Biden calls for major reform to US supreme court | First Thing

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Joe Biden has said the recent US supreme court decision providing presidents some immunity from criminal prosecution was “a fundamentally flawed [and] dangerous principle” as he called for significant reform of the nation’s highest court.

Speaking in Austin at the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Biden said he was proposing a new constitutional amendment that explicitly applied the criminal code to presidents. Donald Trump’s actions demand legislative changes, he said, after the decision in Trump v United States granted presidents wide-ranging immunity from subsequent prosecution.

Biden called for term limits and a binding code of conduct for supreme court justices, noting that scandals had undermined public trust in the fairness of the institution. The US is the only western democracy to grant lifetime appointments to its highest court.

• What does Biden’s amendment need to pass? Constitutional amendments require two-thirds of both the US House and Senate to vote for it, and then also the government of three-quarters of the states, making the proposal unlikely to go far at the moment.

Gretchen Whitmer and Roy Cooper say they’re not in running for VP

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and North Carolina governor Roy Cooper – both viewed as strong contenders for a spot on the Democratic ticket – have said they will not run, notwithstanding their support for Kamala Harris.

With the pair ruling themselves out, remaining lawmakers slated as potential running mates are all white men in critical swing states, including the Kentucky governor, Andy Beshear; the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz; the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro; and Mark Kelly, a senator in Arizona.

All have signaled that they would run if asked to – but none have offered any hints about whether they have been approached by Harris’s campaign.

Western citizens urged to leave Lebanon as efforts to deter Israeli attack continue

Washington is rushing to prevent a full-scale war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah after a rocket attack on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights killed 12 youths at the weekend, while western governments are urging their citizens to leave Lebanon.

The US, UK, French and German governments have all issued travel warnings to their citizens, calling on them to leave Lebanon or avoid travel there. The US has reportedly focused its diplomacy on pressuring Israel against striking heavily populated Beirut, the city’s southern suburbs that form Hezbollah’s stronghold, or Lebanon’s key infrastructure.

Lebanon’s deputy parliament speaker, Elias Bou Saab, told Reuters that Israel could avoid a major escalation by sparing Beirut and the capital’s surrounding area. “If they avoid civilians and they avoid Beirut and its suburbs, then their attack could be well calculated,” he said.

In other news …

• Venezuela’s opposition leader has urged the president, Nicolás Maduro, to accept his exit from power after thousands protested against his disputed claim of being elected for a third time.

• The men’s Olympic triathlon has been rescheduled hours before it was due to begin owing to unsafe levels of pollution in the Seine after heavy rain on Friday and Saturday.

• Two children have died and nine have been wounded after a knife attack on a children’s Taylor Swift-themed dance class in north-west England on Monday. Six of the nine were injured critically.

• Heavy rains triggered a succession of landslides in Kerala, the southern Indian state, with at least 24 people dead, dozens more missing and more than 70 injured.

Stat of the day: Water under the Western desert is being depleted twice as fast since Sisi took office in Egypt

Shortly after Egypt’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi came to power in a military coup in 2014, he announced an ambitious – and controversial – project to transform 6,487 sq miles of desert into farmland before 2027. But with a huge water deficit, critics doubt the project, which is rapidly depleting water from Egypt’s groundwater reserves, is viable.

Don’t miss this: Ukraine’s death-defying art rescuers

“A nation’s understanding of itself is built on intangible things: stories and music, poems and language, habits and traditions. But it is also held in its artworks and artefacts, fragile objects that human hands have made and treasured,” writes the Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins. This is why historian Leonid Marushchak has at times risked his life to evacuate dozens of museums across Ukraine’s frontline, along with a team whom he compares to “guerrilla fighters”.

Climate check: Global methane emissions ‘rising at fastest rate in decades’

Methane emissions are rising at the fastest rate in decades, new research has found, with scientists calling for immediate action to prevent a critical escalation in the climate emergency. The world has focused on tackling carbon dioxide emissions, with little action taken on methane – despite it having 80 times more heating power than CO₂ in the first 20 years of it reaching the atmosphere.

Last Thing: Meet the man who ranked every Disney song

Watching Disney movies with his daughters, musicologist Robert Komaniecki couldn’t help but tune his critical ear into the songs that make them so beloved by many. So, naturally, the music lecturer produced a ranking out of 500 for each tune, scored on lyrics, music, vocals, plot integration and subjective enjoyment (“vibes, basically”). Here’s what came out on top.

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