Good morning.
Wednesday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of seventy-three. Sunrise is 6:15 AM and sunset 7:35 PM, for 13h 19m 49s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 5.1% of its visible disk illuminated.Today is the one thousand twenty-third day.
On this day in 1963, Dr. King delivers his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech to over 250,000 civil rights supporters.
See also text of the speech.
Recommended for reading in full:
Stavros Agorakis summarizes news of A landmark decision in Oklahoma:
- Oklahoma delivered a stinging blow to the drug manufacturing firm Johnson & Johnson on Monday, a landmark victory for the state that may help decide more than 2,000 lawsuits targeting opioid makers and distributors around the US. [CNN / Jacqueline Howard and Wayne Drash]
- The company was ordered to pay $572 million for its “false, misleading and dangerous” sales campaign that contributed to the massive opioid crisis, as J&J supplied 60 percent of the opiate ingredients used for drugs like oxycodone. The amount, though short of the $17 billion Oklahoma hoped to secure in the trial, could pay for a year’s worth of epidemic relief services in the state. [NYT / Jan Hoffman]
- According to Oklahoma’s attorney general, Johnson & Johnson contributed to 6,000 deaths in the state alone since 2000, with the crisis en route to becoming the “deadliest” man-made epidemic. The pharmaceutical firm has already said it will appeal the judge’s decision. [Guardian / Chris McGreal]
….
- The surge in lawsuits comes after a string of evidence helped tie the companies’ malicious sales tactics to the opioid epidemic. According to Vox’s German Lopez, manufacturers promoted opioid-based painkillers as “safe and effective, with multiple studies tying the marketing and proliferation of opioids to misuse, addiction, and overdoses.” This also led to other waves of drug overdoses, as the use of heroin and, later, illicit fentanyls grew in response to people losing access to opioids or seeking more potent, cheaper highs. [Vox / German Lopez]
Nick Miroff and Josh Dawsey report ‘Take the land’: President Trump wants a border wall. He wants it black. And he wants it by Election Day:
President Trump is so eager to complete hundreds of miles of border fence ahead of the 2020 presidential election that he has directed aides to fast-track billions of dollars’ worth of construction contracts, aggressively seize private land and disregard environmental rules, according to current and former officials involved with the project.
He also has told worried subordinates that he will pardon them of any potential wrongdoing should they have to break laws to get the barriers built quickly, those officials said.
Trump has repeatedly promised to complete 500 miles of fencing by the time voters go to the polls in November 2020, stirring chants of “Finish the Wall!” at his political rallies as he pushes for tighter border controls. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed just about 60 miles of “replacement” barrier during the first 2½ years of Trump’s presidency, all of it in areas that previously had border infrastructure.