m.

The obscure Investigations and Threat Management Service within the Department of Commerce went "rogue" across multiple presidential administrations by conducting unauthorized "race-based" investigations into department employees, according to a new Senate report.

Why it matters: The unit was allowed to abuse its authority for years without repercussions and became what whistleblowers described as a “gestapo" within the department that habitually targeted people of Chinese and Middle Eastern descent.

President Biden will meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi at the White House on July 26, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.

Why it matters: The meeting comes amid increasing concerns over recent rocket and drone attacks conducted by Iran-backed militia groups against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria.